Review of Winds of the Wasteland

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.