Black Gold (1936) review - Dusty, fast, and wonderfully weird

Look, if you have a soft spot for dusty 1930s B-movies where the bad guys are cartoonishly evil, Black Gold is a pretty fun way to waste an hour. But if crackly audio and cheap sets make you roll your eyes, you should probably skip this one entirely.

It is basically a story about oil, corporate greed, and a kid with the most baffling nickname in cinema history.

We start with old Dan, who has spent forty years sweating in the dirt. He is this close to striking it big before his lease runs out, but the local big shot Anderson wants to steal his land.

Enter Dan's son, Clifford. Except everyones calling him "Fishtail" for the entire movie.

They never bother to explain why his name is Fishtail, by the way. He is played by Frankie Darro, who always looks like he just got caught stealing a pie from a windowsill.

Then we get Henry, the geologist. Honestly, Henry is kind of a jerk when we first meet him.

He convinces poor Fishtail to go to night school, not because he cares about the kid's future, but because he wants to flirt with the pretty schoolteacher, Cynthia. It is a hilarious motive that the movie just treats as totally romantic.

But things get dark surprisingly fast. Dan gets killed in a "rig accident" that is so sudden it actually made me gasp.

The cable snaps, and boom—he is gone. No long goodbyes, just straight to the next scene.

This movie has the same frantic, almost impatient pace as other cheap melodramas from the era, like The Truth About Youth, where nobody has time to actually grieve.

The Wild Last Ten Minutes

The climax is just pure, beautiful chaos. We get thugs, a kidnapping, and actual dynamite.

My favorite part is when the bad guys knock Fishtail out and try to blow up the whole rig. Henry escapes his captors just in time, and suddenly there is oil gushing everywhere 💦.

But the absolute best part is the very ending. Cynthia decides that, since they are rich now, Fishtail needs to go to military school to "become a gentleman."

Imagine surviving a murder plot and a dynamite explosion, only for your new step-mom to send you packing to military school. Talk about a raw deal!

• The Good: It is only 50-something minutes long and never gets boring.
• The Weird: The absolute lack of explanation for "Fishtail."
• The Bad: The audio quality is rough, like it was recorded inside a tin can.

It is not a masterpiece, but its got that weird, earnest energy you only get from old poverty-row films. Give it a watch on a rainy Sunday if you want some easy fun.