The Law Commands

Produced by E.B. Derr, a former adviser to Joseph P. Kennedy, the Low-budget Crescent Pictures productions starring Tom Keene were not advertised so much as Westerns but as historical adventure yarns. "The Law Commands," however, is the usually sagebrush tale of an upstanding citizen battling a criminal protection syndicate in Iowa at the time of statehood. As such, it isn't half bad and the surviving print remains watchable if slightly on the scratchy side. Of interest to B-Western fans is a large role for good old Horace B. Carpenter, a character star for Cecil DeMille in the 1910s who was offered mostly one-line bits in the talkie era. Always a bit of a ham, Horace chews the scenery with abandon here as well as the head of the local farmers cheated out of their land by greedy Robert Fiske. Budd Buster plays the comic sidekick role in ersatz Gabby Hayes style and Tom Keene is his usual stoic self. The leading lady, Lorraine Hayes, was the sister of B-Movie femme fatale Bernadene Hayes and not, as some sources suggest, the future Laraine Day.