John Wayne and Gabby Hayes team up to take on bandit and (for some unexplained reason) fake Mexican, Pandro Zanti. What a name. Anyway, Wayne is out for revenge because Zanti killed his parents in the film's opening scene. Gabby Hayes also has a pretty daughter, played by Sheila Terry. Zanti's eyes bulge out when he first sees her so you can assume what that means. Hayes and Terry live in a ramshackle old place yet they manage to have a secret passageway behind a cabinet. There's also a deeply stupid sheriff to complicate things for our hero. Pretty corny stuff, for the most part. As with most of the B westerns Wayne did for Lone Star around this time, the highlight is the stuntwork of Yakima Canutt. Animal lovers prepare yourselves there's some rough-looking stunts for the horses in this one.

What distinguishes some of the 'Lone Star' films (and many others in western and adventure films of the early thirties) was their lack of what we recognize as formulaic story telling. To be sure they had good vs. evil (the basic element of any Western), boy meets girl and some stock characters, such as the old rancher and his beautiful daughter or grand daughter, and sometimes the evil banker or other businessman, but the way the action played out was often different from film to film.'The Lawless Frontier' features Earl Dwire in his big star turn (not) as (for some inexplicable reason) Pandro Zanti, a 'half Apache, half American posing as a Mexican who speaks the language fluently.' His biggest posing as a Mexican seemed to be his outrageous mariachi clothes. The only plot seems to be that he wants to steal Ruby, the granddaughter of "Old Dusty" (Gabby Hayes). When meeting her for the first time, Dwire gives her a long once over look that puts him in the big leagues with sexual predators. You'd think that because the opening scene shows Zanti killing John (Wayne) Tobin's father off camera, it would play a bigger part in the film. It doesn't. Too much chasing back and forth between heroes and villains.We get many good stunts, though, from Yakima Canutt, including pulling Ruby up on his horse when he rides by, jumping on 'renegades' and knocking them off their horses, a horse leap off a cliff into a lake, and even the same slide down the sluice sequence that was in "The Lucky Texan" (1934), although this time the Mighty Yak uses a body surfing log instead of straddling a tree bough, and its inclusion is just as illogical this time too, since they are in a desert.The high point is clearly John Wayne's measured and methodical well photographed walk across the desert after the fleeing and stumbling Zanti with those fantastic basalt cliffs of Red Rock Canyon (seen in countless serials, westerns and science fiction 'moon' movies) framed behind him. No final gun duel at fifty paces with the heroine running from the wooden steps of the bar to embrace and kiss the conquering hero in this movie! When John Wayne finally catches up with him, Zanti drinks poisoned water from a waterhole and dies.After a couple too many chase sequences, Zantai's gang is finally captured in Dusty's cabin, emerging one by one from behind a swivel cabinet that apparently leads to a canyon, now blocked off by having been dynamited. No riding off into the sunset or obligatorily kissing the girl: The final shot is Ruby, now Mrs. John Tobin, on the telephone to the now Sheriff John Tobin, "What would Sheriff Tobin like for dinner?" The film also has poor lighting and editing at the beginning, the pacing is slow, some parts with the sheriff cause it to drag, and the horse chases fill up the film. So despite the different and unusual elements, it comes off as one of the weaker Lone Stars.

So what can you say about a film that has the villain hamming it up with a lousy Mexican accent, an opening that has an atrocious editing job(mixing day and night footage in the same scene)and a dumb sheriff who wants to arrest the wrong man and botches his handcuffing of the real villain? For all its faults, it's actually not too bad. The chase scenes actually are quite good, with realistic falls from horseback by the girl and the villain in separate sequences. In real life, galloping over rough terrain, often with people shooting at one another, would cause those spills frequently. Once you get past the horrendous opening, Archie Stout's photography is pretty good for a B movie. I especially liked the desert foot-chase scene, with the towering basalt cliffs of Red Rock Canyon in the background. All told, the action sequences and sometimes stunning photography kept this and other John Wayne potboilers from being dull and gave depression-era audiences their money's worth, which was what made B westerns so popular in the first place. Just like audiences back then did, I sat back and enjoyed the ride, bumpy though it may be at times. Dale Roloff

John's parents are killed by a renegade bandit, played to the hilt by perennial bad guy, Earl Dwire. Dwire injures Hayes, who joins with John to bring him and his gang to justice.The local sheriff, Jack Rockwell, is convinced that John's one of the gang, and when Hayes is shot, arrests John for the shooting.There are the usual chases, gun battles, and fights that hallmark these "B" Westerns. There is one extended walking scene where you can see the Duke perfecting his special walk that became a trademark.An excellent stunt has John riding a log down a large drainage ditch. Pretty amazing, and not without danger to the actor.Beware though, the DVD copy looks as if they took the print from an Extended Play (EP) VHS copy. Very disappointing, but, a classic from John Wayne.