FilmartDD

Ethylester is right. Far more persuasive player (not listed by IMDb) than James Dean, director with more feeling and understanding than galumphing Nicholas Ray, this is about a Rebel With a Cause. And the rest of us, like his family and that school, need to know about that cause.

Not listed in Halliwell, not in Videohound, not in Maltin, not even old Scheuer. What is it that conceals good little Canadian (and Australian, and New Zealand) films from view by the world?! There is still a genre of the 70 minute small production ("indies" I suppose): audiences need these little true films, community groups need to discuss them, the film schools need to be showing little gems like No Reason to Stay to students and potential directors, instead of all that Tarantino.

Seen at Sydney Film Festival June 2010 in a giant picture palace from 1929, the State Theatre in Market St in Sydney centre. The director was present and gained much applause.

All above comments are correct as to the content of the film. Great stuff.

But further, the film is beautiful visually and aurally. No matter the absurdity or wickedness being discussed, the cinematographer and recordist have captured it with style and distinction.

The cartoon moments are admittedly unnecessary, but everything else is top-rate, unlike so many current documentaries based on cheap video -- yes, Michael Moore's and dozens of others' -- so ugly as film in themselves.

So often cast as a dour villain or stern-faced sheriff in his sound era westerns, J.P.McGowan here brings genial and knowing good humor to the role of foreman Buck Peters. He shows an easy authority among the ranch hands, then goes into ironic self-effacement when the dragon sister arrives. In his mid-fifties and getting heavy in build, with more than one hundred and eighty roles behind him (and that counts all his appearances in The Hazards of Helen as just one!), JP takes readily to the humorous business at the ranch which counters the serious purpose of Hoppy's mission as the film develops. Not a big role, but one that the Mulford fans would have insisted on being done to rights. As a much experienced producer of inexpensive but popular light dramas himself, JP may have enjoyed working for the veteran producer Harry Sherman. He would have enjoyed, too, the adroit and vigorous direction of the sole sequence in which he appears, set in front of the bunkhouse. All in all, the audience sees a different and happy side of J.P.McGowan, Hollywood's first Australian.