Dreadfully Boring

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Allan Lane plays a roving cowboy who seems to know an awful lot about the law regarding land claims in Topeka Terror. That knowledge is going to come in handy when he helps a bunch of settlers being swindled during the Oklahoma land rush of 1889. That is after he saves Tom London and his daughter and Twinkle Watts from a runaway team of horses.Perennial Republic villain Roy Barcroft is on hand and I have to say his villainy reaches some new heights. Give the man credit where credit is due, he's got one great scheme to accomplish claim jumping on a truly large scale.Stealing the film in whatever scene he's in is Earle Hodgins playing a dude lawyer who likes to doubletalk in legalese. Nice Republic western for Allan Lane.

It's not surprising that this film doesn't have any other reviewers on this board; I only caught it by chance on Encore Westerns this morning. It's one of hundreds churned out by Republic Studios back in the day, this one featuring Allan 'Rocky' Lane as "The Topeka Terror". The story follows the famous Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, and more specifically, the territory known as the Cherokee Strip. A pair of land swindlers (Roy Barcroft and Bud Geary) lure land agent Parker (Frank Jaquet) into their scheme to pay off his gambling debts, and it's up to Chad Stevens (Lane) to smoke out the bad guys and make the save for the new homesteaders.A lot of what keeps the story moving is the comedic dialog provided by Don Quixote 'Ipso Facto' Martingale, portrayed by veteran Earle Hodgins. As an attorney accompanying the settlers, he amuses and confounds with speech peppered with nonsense like habeus corpuscles and nully contenders. The best way to describe him would be like watching Pat Brady on speed.I'm not so sure the bad guys could really have pulled off a ruse like the one tried in this picture. Agent Parker would record the names of homesteaders making their land claims in the morning, and then fail to recognize those same folks later in the day after he replaced the record book with a phony one. Let's just say it took a major suspension of disbelief in order to make these stories work back in the Forties.Not to worry though, Chad Stevens has it all figured out, and reveals at the finale that he's actually an investigator for the U.S. Land Office. Everyone rightfully gets their claims back, and he heads off into the sunset to take on his next 'pro tem' assignment.