'Neath the Arizona Skies

This rates as the worst of the Duke's early shoot-em-ups that this writer has seen. Still, the worst John Wayne western has much to offer. My big beefs are that the plot line has a hole in it so big you could drive a stagecoach through it. The hero Chris Morrell meets a girl named Clara who turns out to be the sister of his slain friend Bud Moore. Later, she introduces him to her brother Jim, who earlier had switched shirts and hats with an unconscious Chris at the riverbank. Yet, despite being best friend to her brother, Chris doesn't seem to know that Bud had a sister AND a brother who is a bad enough hombre that his first appearance in this film is robbing an express office. Even more implausible is that Clara doesn't recognize the shirt that Chris is wearing at the riverbank as being identical to one belonging to her brother, especially since it appears as something so dressy that no self-respecting cowboy would wear it in public except to a dance. Another bigger beef that rates as a GOOF comes at the movie's beginning. While packing Nina's clothes for their journey,Chris tells her they're heading north to find her dad. Since they're still presumably in Oklahoma, which is east but not south of Arizona, a northward journey means the picture should be retitled "Neath Nebraska Skies." Despite its faults, it's a pretty typical B western with not much to distinguish it from Wayne's other Lone Star pictures, except for the Shirley Temple wannabe they stuck in this picture. Shirley had nothing to fear from the competition here. Dale Roloff