AllMovie

The freewheeling direction of Gregory LaCava helps to enliven the otherwise standard actioner The Gay Defender. Decked out with sideburns and mustache, Richard Dix stars as real-life outlaw Joaquin Murietta, who (according to this film, anyway) is a latter-day Robin Hood, dedicated to driving land-grabbers and corrupt politicians out of Spanish California. The fictional love interest, played by Thelma Todd (long before establishing herself as a comedienne), is Ruth Ainsworth, the daughter of a United States commissioner whose murder Murietta hopes to avenge. A festival of cliches, the film manages to avoid the most obvious plot ploy of all: the attack on the heroine by the villains (the girl manages to get through the entire picture without having to be rescued). The Joaquin Murietta story would be told again -- once more with scant fidelity to the facts -- in 1936's Robin Hood of El Dorado.