Occasionally, this is an enjoyable really bad movie, directed, alas, by Charles Hutchison who did such a good job with "Out of Singapore" (1932) and who played one of my heroes, Hurricane Hutch, on the silent screen. Here, "Hutch" (as everyone called him) is saddled with Conway Tearle, another veteran of the silent screen, but a hammy ham if ever there was one! In fact, he is so ludicrous in both his roles in "Desert Guns" that it's no use taking the stupid story – what there is of it after the script takes time out for dance numbers and other ephemera – seriously. Margaret Morris (the star of the silent series, "Bill Grimm's Progress"), does her best to keep the movie alive, but is undermined by Tearle who draws interest away from everything and everyone else by standing stiffly to attention on the left half of the screen while he waits patiently for his cue. The screenplay, if you could call it such, was penned by Jacques Jaccard who later obtained work as dialogue director of a dozen serials starting with "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" in 1940. I'm sure he would not appreciate the resurgence of this woeful western, padded out with irrelevant dance numbers (which are actually the best things in the movie). "This film is presumed lost!" to quote IMDb, but it is now available on a very good Alpha DVD.
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