User Reviews

My title quote is from incredulous brooding Jed Colby(Noah Beery) when told he had to serve a 15 year prison sentence for the shooting of Grandpa Spelvin, of the Hayden clan, whom the KY backwoods Colbys had been feuding with for generations.

In one of his earliest westerns, the film is near half over before we get our first glimpse of hero Randolph Scott, in the guise of Lynn Hayden, a young member of the Hayden clan, who have moved from KY to NV to escape the vendetta war with Colby clan. Randy has spent the last 16 years staying with Granny in KY, because she refused to move with the others...Although only 60 min long(down from the claimed 70 min.), this film seems longer, as quite a bit of action and quite a few characters are packed in. It's a remake of the silent version, based on a Zane Grey novel, and is directed by Henry Hathaway.

Thanks largely to the fiendish scheming of his nemesis, Jim Daggs(Jack La Rue), Randy does end up the last man alive among the two feuding clans. Scheming Jim, Jed's former prison mate and a supposed ally of the Colby clan, almost ended up with all of the Hayden's cattle and horses, and his supposed partner's spunky daughter, Ellen, to boot. But half dead Randy takes his place at the last min., as he and Ellen wed to symbolically end the feud for good.

Jack La Rue would make a career out of playing darkly handsome, but fiendish villains, whom audiences loved to hate...Buster Crabbe, a favorite of the females in the audience, was also on hand, playing Randy's brother Bill. Buster dismisses Ellen as poor white trash, with a roving eye. But, Randy has a different take, despite her contradictory attitude toward him, especially when she learns he is a Hayden. Randy leaves a package on a rock near where he last saw her. She kicks it down the hill unopened until it lands in her campfire. Then, she changes her mind and opens it to find a beautiful dress. Later, she declared to her disapproving father that it would be her wedding dress.

Another key protagonist-antagonist pair is Jed Colby and Mark Hayden(Egon Brechers) who, after the shooting death of Grandpa, represent the head male of each clan. It was Mark who spearheaded the successful prosecution of Jed for the murder of his father-in-law. After released from prison, Jed led the Colby clan to NV to take revenge on the Haydens, by initially rustling their cattle, bit by bit, hopefully provoking them into a fatal ambush. In contrast to the younger Haydens, Mark wants to avoid resuming the murderous feud, by having Jed convicted of cattle rustling. But, a concerted attack by the Colbys on the Hayden's main house, and the killing of son Bill cause him to make the fatal decision to go after Jed by himself. The resulting horseback chase of the Colbys by the Haydens gives Jim(La Rue)his successful chance to bury nearly all of both clans with a massive dynamite-induced rock avalanche.

Eugenie Besserer plays Granny, who exits early in the film because she refuses to move to NV. This would be Eugenie's last film, as she died the next year.

Barton MacLane has a minor role as the husband of Ann Hayden, sister of Bill and Lynn, played by Gail Patrick, and the father of a daughter, played by a very young Shirley Temple. He had a substantial film career, usually playing tough guys, often villainous. Gail also had a substantial film and TV career, most often playing antagonists of or a supporting role to the leading lady. However, she would play Randy's leading lady in the upcoming "Wagon Wheels", one of the early epic film representations of an immigrant train across the West. Like Randy, she was southern-bred, well educated, relatively tall and thin, good looking, with a patrician demeanor.

Although a decade older than Gail, Esther Ralston plays the romantic lead as the neglected, dirt -poor, emotionally fragile, tomboy wild child of Jed. She had been a star beauty in the silent era, but mostly had supporting roles in the early talkie period.

Noah Berry, who specialized in playing villains, was the brother of the more famous Wallace Beery.

Only 3 years later, the subject of KY backwoods feuding clans would again be dramatized on film, in "On the trail of the lonesome Pine", with far superior production values, even being shot in gorgeous color, a very rare privilege at the time. Both were produced by Paramount and both were mostly shot around Bear Lake,CA. It would again explore the pluses and minuses of various possible ways of ending or minimizing such feuds(other than by La Rue's apocalyptic solution). These still have relevancy today, as criminal gangs in the US have replaced the backwoods feuds....Fuzzy Knight played a subsidiary character in both films, providing the limited music.

This film is currently part of a DVD package of some of Randy's lesser known, mostly early, westerns. The camera work was generally good, if the filming technology and acting were rather primitive, by later standards. At times, both clans seemed to swell with unexplained extras.

