The Trail Beyond (1934)

With a bigger budget than other movies of John Wayne's of this period, this 55 minute programmer has a more interesting story and higher production values than those others.The version I saw, on TCM had a very clean and crisp transfer and even looked like it had been restored.The story goes something like this: John Wayne travels to Canada in search of a missing miner and his daughter, but ends up a fugitive when he helps a friend who has been framed for murder to escape the law. In a deserted mountain cabin, complete with skeletons, they stumble on a treasure map. Deciding to go after the loot, they're on the run again, until a devious trapper plans to get his hands on it by posing as a mountie.There's some wonderful scenery (pity it's not later and in Technicolor) that rather takes over from the story but that's no bad thing and is a nice change from the dust and Indians of your usual western.The Duke's delivery of his lines are stilted and rather wooden but he's unsurpassed at mounting a horse whilst running - and from the back of the animal, which arguably is far more important than eloquent dialogue!Though hardly a classic and probably a bit pretty for young boys wanting 'cowboys'n'indians' action, The Trail Beyond remains quite watchable.

Great alpine scenery. Yes, I know, there's a story too, but who needs it with all the terrific vistas to marvel at. Lone Star didn't just ride around California's Owens Valley on this one. No sir, they got right into some of the best mountain panoramas of the Southern Sierras. Nearly every frame has something picturesque to look at.Maybe you can follow the plot. I couldn't. Something about a gold mine and some baddies who speak Frenchified English about as well as I can. Poor Verna Hillie, she has about ten lines in the whole movie. Still, it does get tiresome looking at all those ugly guys. Then too, watch Noah Beery Sr., who has the look and voice of a first rate villain. Definitely, he should have played the lead bad guy. Still there are some good touches-- the broken bottle (how clever), the race down the river (scope out that waterfall), and the great Earl Dwire (no actor, but with a face that would scare Frankenstein).The only advantage most A Westerns have over this lowly programmer is script quality. Sure, that's a biggie, but otherwise this little V W can hold its own against the sleeker Cadillacs of the day.

I wish folks would quit comparing these films to any film in the year 1007. These films were short on money, long on excitement, and mainly created for the kids to have heroes to cheer for! I get tired of people putting these movies in B categories. Could you do any better with what they had? Almost no budget, and remember John Wayne wasn't considered a STAR until Stagecoach. He was only nominated twice for an academy award, once for the Sands of Iwo Jima and True Grit! For an icon, a movie legend and larger than life person, I think he should have won more Oscars! The Seachers from 1956 didn't win and it is one of the finest films ever made.

Stuntman Yakima Canutt, in a 1978 interview,had no problem recalling 1934's "The Trail Beyond." He recalls it as... "the one where John, Eddie Parker(stuntman) and I stayed wet more than we were dry" and said he told producer Paul Malvern to count him out of any more films where people spend most of the time paddling canoes up and down a river, and just call Buster Crabbe instead."The Trail Beyond" was easily the most water-logged Wayne film until he lost encounters with an octopus/octopii in "Reap the Wild Wind" and the later "Wake of the Red Witch." Within "The Trail Beyond", Canutt, Parker or Wayne(and sometimes all three because of close-ups)leap off a train into a lake;paddles up the river in a canoe; leaps off a bluff and swims to a canoe; paddles up the river a second time and jumps in the water to swim back and upset LaRocque's canoe; jumps in the water from a bank to prevent a canoe from going over the falls and, in general, is wet more often than dry.In the department of Be Careful What You Wish For, an IMDb commentator writes an informed and loving piece about the California locale of this movie, and then wishes it had just been shot in color. One viewing of the colorized video version may have left him him thinking his beloved countryside looked very well and better in Archie Stout's b&w original photography.A distraction may have been the reward poster on John Wayne, as "Gat Ganns" from his earlier "West of the Divide" that shows up on the wall of Beery's "Waninosh House" trading post (which also shows up in "The Man from Utah"), but a much larger distraction was Robert Frazer's and Earl Dwire's attempts at French accents, or whatever accent they tried to employ.And the reward posters aren't a "goof." Monogram and resident-art director E. R. Hickson didn't go in much for redecorating standing sets. Those posters showed up for years in later Monogram westerns post 1937.