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Wonderful character development!

That was an excellent one.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A Disappointing Continuation

The first thing that strikes a current audience is the way the characters are introduced, silent film style. An interesting idea, but you can see why it went out of fashion as it interrupts the flow of the narrative. We're well into the movie before Randolph Scott finally appears and it's a bit disconcerting to suddenly have a sub-title superimposed, "Randolph Scott... Lynn Hayden."The next arresting thing is undoubtedly the fact that in some scenes Hathaway keeps his camera jumping around in a fascinatingly imaginative fashion, taking full advantage of the breadth of the sets and the width of the great outdoors. Pace is further enhanced by breaking up many of the scenes into (by modern standards) an unusually large variety of camera angles (leading to some rough editing in places).The lighting by Ben Reynolds also dates the picture on at least two fronts as it's unfashionable to use soft focus anymore; and illuminating night scenes with only a little key light and little or no background fillers at all has been a definite no-no ever since picturegoers complained that they paid money to see their favorite stars at full strength not half-hidden by shadows.For all Hathaway's efforts to quicken the pace, his players tend to work against him, not only by speaking slowly but by inserting long pauses between words, phrases, and especially cues. Oddly enough, the villains are the worst offenders. In fact this film reverses the general Hollywood rule and makes the goodies much more interesting and diverting than the baddies. Noah Beery and his bunch are not only dull and cliched but abnormally colorless. Hammy acting from Noah Beery and Jack LaRue doesn't help. Not that the good guys are innocent of theatrics, but Scott gives such a likeable and personable performance, he makes up a lot of the leeway. As for the once super-popular star Esther Ralston we can understand why her fortunes declined in the talkies. Her voice is okay but it not only doesn't jibe with the character, she's unable to use it expressively. All her emotions are still registered through her eyes, her facial muscles, her body language. Some of the support players are so bland or so impersonal or so amateurish it's hard to credit they managed to carve out considerable careers in the years ahead: Buster Crabbe, Gail Patrick, Barton MacLane, Fuzzy Knight. Plus Beery and LaRue. As for Miss Temple, well she was only five years old at the time and she does reasonably and recognizably well by her small part. It's the abominable Watson brat who has the lion's share of the kiddie footage.Hathaway's taste for violent action (the principals fight without doubles) and his penchant for location shooting are well in evidence throughout, though the long-awaited climax is a bit abrupt and resolved in a somewhat unsatisfying fashion, but these structural faults doubtless derive from the Zane Grey novel. Incidentally, despite reports to the contrary, there are only five or six short snips of stock footage, few of which seem to have been lifted from the original 1923 picture which has quite different emphases in its storyline.

With this 1933 Paramount feature, "To the Last Man" (its TV title "Law of Vengeance"), John Carradine made his Western debut, and though he's only on screen for exactly 16 seconds he certainly did enough of them over the years (particularly on television) to nearly surpass his more famous horror resume, which actually begins with his next role in James Whale's "The Invisible Man." A remake of a 1923 silent of the same name, it's a story familiar from eons ago, feuding Kentucky families carrying their generational grudge out West, to the community of Grass Valley, Nevada. The film opens with Mark Hayden (Egon Brecher) returning home from the newly ended Civil War, determined to avoid any further bloodshed by moving his family away from their bitter enemy Jed Colby (Noah Beery Sr.). His young son Lynn is present when Jed cold bloodedly shoots old Grandpa Spelvin, at his side cousin Pete Garon (John Carradine, who has no dialogue). Grandpa identifies the two killers to Lynn, while his father counts on the law to settle the matter by jailing Colby for a period of 15 years ("murder? Why it was feudin' pure and simple!"). Jack La Rue continues his streak of playing scheming evildoers as Colby's former cellmate Jim Daggs, whose job is to locate the Hayden clan so that Jed can continue the feud, even after a passage of 15 years. Daggs intends to marry Jed's wildcat daughter Ellen (Esther Ralston), only to find a rival in newcomer Lynn Hayden (Randolph Scott), who remembers seeing his grandfather shot by Ellen's father, but wants to assure her that their elders' fight should not be their own. Brother Bill Hayden is played by Buster Crabbe, with Gail Patrick as sister Ann, Barton MacLane as her husband, the one who kills Carradine's Pete Garon off screen, in answer to the Colbys' year long raid of cattle rustling (Shirley Temple makes a strong impression as their daughter). Such a strong cast, coupled with Henry Hathaway's straightforward direction, and a total absence of a music score make this a better than expected early talkie Western, a formulaic plot with several pre-code twists and turns that keep the viewer off guard. John Carradine was making only his 8th feature film, Shirley Temple her 4th, while other unbilled actors included Erville Alderson, Harry Cording, and young Delmar Watson.

The transfer of this film is horrible. It has been released by Alpha Video under the title of Law of Vengeance. THe movie starts off slow and is something of an oddity in the beginning. Law of Vengeance is the only film that I have seen that shows the actors credit on the screen when they enter the picture. For example, Randoplh Scott's character makes his entrance at 20 minutes into the picture. It is then that the screen credit "Randolph Scott as Lynn Hayden" rolls across the screen. I thought this was interesting.About 30 minutes into this western the story starts to get good. Mostly due to Scott and the female character known as Ellen Colby. The dialogue is very good in places.This western is of importance for a film historian. Not only was it directed by Henry Hathaway, it also stars Buster Crabbe, Barton Mclane, Jake Larue and two uncredited performances by a very young Shirley Temple and a young John Carradine. This film was important in the career of Randoplh Scott and if you are a fan of his, you definitely want to own this movie. At a price less that 5 dollars, it is surely worth it.

The Haydens and Colbys are two mountain families who've had such a long term feud, everyone's forgotten what it started over. Never mind when Pop Colby (Noah Beery, Sr.) shoots Grandpa down in cold blood, Dad Hayden takes an unorthodox and cowardly approach in some eyes, he calls in the law. The Haydens move west and Colby when he gets out of the joint takes the family and moves to where the Haydens are to take up where they left off. Along the way he has an ally, Jack LaRue, who has an agenda all his own.Of course in Romeo&Juliet fashion, the Hayden son (Randolph Scott) and the Colby daughter(Esther Ralston} meet and flip for each other. If anything that throws gasoline on the feud fire.This is one of the weakest of Randolph Scott's earlier westerns. I'm not sure if I'm seeing the complete film as a budget video company put out a re-release that looks like it was choppily edited. There are a lot of plot gaps and things that don't make sense.This is also one of the earliest films of Shirley Temple who's big scene is when one of the Colbys shoots the head off of her doll. It wasn't for sadistic purposes but to get the Haydens to chase them. Still it's an earlier weepy for Shirley. She later did two more films withRandolph Scott, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Susannah of the Mounties and with her name above his at that point.Also at the very end, the fadeout is Esther and Randy in what looks like a photograph of later domestic bliss. And the soundtrack was blaring the Bing Crosby hit Please. Kind of out of place, but since Paramount had the rights to it, they figured they had to use it.