Law of the Rio Grande (1931)

Director:

Forrest Sheldon

Writers:

Betty Burbridge (story)
Bennett Cohen (story)

Release Date:

9 August 1931 (USA)

Genre:

Western

Plot:

Escaping from the Sheriff, Jim and Cookie decide to go straight. But when they meet their old cohort...

Plot Keywords:

Outlaw | Mexico

Cast

Bob Custer	...	Jim
Betty Mack	...	Judy Lanning
Carlton S. King	...	Colonel Lanning (as Carlton King)
Nelson McDowell	...	Wolf Hardy
Harry Todd	...	Cookie
Edmund Cobb	...	The Blanco Kid

Runtime:

USA:57 min (original release)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Webb-Douglas Productions

Bob Custer at Syndicate

If nothing else, "Law of the Rio Grande" demonstrates what you could buy for a couple of bucks and a box lunch back in 1931. There is certainly no lack of saloon extras or henchmen in this low budget affair from Syndicate Pictures, a forerunner of sorts of Monogram, niceties that would become prohibitive later in the decade. The cast is familiar and mostly made up of silent screen actors now down on their luck. It is not that Bob Custer and the others were necessarily terrible performers, but they were audibly unfamiliar with dialog and obviously received no help from a direction steeped in silent era film-making. The surviving print of "Law of the Rio Grande" is rather grim in places, a fact that adds to the overall ennui of the too-familiar story. Mark this down as an interesting piece of independent film-making in an era of transition.