Texas Jack (1935) review: Starlight the horse steals the show

If you have some time to spare and a deep love for scratchy, black-and-white cowboy movies where the horses get actual screen credits, Texas Jack is worth a lazy Sunday watch. Anyone looking for a slick, modern action film with real pacing will absolutely hate this dusty relic. 🤠

It is basically a very cheap, simple revenge story. Our main guy Jack (played by Jack Perrin) is riding around looking for the guy who caused his sister's death.

The sister died after being hired as a schoolteacher, which is a weirdly specific backstory. It is never fully explained why this job was so deadly, but we just roll with it.

Anyway, Jack runs into another new schoolteacher named Ann. She was just hired by a guy named Corey, and boom—Jack realizes Corey is the exact villain he is hunting down.

The plot moves like a tired mule, but that is honestly part of the charm.

I kept getting distracted by Starlight the Horse. The horse is literally billed right at the top of the cast, and honestly, Starlight has some of the best reaction shots in the whole movie. 🐴

There is one scene where Jack is talking to Ann, and Starlight just stares directly into the camera lens like he knows he is in a cheap movie. It made me laugh out loud.

The audio is pretty rough, which is typical for these ultra-cheap westerns from the mid-thirties. Sometimes you can hear the actors shuffling their boots on the wooden floor louder than they are actually speaking their lines.

It reminds me of other early sound-era westerns like The Coming of the Law where everyone is still trying to figure out where to hide the microphones on set.

The bad guy, Corey, wears this ridiculously oversized black hat. It looks like it is about to swallow his entire head in every outdoor scene, especially when the wind kicks up.

There is a fist fight near the end that is so clunky it looks like two toddlers trying to hug each other while wearing heavy winter coats. Nobody actually lands a real punch, but the sound effects tell us otherwise.

But you do not watch these movies for the choreography. You watch them because they feel like a time capsule of a simpler, weirder era of filmmaking where they just cranked these out in a weekend.

If you like old-school westerns, give it a spin on a rainy afternoon. Just do not expect a masterpiece. 🎬