The Dawn Rider

The Dawn Rider has all the right elements for a great movie: a love triangle, loyalties between friends and relatives, revenge, right versus wrong, and a strong-willed hero. Packaged into an hour long cowboy package, everything was right for a great movie. As with nearly all B westerns the time and money required to make a great movie were not there.

As John Mason, Wayne never loses focus in his pursuit of his father's killer. At the same time he is oblivious to the yearnings of his best friend's girl, Alice Gordon. Alice is unaware of her brother's criminal doings. Ben McClure is suspicious of Mason when he is around Alice. Rudd Gordon needs to stop Mason before being revealed as a murderer. All the while Yakima Canutt oversees everything as the evil saloon owner.

While the story is very straight forward with no plot twists, every scene works toward the climax. While it may have been the intention of Robert Bradbury to do this, too often a cheap western got bogged down with mindless action scenes. The Dawn Rider holds up very well as a movie that clearly tells its story and gets to the point without losing the viewer.

John Wayne was a strong figure on screen by 1935. His trademark swagger and delivery was still in the making, but he was genuinely the John Wayne of legend by that time. It took another four or five years for Hollywood to notice, though.

When John Mason's father is killed, John is wounded. Attracted to his nurse Alice, a conflict arises between him and his friend Ben who plans to marry Alice. John later finds the killer of his father but goes to face him not knowing Ben has removed the bullets from his gun.

The dawn rider has a little more drama that the usual Wayne's Lone star westerns and features a good performance from Wayne - of course there's the killer stunts. Wagon going down an incline while Wayne is on the team of horses going in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the bits in between the gunsmoke and hove clattering can be tedious with the drama and conflict over a woman. But still passable with some good acting.

Another interminable B-western starring John Wayne, from Monogram/Lone Star Productions and director Robert Bradbury. Wayne plays John Mason, a nice guy who's returned to his hometown to visit his dad just in time to see the old man get shot down during a robbery by masked bandits. Mason teams up with local tough guy Ben (Reed Howes) to find the bad guys, but things sour when they both fall for the same gal (Marion Burns). Also featuring Dennis Moore, Yakima Canutt, Earl Dwire, Joseph DeGrasse, and Nelson McDowell.

This is so routine as to become tedious, with the same badly-choreographed fight scenes and lengthy horse chases that occur in all of these Lone Star films. It was different seeing Wayne teamed with an equal instead of the usual Gabby Hayes type. This movie also suffers from having another terrible electronic keyboard score added to it sometime during the 1980's for a video release. Added to ostensibly endear it to younger viewers used to having a score throughout every movie, it really only serves to make a bad movie worse.

Not being an expert on this genre I can't give The Dawn Rider an unqualified whoop or a hesitant snort either. I cut my eye-teeth on this type of B Western when a kid in the 60's - I've only seen a few hundred films like it since and it seems pretty much average.

Wayne looked a very smooth and supple 28 year old, swinging into saddles for countless horse races, sorry, chases, but he was a much better character to watch as the craggy icon he later became. He, and all the characters (and the story) in TDR are necessarily flat and undeveloped - the kids in the cinema at the time weren't interested in multi-layered portrayals of Tolstoy magnitude, and Lone Star weren't going to give 'em it either!

The DVD had new musical additions - I prayed for silence! But all in all a pleasant hour was spent by the TV at my ole homestead.

Catch Nelson McDowell as the lanky black-clad undertaker at movie's start. He's got the only face I've seen that appears to be assembled in sections. The eyes go in one direction, the nose in another, while the mouth bounces around like a Kleenex in a windstorm. He's fascinating. I wish we would see more of him.

Other reviewers are right. This is an average Wayne entry in the Lone Star series. Buddies Mason (Wayne) and Ben (Howes) do play off one another well and I like the way they bond after their fist-fight. It's now a friendship based on mutual respect. And when they fall out over the same girl (Burns), we feel the loss. There's also Wayne doing his patented "gunman's walk" before he duels it out with Canutt and Moore.

However, there's not much stunt work or hard riding. But the biggest problem is Dennis Moore as the chief baddie. Catch that scene that pairs up Wayne in a 2-foot hat with Moore in a 6-foot hat. Too bad Moore just doesn't measure up. Then too, the locations don't get outside greater LA, so we don't get the usual great Southern Sierra scenery. But never mind, an ex-Front Row Kid like this old geezer still gets a thrill when that great Lone Star logo pops up on the screen. Yes indeed, the Duke rides again!