Strawberry Roan (1933) Review - That Horse is a Better Actor Than Me

If you have seventy minutes to spare and want to see a horse do actual stunt work, then yes, Strawberry Roan is absolutely worth your time. 🐎

Modern action fans will probably find the dusty 1933 audio a bit of a chore, but anyone who loves classic Westerns or just wants to watch a gorgeous palomino outsmart a bunch of humans will have a blast.

This is not a complicated movie, and that is exactly why it works so well.

The plot is pretty simple: some rancher's mares are disappearing, and everyone is blaming this wild stallion. But we know the real villain is Hawkins, the sneaky foreman who is obviously up to no good from his very first scene.

Enter Ken Maynard, playing a guy named Ken because why bother changing names back then?

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Strawberry Roan (1933) through its definitive frames.

Ken wants to ride this wild palomino to win a whole ranch being offered by Colonel Brownlee. But he also wants to clear the horse's name because Ken is just a good guy like that.

Honestly, the human actors are fine, but the real star here is Tarzan the horse. 🐴

Tarzan plays the wild horse, and some of the things this animal does on screen are just mind-blowing. Like, there is this one scene where he kicks a gun out of a guy's hand, and I had to rewind it twice just to make sure it wasn't a trick of the camera.

It makes you realize how much we rely on CGI nowadays when a real horse in 1933 was doing better acting than most Marvel characters.

The pacing is a bit bumpy, though, like a lot of these early talkies. It feels a lot like The Galloping Cowboy in how it just rushes from one dusty chase to another without much breathing room.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Strawberry Roan (1933) through its definitive frames.

There is also this bizarre musical number right in the middle that feels like it belonged in a completely different film, maybe something like Hard to Handle which also came out around this time.

Ken Maynard just starts singing, and the audio gets super muddy. It is kinda charming but also very weird.

What Kept Me Watching

• The Stunts: Ken Maynard was a real-deal rodeo rider, and you can tell because he does these crazy mounts where he just leaps onto the horse from behind.
• The Horse Acting: Tarzan has more facial expressions than the main villain.
• The Dirt: Everything looks incredibly dusty and real, not like those clean studio sets they used later in the decade.

The villain, played by Charles King, is almost cartoonish with his sneering. You can tell he is the bad guy because he wears a slightly darker hat and spends a lot of time whispering in corners.

There is this one fight scene near a rocky hill where the camera just sits there for a really long time while two guys roll around in the dirt. It goes on for so long that you start to wonder if the cameraman fell asleep under his hood.

"I'll ride that horse or break my neck trying!"

Spoiler alert: he does not break his neck, but it sure looks like he came close a couple of times.

There is a lot of charm in how rough around the edges this whole thing is. The editing has some really weird cuts where a character is suddenly on the other side of the yard with no explanation.

But if you can look past the crackly sound and the simple story, it is just a really fun piece of history. Just do not expect any deep messages; it is just a guy, a horse, and some bad guys getting punched.