Stormy (1935) Review: A boy, his horse, and some sketchy train crashes

If you love old-school horse melodramas where the animals have more acting range than half the human cast, Stormy (1935) is actually a pretty fun seventy minutes. It is perfect for anyone who misses the simple days of Saturday matinee Westerns, but if you can't stand corny dialogue or shaky 1930s rear-projection, you will probably want to skip this one entirely.

The plot is basically a lost-and-found ad with a budget. A train crashes, a beautiful horse gets loose, and our main guy spends the rest of the movie wandering around trying to find it.

The horse is played by Rex, or Rex Junior—honestly, the credits are a bit confusing about which horse is which, but man, that animal can run. 🐴

There is this one scene early on where the train wreck happens. It looks like they just threw some toy train cars down a dirt hill, but honestly? It has way more charm than modern CGI.

Noah Beery Jr. plays the young guy, Stormy. He has this incredibly earnest face, like a golden retriever who just learned how to talk.

He is constantly looking off into the distance with this squinty, hopeful look. You almost want to pat him on the head.

Jean Rogers is in this too, before she became famous in those Flash Gordon serials. She does not have a whole lot to do except look worried in a very nice hat.

The movie kinda drags in the middle when the humans start talking about ranch deeds and water rights. I literally took a quick break to make coffee during a long speech about cattle grazing.

Nobody watches a 1930s horse movie for the legal drama. We want to see the horses!

And the horse action is actually wild. There is a stampede scene that feels genuinely dangerous, probably because safety standards in 1935 were basically non-existent.

You can see dirt flying right into the camera lens. It is gritty in a way that modern movies can never replicate.

I kept thinking about Fighting to Live while watching this. That is another one where the animals basically carry the entire plot on their backs.

Though, Stormy has a bit more heart, even if the editing is incredibly choppy.

At one point, a character gets knocked out, and the transition to the next scene is so sudden I thought my streaming player skipped a chapter. It didn't. That is just 1930s editing for you.

There is also a weirdly long sequence of the Arizona Wranglers singing. They just stand there, strumming guitars, while everyone else looks uncomfortable.

It feels like the director realized the movie was only fifty minutes long and needed to pad it out. It is awkward, but in a very cute, nostalgic way.

If you have seen other b-westerns from this era, like The Danger Rider, you know exactly what kind of cheap thrills to expect.

But Stormy has this weird, gentle soul to it. It is not trying to change the world.

It just wants you to root for a boy and his horse. And honestly? Sometimes that is more than enough.

Some random notes I scribbled down:

• The train crash sound effects sound like someone shaking a sheet of metal in a closet.
• Rex the horse definitely deserved top billing over some of these actors.
• The hats in this movie are incredibly clean for people living in the dusty desert.
• That one stunt fall near the canyon looked way too real. Hope the stuntman got paid well.

It is not a masterpiece, not even close. But it has that dusty, honest 1930s charm that is hard to find these days.