On Western Trails! Review: A weirdly charming dusty relic

If you have twenty minutes to spare and love dusty old footage of cowboys riding horses, On Western Trails! is actually a neat little watch. But if you hate grainy, silent-era newsreels with zero plot, you should absolutely skip this one. 🤠

It is basically just a random collection of clips thrown together. It feels less like a movie and more like someone’s old vacation slideshow they found in an attic.

I put this on late last night expecting to fall asleep immediately. Surprisingly, I stayed awake because the horses are just so fun to look at.

There is some great shots of dust clouds, but my favorite part is when a horse tries to bite another horse’s ear while the cowboy is trying to look all heroic. The editor clearly didn't bother to cut it out, and it made me laugh out loud.

It has that same loose, chaotic energy you get in parts of King of Jazz, even though this is way more low-budget. Actually, it feels even cheaper than Low Bridge, which is saying something.

The camera work is pretty shaky in some spots. You can almost feel the cameraman choking on the dirt kicked up by the wagon wheels.

One guy in a giant white hat keeps waving at the camera like he’s never seen one before. He does it in like three different scenes, which makes me think they just recycled the same ten seconds of footage.

It’s not art, obviously. But as a weird little time capsule? It’s kind of sweet.

Don't expect some grand story about the American frontier. It's just guys on horses, doing horse things, captured on melting film stock. 🐎