Movie Review: Paradise Canyon (1935) directed by Carl Pierson
There’s been a flood of counterfeit bills in the southwest territory recently. Federal agent John Wyatt (John Wayne) has been sent to investigate. The local law enforcement do have one lead. A while back, two suspects were caught flogging very similar funny money. One turned state’s evidence and got a light sentence, while the other protested his innocence and drew ten years hard time. The second man served his sentence and was released some months ago, just about the time the new counterfeits started appearing. The last anyone heard of him, he’d returned to his old profession of running a medicine show.
Wyatt assumes the name of John Rogers and starts following the trail of the medicine show. It’s fairly easy to trace, given that it leaves behind it a series of unpaid bills and drunken vandalism. Eventually John catches up just in time to help the show get across the Arizona border before the latest angry sheriff catches up.
Doc Carter (Earle Hodgins) is an affable fellow who believes in his own patent remedy and takes nips of it frequently. Given this product is 90% alcohol, that may not be the wisest course of action. He’s assisted by his lovely daughter Linda (Marion Burns), who dances a bit, and not particularly honest musicians Mike (Gordon Clifford) and Ike (Perry Murdock). John’s easily able to talk them into letting him join the act with some fancy shooting. They head for a town on the border of Arizona and Mexico.
On the Mexican side of town, there’s a saloon run by a fellow named Curly Joe Gale (Yakima Canutt). He is not pleased to hear that Doc Carter is headed that way. You see, he’s the actual counterfeiter, who set up the evidence to frame his medicine show partner who had no idea that there was any funny money involved. Doc could positively identify him as the culprit in the new counterfeiting scheme.
Curly Joe orders members of his gang to “convince” the medicine show not to come to town, or failing that, cause enough disruption to keep Doc Carter from discovering the truth.
Meanwhile, the captain of the local federales (Gino Corrado) has set his best deputy Miguel (Joe Domninguez) to investigate Curly Joe’s gang as they are clearly up to mischief, even if the captain doesn’t know what it is.
This is one of the Poverty Row Westerns John Wayne made at Lone Star before he got his big break in 1939 with Stagecoach. It’s probably set 15-20 years before it was filmed, as the medicine wagon is the only motorized vehicle seen and everyone else sticks to horses. The sets look cheap, and locations are heavily reused. The writing and acting are okay, but nothing to write home about. Doc Carter is at least an amusing character, and the medicine show scene is more like what it would have been like in real life, instead of the slick production seen in more expensive movies.
It’s notable, however, for being one of the few films in which John Wayne’s character makes a mistake. The Mexican captain offers the help of his troops to capture Curly Joe (once Wyatt shows him the extradition papers) but Wyatt refuses and rushes off to do the job solo. As a result, when Wyatt and Curly Joe get into a fight, the clueless federales arrest Wyatt instead! As a further result, Curly Joe is able to get the drop on Miguel, fortunately being in too much of a hurry to finish the job.
Oh, and about a minute and a half is dedicated to the subplot where John and Linda fall in love because of course they do.
On the decent side, Mexicans are treated okay for a Western film of this vintage.
Content note: Doc Carter abuses alcohol, usually played for laughs. Gun and fisticuff violence, with the former having a surprisingly lack of lethality.
Overall: This isn’t a good movie, but it’s not particularly bad either. It’s short at 53 minutes, so could easily be the lead-in for a double feature with a somewhat better movie, or as something relatively non-objectionable to watch with the kids. There’s also a colorized version, but I am given to understand that’s not an improvement.
