Summary
Across a blistered nowhere where sagebrush trembles like penitents, a foundling suckled on silence grows into myth: Dan, half feral, half angel, nursed by rancher Joe Cumberland and watched by the hawk-bright Kate. His irises, normally storm-gray, ignite into molten citrine whenever the cosmos rubs him raw; the first spark flares when swaggering Jim Silent, a pestilence in leather, tries to erase Dan in a whiskey-soaked saloon. The bullet misses, but vengeance takes root, spreading like desert bindweed. Kate, desperate to leash the tempest inside the man she both loves and fears, rides straight into the outlaw hive, only to be shackled as bait. Dan retaliates by lassoing Lee Haines, Silent’s cocky lieutenant, setting off a macabre chess match: hostage for hostage, soul for soul. In the swap, Joe is freed yet the scale remains lopsided: guilt on one side, gunpowder on the other. Dan tracks the desperados through arroyos that smell of hot copper and old sins, pruning the gang one carcass at a time until only Jim Silent remains—two bruised animals circling under a moon the color of a spent shell. Their final grapple is primordial: no Colts, no knives, just knuckles and teeth on rock until Dan’s hands, still smelling of mare’s breath and campfire, crush the last breath from his nemesis. With the horizon suddenly wider and emptier, the untamed something inside Dan gentles; he returns to the Cumberland spread, not quite domesticated but willing to trade gunbelt for wedding ring, trading the howl of the wasteland for Kate’s whispered name.
Synopsis
Rancher Joe Cumberland finds "Whistling Dan" in the desert and gives the boy a home, rearing him with his daughter Kate. Dan, grown to manhood, remains untamed, possessing a hot temper which ignites his eyes into a yellow glow when he is angered. Dan's eyes glow and he vows revenge when outlaw Jim Silent tries to kill him in a saloon brawl. Kate goes to the outlaw camp to prevent Dan from killing Silent, but is taken prisoner. The confrontation between the two men escalates when Dan captures Lee Haines, one of Silent's men, and Silent retaliates by imprisoning Kate's father. After a trade of prisoners, Dan trails the outlaws and exterminates the entire gang except for Silent. The two adversaries then slug it out, with Dan strangling his tormentor. His revenge accomplished, Dan is somewhat tamed and settles down with Kate.
Review Excerpt
"
A blistered horizon, a hero whose pupils burn like twin lanterns, and a villain whose name—Jim Silent—already tastes of gun oil: those are the ingredients Max Brand and director H.P. Keeler stir into The Untamed, a 1926 western that punches way above its poverty-row budget. The film survives only in patchy 16-mm dupes, yet even through the gate-grime you feel heatwaves rising off Tom Mix’s leather chaps.
Deserts, Destiny, and Damnation
Set nowhere in particular yet everywhere the American psyc..."
