Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #163514 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-09-27
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 56 minutes

Customer Reviews

Pleasant thirties' b-movie
Night riders shoot, scare, threaten and terrorize farmers in Iowa during the Civil War. The riders are in the employ of an unscrupulous easterner - might as well say furriner. You can't miss him, he's the clean shaven one in the brocade vest with the best looking blonde in the movie hanging off his arm. The bad guy, Abbott (Robert Fiske,) would just as soon cheat and swindle the town out of their land, but the backshooting ambushes he's had to resort to have been working out pretty well. So well that the town's doctor, played by over-the-title star Tom Keene, decides the only way to bring peace to the valley is to renounce violence and create a county claims association. The Homestead Act is about to be passed, and the law will then take care of scalawags like Abbott as soon as the Act becomes law. The town folk grudgingly agree to the doc's plans until one of the town leaders is gunned down in broad daylight.

THE LAW COMMANDS is a b-movie with a strong script, interesting cast, and a lead star who's obligingly off-screen for about a quarter of the movie, hightailing it out to the capital to enlist the governor's assistance. Made it 1937, the story of farmers getting kicked off their land for reasons beyond their control must have been a theme the audience could relate to. Keene was a popular movie cowboy in the thirties, at least in b-movie westerns - he made seven movies in 1937. He doesn't ride his horse much, save the heroine, blaze guns, or get in a lot of fist fights. Kind of reminds me of a young Dick Powell, which ain't a bad think if you can sing and joke about being the `leading juvenile' this season, as Powell did in the brilliant `42nd Street' a couple of years earlier. Not so great when you're in Harry Carey and William S. Hart territory. Anyway, according to a reliable internet source Keene was in exactly one hundred movies during his career, and there's a reason he's best remembered as a spaceship colonel in `Plan 9 from Outer Space.' If you're known well enough to sell tickets you don't have to be good.

The rest of the cast contains a few nuggets, though. Budd Buster plays Kentuck' Jones, a Gabby Hayes/Smiley Burnett hybrid who I'd never seen before. It was a bit of a shock to discover this was his 60-something film, and he would have a career that boasted appearing in over 300 movies. Playing his wife is actress Marie Stoddard, a Marie Dressler/Jane Darwell type who added a few nice touches. That same internet source credits her with only one other uncredited role besides this one.

I usually go pretty easy on old westerns, so my four stars should be taken with a grain of salt. I realize THE LAW COMMANDS isn't a great movie, and many will say it's not even a very good movie. But it has a coherent script, moves along briskly, is dotted with interesting bit players, and has a satisfying resolution. And, thankfully, the Alpha/Gotham release print is relatively clean and scratch free. Not a great movie by any means, but an enjoyably modest old timer.