AllMovie

Veteran director J.P. McGowan's moth-eaten Syndicate Film Exchange, a division of W. Ray Johnston's Rayart Pictures and commonly known as something of a graveyard for former silent western heroes, offered a synchronized soundtrack on Riders of the Rio Grande. Syndicate caught 'em on the way down, mostly cowboy refugees from Film-Booking-Office (FBO). One such was Bob Custer, the star of Riders of the Rio Grande. Custer plays a cowboy posing as an outlaw in order to infiltrate the gang of counterfeiters who has kidnapped leading lady Edna Aslin. The story (by Syndicate's resident scribe Sally Winters) was hardly fresh in 1929 and would see repeated service in the years to come. Organized in 1928, Syndicate was doomed to be swallowed up in 1931 by a new Johnston organization, the often maligned (and sometimes justifiably so) Monogram Pictures, Inc.