Well ladies and gentleman the Pony Express rides again,, this time with John Wayne leading the charge. A man and his partner ride into town looking to make some money,, and there chance is right in front of them 25,000 prize for the quickest Pony Express run.. Crescent City is where it all starts at,, and for the life of me I can't remember the ending point, but that's really not important,, so the Duke and his partner get the line,, now only to find out that the town in which they start at has a grand total of get this,, 2 people.. well eventually 3 more people are on the way so we got 5 all together,, the man who put up the prize money though isn't playing on the up and up , as he tries to sabotage the Duke and his partner from finishing the run from the one city to the other for the Pony Express,, I found this movie to be very interesting as I really don't know much about the origins of the Pony Express.

John Wayne's extremely low budget features of the mid 1930's are an entertaining mix of various western themes that are often repetitive, yet never boring. In the case of "Winds of the Wasteland", he is the sucker who buys a stagecoach of the practically vacant ghost town of Crescent City. But when Duke's the hero, he's bound to get revenge in the most clever way, and here, it is the rebuilding of that community and the race to get a government grant to deliver the mail through their stagecoach. Lane Chandler is his "Gabby" Hayes like sidekick who humorously finds an interesting intruder into the stagecoach when they first come across the decrepit vehicle. Of course, there's a young lady involved, and she's Phyllis Fraser, the big-city raised daughter of Crescent City's doctor who has lied to her in the mail over the city's population. Lots of humor (especially the delight of the town's mayor/sheriff/drug store operator at doubling the town's population from 2 to 4!) fills up the short running time as Wayne cleverly goes up against the bad guys who commit a lot of nefarious actions in order to keep Wayne from winning the race. The result is an entertaining programmer that Duke fans will want to watch again and again.

Wow, I've watched a ton of John Wayne's B-westerns from the 1930s, but I have never seen one that featured such obscure actors throughout the film. Familiar faces like Gabby Hayes and Yakima Canut are no where to be seen, so it's obvious that this is an even lower budget film than usual for Wayne--an actor who made a bazillion B-westerns. Fortunately, despite the no-name cast, the film itself was pretty dandy--mostly because it was so unlike all the rest of these films.The film begins with the closing of the Pony Express--a service that actually only operated for about a year. Wayne and another ex-rider decide to go in to the stage coach business--even though they know absolutely NOTHING about it. It's because of this that they are so easily swindled by a jerk who owns many of the stage lines. He sells them a broken-down stage and a route for a ghost town! But, instead of giving up, the two work their butts off and through some ingenuity the business and the dead town start to come to life. However, the evil rich jerk is determined to ruin the partners--even if it means killing one of them! Despite the no-names, the film was entertaining--more than I had expected. With a fresh plot and Wayne's usual effortless performance, it's among the best B-westerns I've seen. Well worth seeing...and within only a few short years, Wayne would go on to A-pictures and stardom.

Strong story line that benefits from Lone Star's alliance with Republic Pictures. Poverty row Lone Star usually emphasized action at the expense of story-line. This resulted in lots of exciting chases, but often with little understanding of why. Here, however, the plot is very well developed with believable characters and good action. It's an excellent sketch of how guts, risk, and ingenuity helped transform an abandoned ghost town into a vibrant new community. The screenplay also does a nice job of showing the challenges of rebuilding a frontier town without losing the conventions that entertained kids of the time. Wayne delivers a nicely appropriate turn as the driving force behind the redevelopment, along with Lane Chandler as his buddy. This film especially shows Wayne's charm before the big-money responsibility of super-stardom made him more serious. Final stage race is well conceived along with how reviving the town also restores self-confidence of its inhabitants. Very positive story-line unusual for a B-Western of the time.