The Pen Pal Club

       Typical John Wayne western that seems just ridiculous enough to be enjoyable but not real at all. There’s a love triangle, lots of action-packing brawls, a gold rush and a typhoid fever epidemic all thrown together in an hour and a half. Sometimes the scenes just rush by and you wonder how it’s possible that so much could happen in only a few short minutes. It was a pretty bad movie, although I enjoyed watching it for its “badness.” I have to say that I was surprised that there was not more time and energy spent on the love triangle (or square). Once it was set up, the other woman suddenly disappeared and became a silent, unseen threat. Then a totally unexpected plot twist with the gold rush coming on. So hat’s off to you, writers, on totally surprising me with that one. I was not expecting the singer to suddenly abandon the town and man she loved to become a nurse with all the grungy men of the gold rush. I also learned that if you ever want to prove yourself a badass without a fight all you have to do is bend a quarter and give it some kid like it was no big deal. I’d write more about this movie but really there isn’t a whole lot to say, it’s not John Wayne’s best. Our next movie to tackle is a documentary called Life in a Day.