The Trail Beyond (1934)- John Wayne (2)

Director: Robert N Bradbury

Stars: John Wayne,Verna Hillie & Noah Berry

Genre: Western/Action/Adventure

MPAA Rating: Not Rated

Running Time: 55 Mins

Tagline: None

Synopsis:

{According to IMDB}

"Rod Drew hunts for a missing girl and finds himself in a fight over a goldmine as well. "

Discussion

Before John Wayne starred in Big Budget westerns like True Grit, The Searchers, Rio Bravo and Who Shot Liberty Valance; he began in low budget westerns throughout the 1930’s. These B-Westerns were produced by Lone Star Productions. Most of the films produced by Lone Star had similar plots, mostly always involving thieves, missing gold, and banditos; In other words, your typical stereotypical western. On a side note, It is curious- Wayne had starred in The Big Trail (1930) a bigger budgeted western, yet it did not launch his career. It was not until 1939’s Stagecoach, that he obtained recognition. So in between the time of these two films (from 1934 to 1937) Wayne did these cheap low budget westerns. The Trail Beyond is one of those, low budget and produced by Lone Star Prod, and it is a perfect example of your stereotypical western.

John plays Rod Drew; he is in search of a long lost niece from a friend of his.  Of good will, Drew goes in search of her in the mountains of Canada (it's actually California) In his search, Drew re-united with an old friend in a train; the friend, however, gets in a big fight over a bad hand of poker. Drew helps his friend out and they manage to escape from the feud and leave the train. After the short introduction of these principal characters, we meet the villains...some badly portrayed French baddies. I have never seen such poor attempt at impersonating a French accent in my life; I was laughing uncontrollably, not only at the accent but at the wardrobe and thin moustache common in a stereotypical French man. Anyhow, Wayne's character stumbles upon a cabin, were some skeletons have been left behind with a map to a lost gold mine. In begins the plot: Wayne must prevent the baddies from getting their hands on the map and the gold...how original, no?

I wasn’t too impressed with this mediocre western, then again it's an early Wayne western...so it is excusable. Like I said earlier, Most of the Lone Star Westerns involved the same plot. I didn’t dislike this one, yet I’m not so amicable about it. You might actually find this John Wayne flick in a pack of 20-50 movie collection. The Price range for the movie pack goes from 5-10 dollars. The Box Set I own is from Brentwood Studios, I got it for 10 bucks, so there, and it’s pretty cheap.  Just don't expect good picture quality. You have to keep in mind that these movies are over 70 years old, the quality is not exactly up to par with today's standards; unless it has been remastered, which it hasn’t in this case. So, overall, the picture quality in most of these westerns is below average. I will let you be the judge; I will post a link below to the full movie since it is available to public domain