In Aeschylus's "Oresteia," the point is made that revenge is never ending, whereas justice can brings things to a final resolution. "To the Last Man" turns that idea on its head. In this movie, which is about a feud between two families, whose principal names are the Haydens and the Colbys, the head of the Hayden clan, Mark Hayden, decides to end the feud by bringing in the law, which Granny Spelvin objects to as not honorable, because blood will not be spilled for blood. Nevertheless, Mark goes to the sheriff and charges Jed Colby with the murder of Granpa Spelvin. Even the sheriff thinks it is a bad idea to let the law interfere with a feud, but he arrests Jed, who is tried and sentenced to fifteen years in jail. To get away from Kentucky, Mark takes his family out to Nevada. But when Jed's fifteen years are up, he and what is left of his family follow the Haydens to Nevada, along with a gang of criminals, headed by Jim Daggs, whom Jed met while jail.

While things are heating up between the two families, Lynn Hayden and Ellen Colby accidentally meet and fall in love. They plan to marry as the feud swirls around them. And so, this is a kind of "Romeo and Juliet" story, except that this too is turned on its head. Whereas Romeo and Juliet died, leaving their families to regret the feud that led to their deaths, this "Romeo" and "Juliet" live, get married, and live happily ever after, while everyone else in the two families dies (except for a few women and children on the Hayden side). Moreover, unlike justice, which ended nothing, revenge carried out to its ultimate conclusion, when there is only one man left, is the only thing that finally puts an end the feud.

A western with Esther Ralston, Scott, MacLane, Crabbe, Gail Patrick, N. Beery, Shirley Temple, some of these players had yet to wait for their heyday, others had it already, while others yet were just about to taste it; an embellished B with a storyline of feud and rustling, in the coarse style of the Bs, with more violence and less silliness (perhaps none at all, in fact this makes much of the movie's quality), not really a drama, but well directed, let's say an inspired B style, crafty but undoubtedly B, better than other feud and rustling '30s movies, but still one of those, and the feminine cast seems surprising, the actresses transcend the almost mediocre movie. The script is worth an epic. There's an awareness of the cast's league, and the direction gives the players the chance to act, mostly the actresses, but also N. Beery the older. A cowpoke talks about his mother's profession, a boy rescues dogs, Beery stops J. La Rue's hand. Consequently, the action is eventful, rich and lively.

Esther Ralston makes a memorable role, as the churlish girl. In her movies, she sometimes seemed a bit dolt. Her hot-blooded performance is enjoyable.

Muriel Kirkland leaves a good impression.

MacLane doesn't promise anything worthy.

Scott was obviously above the league of Crabbe or of La Rue, but not that much.

I saw this film under the title "Law of Vengeance", with an interesting convention of introducing each character with their film credit when they first appeared on screen. It's not unusual to see early silents and even talking films show all the characters in the story before the action gets under way, but I don't think I've seen it done this way before. Which means Randolph Scott, top billed but not appearing for about the first twenty minutes, suddenly shows up as Randolph Scott portraying Lynn Hayden.

Probably the best recommendation to see this film is for the players, a fairly top flight cast (perhaps in retrospect) including Scott, Buster Crabbe, Barton MacLane, Jack Larue and Noah Beery. Funny, but Beery looked more like his real life son Noah Beery Jr. before doing the fifteen year prison sentence in the story. Then suddenly he looked like a totally different actor. I'll have to go back and check that out again.

The bigger surprise though might have been catching Shirley Temple in an early uncredited screen appearance. Back in my early parochial school days, it seemed we were treated to a Temple film every couple of months. Others on this board have mentioned one of the Colby bunch taking her doll's head off with a rifle shot. I thought that was bad enough, but later in the story one of the bad guys was actually going to shoot her brother when another character ruined his aim. Seems to me that was carrying a feud just a bit too far.

What I don't understand is the way the picture ended. We're led to believe that most of the Hayden clan was killed in the blast that leveled the mountainside, but it seems that the Colby bunch was buried too! Then Larue's character offs the senior Colby (Beery) in order to marry daughter Ellen (Esther Ralston), which Jed Colby didn't approve of. Of course, Lynn Hayden had other plans, and in one of the more interesting finales to a final showdown you'll ever see, Hayden strategically positions a knife to defeat Jim Daggs, even though he was almost unconscious. Not a move I would recommend for a would-be hero in real life.

