King of the Pecos [Blu-ray]

"The Duke" is King...Of The Pecos....
This review refers to the Artisan DVD of "King Of The Pecos"(John Wayne Collection)...

Alexander Stiles is a land grubbing, cattle rustling,water hording, lily livered murderin' thief. Nobody and nothin' will get in the way of the empire he is building for himself in Old New Mexico. He even goes as far as to have a hard working husband and wife shot down in cold blood in front of their own child. BIG mistake...little did Stiles realize then that this little kid would grow up to be The Duke..John Wayne!

Yesiree Bob..little John Clayborn comes back to town all grown up and with a law degree to boot. Now known as John Clay he's on a mission to help the townspeople that have all been swindled by the evil Stiles. The long arm of the law is no match for Stiles' murderin' ways though, and lucky for us, The Duke not only has a law degree but is a crack shot with a six-shooter as well! So let the range wars begin! Who will be the last man standing?...well..You...

Cleburn's Revenge
John Cleburn and his family were hard working settlers with legal right to prime western property. They happened to be on the property that the thieving Alexander Stiles set his sights upon. When Cleburn did not agree to sell his property, Stiles and his evil cronies just killed Cleburn and his wife and beat their son, leaving him for dead. But, he did not die, and you can imagine that John Jr. grew up with revenge in his eyes. He became a lawyer and a gunman. With those two talents, he eventually manages to ruin the evil Stiles Empire. John Wayne was the only one in the film with much acting ability. His two sidekicks are somewhat funny. As usual, there is a wedding at the end and JW is in it. This is a good film for all to see. Get your kids into the old Wayne films. They are clean and wholesome good fun.

King of the Preteens
I'm a big fan of John Wayne. Even in my youthful liberal days, I always stood up for him whenever my friends on the left would disparage him and his acting. "Forget his politics" I would say, "He's an outstanding actor!" The comment that "He always played the same role" led me to observe, over the years, that this discription would apply to 90% of all screen actors. The idea that a strong, forceful man of principle is the discription of a character role just doesn't register. The main problem with the career of John Wayne was that he made numerous poor decisions in the movies he chose to make. However, that is a flaw of his years of stardom. He made a lot of clunkers before he ever became a star but that was his role in hollywood; the Saturday matinee cowboy hero.

I have seen a number of Wayne's pre-"Stagecoach" movies and I decided to jot a review of "King of the Pecos" because it struck me as one of the better movies Wayne made during this period. It has an...

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