The Worst Film Ever

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The first thing that strikes a current audience is the way the characters are introduced, silent film style. An interesting idea, but you can see why it went out of fashion as it interrupts the flow of the narrative. We're well into the movie before Randolph Scott finally appears and it's a bit disconcerting to suddenly have a sub-title superimposed, "Randolph Scott... Lynn Hayden."The next arresting thing is undoubtedly the fact that in some scenes Hathaway keeps his camera jumping around in a fascinatingly imaginative fashion, taking full advantage of the breadth of the sets and the width of the great outdoors. Pace is further enhanced by breaking up many of the scenes into (by modern standards) an unusually large variety of camera angles (leading to some rough editing in places).The lighting by Ben Reynolds also dates the picture on at least two fronts as it's unfashionable to use soft focus anymore; and illuminating night scenes with only a little key light and little or no background fillers at all has been a definite no-no ever since picturegoers complained that they paid money to see their favorite stars at full strength not half-hidden by shadows.For all Hathaway's efforts to quicken the pace, his players tend to work against him, not only by speaking slowly but by inserting long pauses between words, phrases, and especially cues. Oddly enough, the villains are the worst offenders. In fact this film reverses the general Hollywood rule and makes the goodies much more interesting and diverting than the baddies. Noah Beery and his bunch are not only dull and cliched but abnormally colorless. Hammy acting from Noah Beery and Jack LaRue doesn't help. Not that the good guys are innocent of theatrics, but Scott gives such a likeable and personable performance, he makes up a lot of the leeway. As for the once super-popular star Esther Ralston we can understand why her fortunes declined in the talkies. Her voice is okay but it not only doesn't jibe with the character, she's unable to use it expressively. All her emotions are still registered through her eyes, her facial muscles, her body language. Some of the support players are so bland or so impersonal or so amateurish it's hard to credit they managed to carve out considerable careers in the years ahead: Buster Crabbe, Gail Patrick, Barton MacLane, Fuzzy Knight. Plus Beery and LaRue. As for Miss Temple, well she was only five years old at the time and she does reasonably and recognizably well by her small part. It's the abominable Watson brat who has the lion's share of the kiddie footage.Hathaway's taste for violent action (the principals fight without doubles) and his penchant for location shooting are well in evidence throughout, though the long-awaited climax is a bit abrupt and resolved in a somewhat unsatisfying fashion, but these structural faults doubtless derive from the Zane Grey novel. Incidentally, despite reports to the contrary, there are only five or six short snips of stock footage, few of which seem to have been lifted from the original 1923 picture which has quite different emphases in its storyline.

