Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Arianna Moses 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.

Hayleigh Joseph This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

mark.waltz When John Wayne & George "Gabby" Hayes strike it rich in the mine, a group of mustache twirling villains become determined not only to find the location of the mine, but to get Gabby's property as well. Over a long stretch of 53 minutes, the Duke is framed for murder, but "Gabby" has a trick up his sleeve in his old costume box-the dress from a production of "Charley's Aunt" he uses to outwit the villains. So if anybody ever asks you what John Wayne movie has a man in drag, you can tell them Gabby Hayes in this one. There is also a silly sequence where Wayne rides across the range while someone else is sliding over a waterway on what appears to be some sort of stick. (Broomstick, perhaps?) Fortunately, it's all over and resolved in less than an hour, and results in some laughs-at the film's expense.

MartinHafer I've seen quite a few of John Wayne's B-movies that he made throughout the 1930s and this one certainly was unique. I saw it on the Encore Channel and noticed that the soundtrack was very, very modern--done with electrical instruments that hadn't been invented until very recently. Also, at times it really sounds out of place. However, the voice tracks are all original. Why was this done? Could anyone explain this to me?! It detracted a bit from an otherwise excellent B-western and I then noticed this in OTHER Wayne films on Encore. Whose hair-brained idea was this?!"The Lucky Texan" stars John Wayne with George "Gabby" Hayes. You might not recognize Gabby at first. Some of this is because in the 1930s he still hadn't settled upon his old coot character yet--appearing in some of Wayne's films with his false teeth and dressed quite well. In this guise, he occasionally even played the villain. Here, he isn't quite the erudite character but not quite the coot, either--he's a bit of a transition. While missing the teeth and sounding like the old Gabby we all know and love, here he sports a mustache instead of a scraggly beard and is a bit less of a crazy character--at least for the first 3/4 of the film.The movie begins with Wayne and his new partner discovering gold. However, instead of staking their claim and having it jumped, they decide to keep the location of their find a secret. Little do they know that the man in the gold assayer's office is part of a gang that includes many of the folks in town and they'll stop at nothing to steal the claim. First they try to frame Hayes for murder--and this fails. Then, he try to kill him and assume he's dead---though he survived and kept his whereabouts hidden. When men now claim that Hayes sold his property to them, Wayne is sure that there is a conspiracy afoot...and he investigates while Hays lies low. How Hayes manages to do this is a real hoot--but I won't say more--it would spoil the fun.While the plot is pretty standard, how all this is handled is certainly not. Again, I can't really say more, as it would really miss a wonderful twist. Leave it to me when I just say that you MUST see this film if you like B-westerns. You'll see what I mean.By the way, aside from the bad soundtrack that was tacked on later, isn't it odd to see ladies wearing 1930s-style dresses and seeing one of the good guys give chase in a model T Ford as two of the baddies rode off on an electric cart?! Apart from these anachronisms (and more), this looks like an old West film and it sure baffled me!

Jay Raskin Gabby Hayes irascible sidekick performance and Yakima Canutt's excellent stunt work make this one quite watchable. Gabby is delightful, especially when he puts on a dress to testify at his own trial. The horse transfer stunt that doesn't work is really special. Yakima (doubling for Wayne) jumps on a fleeing horse from his own galloping horse, he misses and ends up rolling down a hill. One gasps and hopes he wasn't hurt.With likable characters and a plot that keeps moving, this one is quite professional and on a par with a good Lone Ranger episode two decades later.

Mike-764 Jerry Mason finishes college and goes back to live on the ranch of his father's best friend, Jake Benson. Mason and Benson soon find a rich vein of gold in a nearby creek and are able to secretly mine the gold and bring it in to the assay office of Harris and his partner Cole. Harris tries to figure out where Benson's mine is located, but the two won't disclose it at the moment. Harris figures out that the mine must be near Benson's ranch, so he tricks Benson into signing the deed over to Harris. After Benson is released from jail following his arrest for the attempted murder of the banker (actually done by the sheriff's son to pay off a gambling debt to Harris), Harris and Cole decide to strike, ambushing Benson in the desert and framing Mason for the crime, then trying to take over the ranch. Benson is able to make it back to his ranch and sends Betty (his visiting granddaughter) to Mason, where he devises a plan to capture the real crooks. The film is a letdown for Wayne with his only memorable scene being him riding down a log flume on a stick to capture Parker. Hayes is great here, first showing the Gabby/Windy characteristics that would make him a B western icon. Sheldon is terrible here and appears she won the role in a raffle, and is nearly as bad as the script and directing by Bradbury, who is unable to keep a constant flow in the movie. The subplot with the sheriff's son shooting the banker and Benson's arrest has nothing to do with the rest of the film and the ending best belongs in a Keystone Kops short rather than this film. Rating, based on B westerns, 3.