Kattiera Nana
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
Karry
Best movie of this year hands down!
Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Phillida
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Edgar Allan Pooh
" . . . with that watermelon accent," one White Dude says to another as HAUNTED GOLD proves that John Wayne flicks were chock full of Racism from their earliest days. During GOLD, Wayne constantly demeans his older Black Employee, "Clarence," (played by Blue Washington) by calling him "Boy." This and Wayne's many subsequent films in which he portrays a string of lazy Racist Antebellum (or Pre-Civil War) Southerners, Ex-Confederate War Criminals, and U.S. Cavalry Officers waging Genocidal War against North America's First Nations goes a long way toward explaining why "Il Duce" was extremely popular in America's Ku Klux Klan Kountry, but not so much anywhere normal human beings lived. Though Wayne could tolerate working with mostly-White buffoons putting on "Redface" to portray "Indians" for him to massacre, he was notoriously skittish around Blacks, who had few memorable co-starring roles with him among any of his 166 feature films. Though Mr. Washington's part here played as "Comic Relief" in that part of America universally viewed as backward and inbred Then, as well as Today, quantity always Trumps quality in the U.S., as the Racist Trumping King still teaches us daily.
wes-connors
On a dark and windy night, harmonica-playing cowboy John Wayne (as John Mason) arrives in a shadowy town, atop his smart-witted horse "Duke". Mr. Wayne is annoyed to find slavish, dim-witted cook Blue Washington (as Clarence Washington Brown) has followed; the servant was ordered to remain back at the ranch. A noticeably superstitious man, Mr. Washington wants to help boss Wayne, but crooks don't fear his "watermelon accent." Wayne's mission is to claim his half-share in a gold mine. He meets pretty blonde Sheila Terry (as Janet Carter), who also may be entitled to a half-interest in the mine... Wayne must battle dastardly Harry Woods (as Joe Ryan) before he and Ms. Terry can put their halves together. "Haunted Cave" has a couple of good action sequences, but they must have been lifted from "The Phantom City" (1928), with actor Ken Maynard and/or his stunt-man in Wayne's role. Washington reprised his role from the earlier film, where his "watermelon accent" was depicted on title cards. As the housekeeper, Martha Mattox is a welcome fright.** Haunted Gold (12/17/32) Mack V. Wright ~ John Wayne, Blue Washington, Sheila Terry, Harry Woods
bkoganbing
Haunted Gold is not a bad western for John Wayne from the series he made at Warner Brothers in 1932-1933. He's the owner of a ranch who's investigating some strange goings on at a mine where his father was once the part owner. The daughter of his dad's partner, Sheila Terry, received a letter about the mine and she's on the scene as well.There's a mysterious 'phantom' at work and Haunted Gold is starting to bare a resemblance to Abbott and Costello's Hold That Ghost. Never mind that it's a remake of an old Ken Maynard silent western.The comedy here comes from Blue Washington who plays Clarence Washington Brown, cook at Wayne's ranch and self-appointed bodyguard to his person. Sad to say that Blue Washington conforms generally to prevalent black stereotypes of the period. But actually if you take away the racial component, Washington really does act a whole lot like Lou Costello.As in all of Wayne's Warner Brothers films of the time, the Duke is aided and abetted by Duke the Wonder Horse. Most exciting scene is a fight with John Wayne and one of Harry Woods's gang of bad guys in a cable car above the mine. Duke the Horse comes to Wayne's rescue twice during that scene, actually quite exciting.It's too bad the racial stereotyping was there, but wouldn't a film with John Wayne with Lou Costello as a sidekick been real interesting? The mind boggles.
JimB-4
John Wayne made scores of B-Westerns in the thirties, and in some ways the few he did for Warner Bros. were among the more interesting, having somewhat better production values and execution. There are elements in "Haunted Gold" that would never have been covered by the budget of one of his Monogram programmers, but that's not saying much. It's pretty much the same old thing we'd see from Wayne for the next six or seven years -- good guy helps a sweet young thing outwit nefarious baddies out to cheat her or him out of something. Wayne has physical charm yet is still a callow actor at this time, though no one does much real acting in these. There's no George Hayes to lend true gravitas to the situation, and Erville Alderson, while always an interesting specimen to look at in the movies, is really terrible as a performer in the solid older man part. It's all not really much, until an exciting fight in a cable car between Wayne and an outlaw near the end. What is most notable (and most difficult) about the movie is the sidekick character, Clarence. "Haunted Gold" isn't the first nor would it be the last Hollywood movie to give a black actor bug-eyed terror and clichéd dialect for racial comic effect. But if there can be degrees of acceptability to such stereotyping, this movie seems to take it to a painful degree. For one thing, Blue Washington, who plays Clarence, is a strong, masculine figure of a man -- tall, muscled, intelligent of mien -- yet he scampers about whimpering about spooks and monsters like skinny little Willie Best. It seems immeasurably more degrading (though I'm not suggesting it wasn't degrading for other actors). Perhaps part of the difference is that Willie Best and Mantan Moreland, when they did their frightened "darkie" routine, were funny -- very funny. Watching Blue Washington do this stuff is like watching Sidney Poitier or James Earl Jones do it -- it's difficult not to focus on the humiliation of the actor. The script contains plenty of references to "darkies" and "Smoky" and "that watermelon accent," though Wayne's character treats Clarence more as an amusing comrade than a dimwit or a servant. But none of this makes "Haunted Gold" less uncomfortable an experience, at least if one has any empathy for Blue Washington, an actor who it seems had talent, even if it is sublimated beneath insensitive clichés here.