The Dawn Rider

An American Western; A story about a man returning home to witness his father murdered. Giving chase, he is shot himself. He plans to track down the elusive robber, though his plan is complicated by his love interest, and vengeance. This Lone Star Productions oater doesn't have much lustre. The acting is a bit stiff in most scenese and there is very little character development. A modicum of intrigue helped the story along, otherwise this is efficient at best. Nonetheless, it has some fine stuntwork - the horse chases are marvellous.

This film essentially begins with two cowboys named "Ben McClure" (Reed Howes) and "John Mason" (John Wayne) getting into a fistfight in the middle of a small town with John eventually coming out the winner. Being that neither man is the type of hold a grudge against a fair fight, after everything is said and done, they both become good friends. Not long after that, John steps into the freight office to see his father and, upon arriving there, finds that it is being held up by a number of armed thieves. To his great sadness and dismay, when his father puts up some resistance, the outlaws kill him right in front of John before leaving in a hasty manner. Quickly following them on horseback, John manages to kill at least one of the outlaws before he is also shot. Fortunately, Ben has followed close behind and manages to carry him to his house where a doctor and his girlfriend "Alice Gordon" (Marion Burns) are able to eventually get him back on his feet. What John doesn't know, however, is that Alice's brother "Rudd Gordon" (Dennis Moore) is the leader of the outlaw gang that killed his father and that this information is going to cause a number of problems for all concerned. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this short, Depression Era film suffered from a poor transition between scenes which gave the movie a rather choppy quality to it. The acting was also rather mediocre as well. Even so, it had an entertaining plot and, all things being equal, I have rated it accordingly. Average.

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.

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.

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.