Paradise Canyon (1935)
Undercover government agent John Wyatt joins a traveling medicine show as its sharpshooter to get close to a counterfeiting ring working the Arizona-Mexico border, only to find the show's own boss tangled up in the racket.
Paradise Canyon was John Wayne’s last picture under his Lone Star/Monogram contract before he moved on to Republic; it later resurfaced on home video in a colorized print retitled Guns Along the Trail.
Background
Paradise Canyon was the last Monogram/Lone Star western John Wayne made before moving to Republic Pictures. Directed by Carl Pierson from a script by Lindsley Parsons and Robert Emmett, and produced by Paul Malvern, it was released on July 20, 1935, with a running time of 52 minutes. Wayne plays government agent John Wyatt, who goes undercover with Doc Carter’s traveling medicine show to track a counterfeiting ring operating along the Arizona-Mexico border. The trail leads to Curly Joe, a local man who once framed Carter for a crime he didn’t commit, and who turns out to be running the counterfeiting operation himself.
What to watch for
The film is another of stuntman Yakima Canutt’s many collaborations with Wayne from the Lone Star years, when the two worked out riding and fight choreography together on tight budgets and tighter schedules. Paradise Canyon also runs Wayne through yet another disguise-heavy plot typical of the series, here posing as a sharpshooter in a traveling show rather than the usual drifting cowhand. Decades later the film resurfaced on home video in a colorized print retitled Guns Along the Trail, a common fate for public-domain Poverty Row westerns repackaged for television and VHS audiences long after their original theatrical runs.
