Review of Winds of the Wasteland

I much prefer the alternative title of "Stagecoach Run", even better "The Great Stagecoach Race", as several reviewers titled their reviews. This is an early John Wayne Republic western. After this film, Wayne would move to Universal for a series of films in late '36 and '37, returning to Republic in '38....... It doesn't take long to figure out who the chief villain is: Douglas Cosgrove, as Cal Drake, who owns the stage line headquartered at the fictional town of Buchanan City, presumably in California. Wayne and his buddy Larry(Lane Chandler) are recently retired Pony Express riders, after the new telegraph line from the eastern US knocked them out of work. (Besides, they were way too heavy to make it as such riders!). Wayne decided they should save their collective 4 Pony Express ponies given them as a retirement present to pull a stage in a proposed new stage line. They can't guess what all tricks Drake will try to ensure that their stage line, if it gets off the ground, will fail. He offers to sell them the franchise for his Buchanan City to Crescent City run for $3000.,$1000 due immediately. He showed them some literature that said Crescent City had a population in excess of 3000. They decided to buy it, without first checking out Crescent City, a bad mistake! They found that the population had shrunk to 2: an eccentric old man, called Rocky, and another older man: Dr. Forsythe. Wayne finds a skunk residing in the mothballed coach. This skunk or its lingering smell would surface several additional times, including the last frames.........They did a trial run from Crescent City to Buchanan. Drake's henchmen weren't very friendly, and Wayne had to fight one. However, he did get his first passenger: Dr. Forsythe's daughter, Barbara(Phyllis Fraser): a knockout blond, looking much like Ginger Rogers, who was her cousin. She smelled skunk inside the coach, so requested to ride up front with Wayne. Thus, they got to introduce themselves. Boy, was she horrified when she saw Crescent City! She tried to talk her father into leaving, with no luck..... Somehow, Rocky found a flier announcing a race contest between stagecoaches to carry the mail between Buchanan City and Sacramento. The winner would get $25,000. plus the contract. It turned out that the only 2 contestants were Drake and the Crescent City line. You can bet that Drake and his henchmen did everything they could think of to knock Wayne and his coach out of the race. When these didn't work, they tried a variety of tricks during the race, to little avail. Of course, Wayne wins, by a head, and ends up with Barbara in his arms. I won't detail the various tricks Darby's men tried. See the movie to find out. It's available at YouTube. Wayne, himself, had a trick up his sleeve to induce more people to locate in Crescent City. He did a good deed for the telegraph linemen, and talked the supervisor into stringing the line through Crescent City, rather than Buchanan.......I'm surprised that Barbara's father wasn't killed before the ending, thus symbolically transferring Barbara's affection from him to Wayne.