My title quote is from incredulous brooding Jed Colby(Noah Beery) when told he had to serve a 15 year prison sentence for the shooting of Grandpa Spelvin, of the Hayden clan, whom the KY backwoods Colbys had been feuding with for generations.In one of his earliest westerns, the film is near half over before we get our first glimpse of hero Randolph Scott, in the guise of Lynn Hayden, a young member of the Hayden clan, who have moved from KY to NV to escape the vendetta war with Colby clan. Randy has spent the last 16 years staying with Granny in KY, because she refused to move with the others...Although only 60 min long(down from the claimed 70 min.), this film seems longer, as quite a bit of action and quite a few characters are packed in. It's a remake of the silent version, based on a Zane Grey novel, and is directed by Henry Hathaway.Thanks largely to the fiendish scheming of his nemesis, Jim Daggs(Jack La Rue), Randy does end up the last man alive among the two feuding clans. Scheming Jim, Jed's former prison mate and a supposed ally of the Colby clan, almost ended up with all of the Hayden's cattle and horses, and his supposed partner's spunky daughter, Ellen, to boot. But half dead Randy takes his place at the last min., as he and Ellen wed to symbolically end the feud for good.Jack La Rue would make a career out of playing darkly handsome, but fiendish villains, whom audiences loved to hate...Buster Crabbe, a favorite of the females in the audience, was also on hand, playing Randy's brother Bill. Buster dismisses Ellen as poor white trash, with a roving eye. But, Randy has a different take, despite her contradictory attitude toward him, especially when she learns he is a Hayden. Randy leaves a package on a rock near where he last saw her. She kicks it down the hill unopened until it lands in her campfire. Then, she changes her mind and opens it to find a beautiful dress. Later, she declared to her disapproving father that it would be her wedding dress.Another key protagonist-antagonist pair is Jed Colby and Mark Hayden(Egon Brechers) who, after the shooting death of Grandpa, represent the head male of each clan. It was Mark who spearheaded the successful prosecution of Jed for the murder of his father-in-law. After released from prison, Jed led the Colby clan to NV to take revenge on the Haydens, by initially rustling their cattle, bit by bit, hopefully provoking them into a fatal ambush. In contrast to the younger Haydens, Mark wants to avoid resuming the murderous feud, by having Jed convicted of cattle rustling. But, a concerted attack by the Colbys on the Hayden's main house, and the killing of son Bill cause him to make the fatal decision to go after Jed by himself. The resulting horseback chase of the Colbys by the Haydens gives Jim(La Rue)his successful chance to bury nearly all of both clans with a massive dynamite-induced rock avalanche.Eugenie Besserer plays Granny, who exits early in the film because she refuses to move to NV. This would be Eugenie's last film, as she died the next year.Barton MacLane has a minor role as the husband of Ann Hayden, sister of Bill and Lynn, played by Gail Patrick, and the father of a daughter, played by a very young Shirley Temple. He had a substantial film career, usually playing tough guys, often villainous. Gail also had a substantial film and TV career, most often playing antagonists of or a supporting role to the leading lady. However, she would play Randy's leading lady in the upcoming "Wagon Wheels", one of the early epic film representations of an immigrant train across the West. Like Randy, she was southern-bred, well educated, relatively tall and thin, good looking, with a patrician demeanor.Although a decade older than Gail, Esther Ralston plays the romantic lead as the neglected, dirt -poor, emotionally fragile, tomboy wild child of Jed. She had been a star beauty in the silent era, but mostly had supporting roles in the early talkie period. Noah Berry, who specialized in playing villains, was the brother of the more famous Wallace Beery.Only 3 years later, the subject of KY backwoods feuding clans would again be dramatized on film, in "On the trail of the lonesome Pine", with far superior production values, even being shot in gorgeous color, a very rare privilege at the time. Both were produced by Paramount and both were mostly shot around Bear Lake,CA. It would again explore the pluses and minuses of various possible ways of ending or minimizing such feuds(other than by La Rue's apocalyptic solution). These still have relevancy today, as criminal gangs in the US have replaced the backwoods feuds....Fuzzy Knight played a subsidiary character in both films, providing the limited music.This film is currently part of a DVD package of some of Randy's lesser known, mostly early, westerns. The camera work was generally good, if the filming technology and acting were rather primitive, by later standards. At times, both clans seemed to swell with unexplained extras.

The transfer of this film is horrible. It has been released by Alpha Video under the title of Law of Vengeance. THe movie starts off slow and is something of an oddity in the beginning. Law of Vengeance is the only film that I have seen that shows the actors credit on the screen when they enter the picture. For example, Randoplh Scott's character makes his entrance at 20 minutes into the picture. It is then that the screen credit "Randolph Scott as Lynn Hayden" rolls across the screen. I thought this was interesting.About 30 minutes into this western the story starts to get good. Mostly due to Scott and the female character known as Ellen Colby. The dialogue is very good in places.This western is of importance for a film historian. Not only was it directed by Henry Hathaway, it also stars Buster Crabbe, Barton Mclane, Jake Larue and two uncredited performances by a very young Shirley Temple and a young John Carradine. This film was important in the career of Randoplh Scott and if you are a fan of his, you definitely want to own this movie. At a price less that 5 dollars, it is surely worth it.

This tale of fussin' and a feudin' is showing its age in spades, but at least it benefits from a memorable cast: Randolph Scott, Buster Crabbe, John Carradine, and little Shirley Temple, whose doll gets its head shot off. Jack La Rue plays the villain and is in desperate need of a moustache to twirl.