Howdy pardners, welcome to “Western Wednesdays.” My name is Geno Cuddy and I have been studying, analyzing, preserving and discussing classic film for over twenty years. It is my pleasure to join Cinema Crazed and their brilliant team of writers.
One of my biggest fascinations is the B-Western, those classic Saturday matinee sagebrush adventures featuring the likes of Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, they were the original superheroes long before any caped crusaders appeared on screen. My main objective with this column is to introduce newer generations to these classic (and not so classic) films so that these sagebrush superheroes are never forgotten.
SYNOPSIS:
Hoot Gibson portrays a cowhand in a rodeo, when he and his partner [Skeeter Bill Robbins] overhear a challenge to capture a wild bucking bronco known as The Devil. Gibson and Robbins accept the challenge and capture the brute. Unbeknownst to them, unscrupulous rider Gil Davis [Edmund Cobb] is on their trail and steals The Devil from Gibson and Robbins’ range, and murders Robbins in the process. Gibson is framed with murdering his friend and sets upon capturing the true culprit. Davis is set to ride The Devil in the rodeo, but on the day of the event, Davis gets cold feet and rides away. Gibson takes the reins and tames the brute. Gibson then proceeds to track down Davis and forces him to confess to his crimes.
REVIEW:
Edmund “Hoot” Gibson was a champion rodeo rider who started in films in 1910. By the time “Wild Horse” was produced, Gibson was an established screen favorite. The film, produced for poverty-row producer M.H Hoffman’s Allied Pictures Corporation and later reissued under the title “Silver Devil,” is said to be Gibson’s favorite of all of the films he ever made and it’s not hard to see why. This film is not strictly a western, rather it’s a rodeo picture that provides Gibson the opportunity to showcase the riding that made him famous, riding on his beloved palomino Mutt from his own stable of championship horses.
Gibson lights up every scene he is in, but the other actors seem to fall flat. This film was one of the first films to feature Glenn Strange, who would go on to establish a long career in films, especially westerns and memorably the Frankenstein monster in three Universal films culminating with the horror comedy “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”
The worst part of the picture is the unfortunate presence of Stepin Fetchit. His character, like so many he played, is a cringeworthy stereotype today and Fetchit adds nothing to the story of the film, aside from being ill-conceived comic relief. It seems directors Thorpe and Algier needed to pad out the film to a full hour running time and much of that dead space is taken up by Fetchit and his insufferable antics.
I will remark that it was intriguing to see some camera shots from the horse’s point of view, which for a poverty row film from mid-1931, must’ve been difficult to achieve considering how bulky film equipment was during those times. For me, this was a middle of the row effort from Gibson, it was neither exceptionally good or reprehensibly bad. I feel if they cut Stepin Fetchit from the film, there would have been a much better flow to the story.