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4.7/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 4.7/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Shotgun Pass remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
You should watch this if you have about sixty minutes to kill and a weirdly specific interest in how the Army got its horses back in the day. It’s a fast watch. People who need a complex plot or 'character arcs' will probably find it boring as rocks.
It’s a movie for people who like the sound of real hooves hitting real dirt. No CGI here, obviously. Just a lot of guys in big hats getting dusty.
Tim McCoy is the main draw here, playing Tim Walker. He has this way of looking at people that makes you think he’s about to explode. Even when he is being nice to the lady, he looks like he's calculating the trajectory of a bullet. It’s kind of funny if you watch it for too long.
His acting is very... staccato. He moves in straight lines. He talks in straight lines. He’s like a human ruler.
The plot is basically a logistics nightmare. Tim has horses. The Army wants horses. The Mitchell brothers want to stop Tim. That’s the whole movie, really.
I noticed early on that the sound is a bit crunchy. It was 1931, so the microphones probably looked like giant trash cans. Sometimes you can’t hear the dialogue over the sound of the horses, which honestly, is probably how it felt in real life.
There are so many horses in this movie. At one point, the screen is just a sea of brown and white manes. It’s actually pretty impressive how they managed to herd them all through those narrow rocky gaps without everyone losing their minds.
One horse in the background of a wide shot keeps trying to bite another horse. It has nothing to do with the scene. I spent five minutes just watching that one horse be a jerk.
The Mitchell brothers are your standard-issue 1930s villains. They don't have 'motivations' like modern bad guys. They are just mean because the script says so. They block the pass with rocks and guns, and they look like they’ve never washed their shirts once in their lives.
If you’ve seen The Black Ace, you know the vibe. It’s that transition period where movies were still trying to figure out how to be loud and fast at the same time.
Virginia Lee Corbin is in this too. She’s fine, but she doesn't have much to do besides look worried about Tim. The movie isn't really interested in her. It’s interested in the horses and the contract.
The pacing is actually better than some of the stuff I've seen from this era, like The Whipping Boss. It doesn't linger on faces for five minutes for no reason. It keeps moving because the horses are moving.
There’s a bit near the end where the tension is supposed to be high, but you can see a cameraman's shadow for a split second. Or maybe it was a horse shadow. It’s hard to tell with the graininess. It makes it feel human, though.
It’s not a deep movie. It doesn't try to be. It’s just a story about a guy trying to do his job while some idiots try to stop him. We’ve all been there, just maybe without the spurs and the six-shooters.
I liked it more than I expected to. It’s short enough that if you hate it, you haven't lost your whole afternoon. But if you like the smell of old celluloid and western dust, it’s a good way to spend an hour.
The ending is exactly what you think it is. Tim McCoy wins. The bad guys lose. The horses get to the Army. No surprises here. Just a solid, dusty B-movie that knows exactly what it is.
IMDb —
1918
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