This is without question a Pre-Code Western that featured two people that would become legends. Shirley Temple and Randolph Scott. What is interesting is Shirley is not credited and Scott ( like the rest of the cast) is not credited until he shows up. The main star in the movie is Esther Ralston ( Ellen Colby) who is the daughter of Jed Colby ( Noah Beery) who murdered the Grandfather of Lynn Hayden ( Scott). A couple of points:,the bad guy usually has some redeeming characteristics ( like caring about his daughter), Colby does not and spoilers ahead: He gets murdered by the even nastier Jim Daggs ( Jack La Rue ( an actor like Berry known for playing villains)). It is about a feud between the two families and what is interesting is there is no question who is good and who is bad. Something else you never see is Colby and Daggs succeed in killing all of the male adult members of the family ( except a badly wounded Lynn). It is actually Ellen that is the real heroine of the movie. She is able to fight off Daggs so that Scott can finally kill him, and They show a photo where they marry at the end. You rarely see a woman who is so obviously a white trash tomboy especially in Westerns ( even Indians are usually not shown that way). Another point is the price that both Ellen and especially Lynn pay. One finding out how creepy her father is the other losing family members. One more point. This movie that I saw on TCM, is the restored print from the Museum of Modern Art and you can see a clear difference between that and Public Domain prints. This is an excellent Western and a MUST for Scott fans. Also do not overlook the Pre-Fox ( this was filmed at Paramount) Shirley Temple who steals the scenes she was in, and Esther Ralston. 10/10 stars.

It's 1866, the year after the civil war. The Haydens and the Colbys have been a-feuding and a-fussin' for nigh on a long time now. But Pappy Hayden, having fought as a soldier, has seen enough blood for a lifetime, so he packs up with two kids and leaves Kentucky behind, a-headin' for the West, where he manages to set up a cattle ranch.

Meanwhile, Pappy Colby was convicted of murder with, I guess, mitigating circumstances since his helpless victim was a Hayden. He gets fifteen years in the slams. When he gets out, he learns that the Hayden family is now out West, so he and his daughter, Esther Ralston, and one of the Colby goons, Jack La Rue, a-ride out West looking for them. Jack La Rue, by the way, sounds exactly like John Ireland if John Ireland couldn't produce a believable line of dialog.

This business of feuding is kind of interesting from the point of view of cultural evolution. It's a kind of transitional legal stage, somewhere between abject savagery and written rational/legal authority. There's a sense of personal honor mixed in with it. That's where the Hatfields and McCoy's come in.

Appalachia was settled in the early 1700s mostly by immigrants from the borderlands of Scotland and England, where there was very little in the way of rational law. Families settled their own arguments. That's where you get the MacDonalds versus the Campbells. All these traits -- clan feuds, duels, the culture of honor, the thirst for independence from any authority -- were brought from their source region to Appalachia and later the Wild West, where they flourished. And you wind up with Shane out-drawing the bad guys.

Nope. As Grandmaw Spelvin puts it, "No Hayden don't go squealin' to the police." Thank you for your attention. Now, where were we? We're out West and the bad family, the Colbys, are trying to prod the good guys, the Haydens, into a continuance of their Kentucky feud. They do this by rustling cattle, shooting at little girls, killing the family dog. Their plan is complicated by two things. One is that, while the Hayden boys are perfectly willing to fight, Old Pappy Hayden keeps insisting that when the time comes he'll take it to the law.

Another complication, which comes as no surprise whatever, is that one of the Hayden boys, Randolph Scott, and one of the Colby hoydens, Esther Ralston, fall in love at first sight. We can see why Randy is attracted to her. She's kind of good looking, as brawny in her own way as Randy is in his. But she's rough trade as well. "I ain't used to be polited at." It doesn't give much away to say that the ending resolves the feud forever.

The film didn't go through a benediction by the Criterion Collection. The print is spiky and primitive and the sound is muffled. There are problems with the continuity too. For a few minutes I didn't know whether we were in Kentucky or out West. And Ralston catches Randy shaving. He puts down his razor, wipes his chin, reaches for a shirt and when he turns around he's wearing it. And I don't know how Pappy Hayden, who brought only a little boy and a little girl with him, acquired such a large family in so few years. Still --

"To The Last Man" was originally released back in 1933.

Anyway - As the story goes - After the Civil War, a patriarch of a Kentucky family looks to move out West for new opportunities and leave the vicious feud his family has had for years with another family.