I'll tell you why so serious

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

John Wayne grew as a screen performer during his days starring at the cheapo production company Lone Star. It's a shame the last film he made there turned out one of the worst.Government agent John Wyatt (Wayne) is sent on a mission to find a pair of suspected counterfeiters. One, Doc Carter (Earle Hodgins) runs a travelling medicine show selling gussied-up hard liquor as a "Famous Indian Remedy." The other, Curly Joe Gale (Yakima Canutt), is hiding out in Mexico, where he runs his illegal trade. The government suspects the two may still be in cahoots."Well, that's a new one for me," Wyatt tells his boss. "Looks like I'm going to have to join a medicine show."It's the one new wrinkle on what by now had become the Wayne formula at Lone Star. Once again he has a secret identity, once again he will meet a charming girl to bond with (Marion Burns as Doc's daughter Linda) and once again he will butt heads with Canutt when the crook crosses paths with his less crooked partner Doc and decides to get him out of the way for good.Director Carl L. Pierson may not be Wayne's regular helmer at Lone Star, Robert N. Bradbury, but he employs the same kind of flat storytelling devices and obvious padding. The film begins with Wyatt riding up to a town and discovering Doc Carter just rolled out under a cloud of community suspicion. The routine is repeated twice more before Wyatt finally links up with Doc and joins the show.An assortment of time-killing devices follow, including a lengthy section where Doc delivers his spiel, introduces a pair of guitar- playing singers who perform a couple of songs, then turns things over to his new attraction, "Cowboy John," who shoots targets around Linda. This amounts to a successful courting ritual for Wyatt, leaving us to wonder what kind of father lets a stranger fire bullets an inch from his daughter's head.A drunk one, I guess. Much of the humor involves how Doc Carter is his own best customer. In between pulls from the bottle, his tedious spiels suck away whatever passes for energy. As John W Chance points out in another review here, you get the feeling Pierson thought Hodgins was going to be in pictures long after the world forgot about this Wayne guy.There's also Canutt as the bad guy, a legendary stuntman who was no actor. The film has him try to bribe Wyatt to make Doc leave town, then resort to lame threats when Wyatt refuses."Alright, stranger, then I'll deal from the bottom of the deck," Curly Joe replies in his flat, wheedling voice. "You and that show be out of town tonight, or I'll be there looking for you." Eventually the criminal mastermind settles on having his henchmen take Doc and Linda to a cave where he can laugh and wait for Wyatt to show up before shooting them.There's also a number of needlessly cruel horse falls that punctuate long chase scenes. All of this is by-the-numbers Lone Star time kill, and hopefully fed some hungry dogs better than it does our need for excitement.The most disappointing thing about this film is Wayne himself. While he managed to show some real talent in his Lone Star work, here he's very clearly going through the motions and watching the clock. With such a dull supporting cast and a lame story, you can't blame him. Maybe he was thrown playing love scenes with an actress who had the same first name he did.Wayne's Lone Star films have some good moments, and at least one film worth recommending on its own merits, "Sagebrush Trail." Unfortunately, this one only shows why they called it "Poverty Row."

. . . so PARADISE CANYON is a pretty static story. This flick is one of TWO DOZEN--that's right, you can count them up on this site's "John Wayne" filmography: there are 24!--movies Wayne made during the 1930s alone in which he's pretending to be a "John." (Of course, in Real Life, he was in and out of so many Mexican bordellos during the mid-1900s that he got his days and nights mixed up, and "accidentally" MARRIED at least one of these hookers!) As Gertrude Stein famously said, "A john is a john is a john." Though America's self-appointed Snitch-in-Chief later reduced Humphrey Bogart to a sniveling coward during the Great U.S. Witch Hunt, at least Bogie did not feel the need to play "Humphreys" in all of HIS films. (Somehow, it seems that THE MALTESE FALCON may have flopped if its P.I. were named "Humphrey Spade;" ditto a CASABLANCA centered around "Humphrey's Gin Joint.") The other key visitor to PARADISE CANYON is "Linda Carter." Though Linda throws herself at John-John, there's not much chemistry here, since she's clearly not a high-end Mexican courtesan. Those hoping to see Linda don Star-Spangled Tights also will be disappointed, because she lacks Wonder Woman's super powers (and this flick is filmed in Black & White, to boot!).

For fans of Lone Star-Wayne only. It's a pretty slender installment from our friends at Paul Malvern's production company. Wayne's an undercover G-man on the trail of counterfeiter Yakima Canutt. On the way he hooks up with medicine man Doc Carter (Hodgins) and his sloe- eyed daughter (Burns). We see a lot of the medicine show and some of it is a hoot—The Texas Two whose down-home ditties are memorably corny. But reviewer Chance is right: Hodgins takes up too much screen time for a brief 50-minute feature. Too bad producer Malvern didn't pop for a location shoot at scenic Lone Pine. That would have compensated for a lot. Instead, the boys have to ride around the scrubby un-scenic outskirts of LA. He did however pop for a well-staffed chase scene at the end. Then too, there is the usual hidden hideout that fascinated Front-Row kids like myself, along with a dramatic plunge off a cliff. But the sum-total is rather plodding and not up to the usual high-action standard. (In passing— sorry to say I counted 3 "trip-wire" induced falls, which make for a dramatic tumble of horse and rider, but is unfortunately often fatal to the horse. Happily, these stunts were eventually banned. On a more upbeat note-- for a really entertaining look at how these Saturday afternoon specials were made, catch Hearts of the West {1975}.)

In Paradise Canyon, John Wayne is a federal man looking for some counterfeiters. Suspicion is falling on Earl Hodgins, the feds are circling in on him. Looks like the work he was sent to prison for a 10 year stretch for.Hodgins back in the day operated his racket from a carnival medicine show and the medicine show has been started up again. Wayne helps Hodgins skedaddle out of town and in gratitude Hodgins lets Wayne join the show as a trick shot artist.Of course Hodgins's daughter Marion Burns is also quite the distraction for Wayne. With some detective work and a little help from the Mexican Rurales, the Duke uncovers the real counterfeit mastermind. Paradise Canyon has a weak story line and the VHS copy I viewed wasn't particularly good. However this particular film was stolen by Earl Hodgins as the garrulous carnival man. Hodgins is quite good in a part usually reserved for Gabby Hayes in these Lone Star Productions.