Running for town Marshall, lawyer/schoolteacher Walter Pidgeon loses out to John Wayne and begins running guns. When the Civil War breaks out, he begins raiding both sides for personal gain, eventually settling on the side of the south and clashing again with Wayne, this time on a field of battle.
A fairly big-budget Republic Pictures production, Dark Command starts off light-hearted, with Wayne traveling with frontier dentist Gabby Hayes. Soon however, the situation get complicated and pretty intense for the duration of the movie, with sub-plots involving Wayne and Pigdeon's love-triangle with Claire Trevor and the murder trial of Trevor's younger brother Roy Rogers.
Wayne is quite appealing and his political speech near the beginning is quite a hoot. However, Pidgeon is the real standout as the deeply ambitious villain.
Roy Rogers never seemed very youthful in his starring pictures, even the early ones. Seeing him here playing a teenager, serves to remind one just how young he really was.
This is a great film. However, I wish it would have been made a bit later in Cinemascope and Technicolor, with maybe an extra hour to expand and elaborate on the story. It could have transcended "great" and become an event!
A fairly big-budget Republic Pictures production, Dark Command starts off light-hearted, with Wayne traveling with frontier dentist Gabby Hayes. Soon however, the situation get complicated and pretty intense for the duration of the movie, with sub-plots involving Wayne and Pigdeon's love-triangle with Claire Trevor and the murder trial of Trevor's younger brother Roy Rogers.
Wayne is quite appealing and his political speech near the beginning is quite a hoot. However, Pidgeon is the real standout as the deeply ambitious villain.
Roy Rogers never seemed very youthful in his starring pictures, even the early ones. Seeing him here playing a teenager, serves to remind one just how young he really was.
This is a great film. However, I wish it would have been made a bit later in Cinemascope and Technicolor, with maybe an extra hour to expand and elaborate on the story. It could have transcended "great" and become an event!