Plot summary (with spoilers): We sweep across the gorgeous Texas landscape. It's 1868, and The Duke returns home three years late, after fighting in the Civil War. He arrives at the door of his brother and his brother's wife and family. They're thrilled and excitedly greet him and ask him to stay and eat dinner with them. The Duke accepts, speaking in that delightful mildly retarded, drunken stroke-victim way of his. The family dotes on his every whim while he shambles around and slurs some more and is irascible. He also says "that'll be the day!" at one point, all indignantly. He says that like five times in this movie. It's his catchphrase. An angry, sarcastic, "that'll be the day!" To let us know how tough he is.
Then some other dudes show up, including the finance of one of The Duke's nieces, and an old coot Reverend, who is also a Captain in the Texas Rangers army. They say that some dirty Comanche Injuns have been stealing their cattle and they're rounding up a posse to give the Injuns what for. The Duke agrees to help them, but won't join the Rangers officially because he's still a member of the Confederate Army, dammit. You can tell he's angry because his inflection and facial expressions remain exactly the same.
The menfolk go riding off. They include not only the manliest manfolk of them all, The Duke, but also The Duke's niece's fiance Bud, as well as his nephew Martin, the old coot Reverend, a bunch of other no-names, and some bald crazy weirdo named Mose. Mose is the "comic" "relief" in this movie and makes funny faces and crosses his eyes and stuff, like you would do if you were attempting to amuse a one year old.
But it was all a ploy by the Comanche. While the menfolk are out in the plains, the Injuns ride up to the family home, where The Duke's brother and wife remain, as well as their older daughter Lucy and little daughter Debbie. The family sees the Comanche riding up and lift Debbie up to the back window and they tell her to run away as fast as she can. The window's plenty big. I don't see why they can't all run. But it's all for not, as the Comanche chief sees her and approaches. Unfortunately, due to genocide, there aren't a lot of Native American actors out there, so the part of the murderous Comanche chief is played by a white man in brown make-up.
The menfolk return to find the home burned to the ground. The bodies of The Duke's brother and sister-in-law are found, but the daughters are missing. So they ride off in search of them.
The Duke wants to ride in and kill everyone, even at the cost of his niece's lives, but the Reverend wants a rescue mission. The Duke goes along with it, but don't like it. (According to wiki, the subtext is supposedly that The Duke's character was in love with his brother's wife and driven mad by her death. But since John Wayne thinks "Subtext" is the name of a fag bar in New York City, this doesn't really come across). But soon the Comanche surround them. There's a shoot-out across the river. A couple men go down. The Reverend orders a retreat. He tells the Duke there's too many of them and the Comanche can see them coming. The Duke says he'll go on alone, but Lucy's fiance Bud and her brother Martin want to go as well.
(You know how it's funny that Luke Skywalker's first line is some terribly-delivered whiny bit about wanting to go buy power converters? Well, every single one of Martin's lines is delivered in that same whiny pitch. It's fucking terrible. Between him and John Wayne, this is literally the worst acted movie in all of Hollywood history. All they need now is Sofia Coppola and it would be the perfect Holy Trinity of shit acting).
So Martin, Bud, and The Duke go off on their own and wander around a bit and finally The Duke goes into some caves and finds Lucy dead. He tells Bud, who charges the Comanche camp and is killed.
The Duke and Martin press on through the winter, and finally lose the trail. They go to Bud's family's home and give them the sad news. Bud's younger sister Laurie doesn't seem to give a shit and aggressively hits on Martin. The Jorgensens also have a letter that was sent to them by a dude Futterman, who claims to know that Lucy and Debbie were kidnapped by a Comanche chief named Scar, and that he knows where Scar is.
The Duke and Martin press on, and Martin writes Laurie letters about their progress. They find Futterman, who will only give them info for money, so The Duke gives him five gold pieces and he says "something something due west" or whatever, and they go.
After many more adventures, including a HI-larious bit of wackiness where Martin accidentally buys and marries a Comanche squaw, five years have passed.
The Duke and Martin have finally tracked Scar's location. They happen upon some other women who were kidnapped by Scar, but now they're crazy and have their hair tied up in Injun braids and wear red face paint. They grunt and squawk and rock back and forth. Then this dialog happens.
Martin: They don't even seem white!
The Duke: They ain't white. Not anymore.
And they both walk away sadly, as the formerly white human women descend further into Injun madness. Good Christ.
They sneak up to Scar's camp, and find Debbie herself, having gone fully native. Martin tries to get her to go with them, but she insists she's happy here. The Duke tries to kill her dead, but Martin shields her body and then the Comanche attack. The Duke gets an arrow in the arm, but he and Martin still escape.
In the worst acted scene in a movie filled to the brim with them, Martin screams and rants and raves at The Duke for trying to kill his sister, while The Duke counters that she ain't his sister no more because the Injuns have got to her. The scene ends with Martin's truly cringe inducing "I hate you. I wish you were dead!" in exactly the same tone and inflection as a fifteen-year old girl, and The Duke says, "that'll be the day!" and I think this is when I punched myself in the face just to feel something again.
Then the go back to the Jorgensen home, where they happen upon Laurie about to get married. Martin's incensed, and tries to fight the other dude and there's this one weird hilarious part where they're grappling in the dirt while everyone watches and the other dude goes "Whoa! Wait, wait!" and they both stop and he picks up a fiddle off the ground and says, "somebody's fiddle" and then someone quickly runs up and grabs it and then they keep fighting. So weird and random and almost worth this twenty minute digression for no reason. Then Mose runs up and says he knows where Scar is, so they stop fighting and everyone gets ready for a full-on attack.
They charge Scar's camp and kill a bunch of Injuns and a bunch of them get killed and then Debbie has a change of heart and tries to go with Martin but they get separated during the melee, The Duke sees her running down a hill and he gallops over to her and Martin thinks he's going to kill her and there's "suspense" as The Duke gets closer and closer to her and she screams and falls down and he stands over her and says..."come on, Debbie, let's go home".
So they all go home but The Duke doesn't go inside because he's all deep and broken and shit and he rides away to go make 200 movies playing the exact same character.
See ya, Duke. Don't let the swinging doors hit ya.
Review: I hate John Wayne. So very, very much. He's terrible. Really, really terrible. His movies are really terrible. When I was a kid, my stepfather watched nothing but John Wayne movies, seemingly in a 24/7 constant loop and I've probably seen them all but with no clear way of knowing where one begins and the other ends. Hey, maybe that's the secret. Maybe all his movies are actually just one giant 600 hour movie that will play in Hell throughout eternity. Also, besides John Wayne horrible acting, the guy playing Martin was actually worse and the story was boring and racist and kept digressing for no real reason.
Stars: One star out of five, because that weird fiddle line made me laugh.
Next, perhaps my last silent film ever, "City Lights", and then the Final Ten.
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