Randy Rides Alone

1934

Action / Drama / Mystery / Romance / Western

3
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 42% · 1 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 42% · 500 ratings
IMDb Rating 5.3/10 10 1302 1.3K

outlaw murder posse damsel in distress

Director

Harry L. Fraser Photo
Harry L. Fraser

Top cast

George 'Gabby' Hayes Photo
George 'Gabby' Hayes as Marvin Black aka Matt the Mute
John Wayne Photo
John Wayne as Randy Bowers
Herman Hack Photo
Herman Hack as Posse Rider
Tex Phelps Photo
Tex Phelps as Deputy
720p.WEB
481.11 MB
1280*960
English 2.0
NR
30 fps
12 hr 52 min
Seeds 11

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Spondonman 6 / 10

Alternate title: The Forgotten Massacre At The Saloon

Another Wayne/Canutt/Hayes Lone Star entry, mostly enjoyable with the usual few tedious scenes thrown in. How any 52 minute movie can have tedious stretches is down to the love interest and various characters having to walk from one location to another. Riding is much more exciting after all!It has a good start, with Wayne entering a saloon only to be greeted with a blood-bath, or was it just a good night previous? Chin-bald Hayes plays 2 characters, one the top baddie and the other a good-guy mute who has to write his words down on scraps of paper - more tedium. The key moment in RRA is after the heroine has said no to him as the good guy he starts to scribble an answer down to try to change her mind. Then he and the scriptwriter realise it won't do any good with only 5 minutes left so he petulantly blurts out "I'm fed up with this" and becomes his True Evil Self to her.Some nice outdoor photography, nice print, nice scenes of the skinny Duke ambling around Alone before he's suddenly smitten with love. He improved his fight techniques in the coming years!
Reviewed by dbborroughs 5 / 10

If you can get through the slow stretches this is a good little western

John Wayne rides into a saloon and finds the player piano running and everyone in the place dead. The safe has been broken into as well. As Wayne investigates the scene the sheriff and posse arrive and promptly arrest Wayne vowing to get his gang as well. Breaking out of the jail with the help of the saloon owner because she knows he didn't do it Wayne is off to find out who did.Though held by many as a classic, I'm not too sure of its status. Its certainly got some good moments and at least one classic moment in it, but its not really a classic sort of film. The opening of the film where John Wayne walks into the saloon and finds everyone dead is one of the creepiest sequences I've ever seen in any sort of film. There is something unsettling about the whole affair that really gets under your skin. Its the type of thing that makes you sit up and pay attention, I just wish the rest of the film was on on par with that one scene.Unfortunately this 53 minute film also has a great deal of filler. There are frequent stretches were people just ride between locations. This doesn't include the chases which seem to spring up every five minutes or so. Its deadly and it kills the pace of the film which would be a taut 30 or 35 minute with out them.Worth a look for that one scene if nothing else.
Reviewed by BrianG 6 / 10

Very different for the Duke

John Wayne made a slew of B Westerns for major and minor studios in the '30s before he hit it big with "Stagecoach" in 1939 for RKO. This was made for Monogram, a minor studio, and directed by Harry Fraser, a quirky director who spent his entire career grinding out B (and D, and Z . . . ) movies for long-forgotten studios like Resolute, Atlantic, PRC and Screen Guild. Working at a cheapo studio like Monogram would be considered the start of a downward slide for most directors; for Fraser it was a step up the career ladder, and he was ready for it. This could well be called one of, if the first, gothic Westerns; such things simply did not exist in 1934. It's eerie, atmospheric and has an especially shocking (for the time) opening scene. Randy (Wayne) rides into town after a long, dry trip and stops by the local saloon to wet his whistle. As he approaches it, he hears the tinkle of a piano coming from inside. Entering the establishment, however, he's greeted by a grisly sight: the piano is a player piano running by itself, and there are dead bodies lying everywhere. This film shows what can be done with almost no money but a lot of imagination and talent. This kind of movie wouldn't have been made at any of the big studios, but the independents could get away with a lot of things the majors couldn't (and wouldn't) do. This is an extremely offbeat, well done little film, not at all like Wayne's other westerns of the period. It's too bad Harry Fraser was never able to capitalize on the success of this movie (reportedly it made quite a bit of money and Wayne got along especially well with him); it would have been interesting to see what he would have been capable of with a bit more money and some major studio backing. Instead, he stayed pretty much where he was and ended his career making trash like "The White Gorilla" and "Chained for Life", about a murder committed by Siamese twins (!). Sorry, Harry.
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