Men of Action (1935) Review - Radio Horses and Dusty Shovels

If you love old-school 1930s B-movies where guys in dusty hats punch each other over piles of dirt, Men of Action is a pretty fun hour of your life. But if you can't stand obvious stock footage of the Hoover Dam being edited next to some random California hills, you'll probably hate it. 🚧

The whole plot is supposed to be about building the fictional "Sweetwater Dam" before the clock runs out. But honestly, half the movie is just recycled clips of real construction workers from Nevada doing actual hard labor while our main actors pretend to hold shovels.

Then you got this crooked banker Edwin Markham who wants the construction company to fail so he can swoop in. He hires these classic B-movie bad guys—including Fred Kohler looking extra mean—to sabotage the whole operation.

They end up dynamiting a mountain side and accidentally kill a worker played by John Ince. His kid, played by the energetic Frankie Darro, vows to get revenge for his dad.

I absolutely love Frankie Darro in these old flicks. He always looks like he had about four cups of coffee right before the director yelled action. ☕

To get his revenge, Frankie joins this "radio-dispatched horse-mounted patrol" organized by the owner's daughter. Yes, you read that right. Men riding horses with giant radio transmitters strapped to them.

It is just as wonderfully goofy as it sounds. There is this one hilarious shot where a guy is trying to give a serious report on his radio, and his horse looks so incredibly bored like it's questioning its life choices. 🐴

Frankie teams up with the construction foreman, played by LeRoy Mason, who is basically there to look tall and heroic. They make a last-ditch effort to stop the bad guys from blowing up the main dam structure.

The editing is incredibly choppy in the last fifteen minutes. Sometimes a character is in the middle of a fistfight, and in the very next frame, they are standing perfectly still looking at the horizon.

It reminds me of the rushed feel in Reaching for the Moon, though that one had a bit more budget to hide the seams. Or even some of those early British docs like St Kilda: Britain's Loneliest Isle where the scenery does all the heavy lifting instead of the actual script.

But hey, the movie is barely an hour long and never gets boring. If you want a deep masterpiece, go watch something else, but this is great Saturday afternoon fluff.