The Crimson Trail (1935) Review: Mostly Just Horses and Shouting

Is this worth watching today? Well, if you love dusty 1930s B-westerns where the horses do most of the heavy lifting, then yes. But if you hate scratchy audio and guys in huge hats yelling about cows, you will probably want to skip this one entirely. 🤠

The plot is basically one big, annoying misunderstanding. Billy (played by Buck Jones) gets it into his head that his neighbor is a cattle thief. Instead of just talking like normal human beings, everyone decides to ride around in circles and shoot pistols at the sky.

Honestly, the real star here is Silver the horse. At one point, this horse literally unties a knot to help out. I am pretty sure Silver had a higher IQ than anyone else on the set. 🐴

The camera work is incredibly basic. It just sists there, watching people walk into the frame and walk out. It has that creaky, early-sound era vibe, not quite as bizarre as Alice in Wonderland from a couple years prior, but still very clunky.

There is this one stunt where a guy falls off a roof and you can clearly tell it's a dummy. Like, the limbs don't bend right at all. It made me laugh out loud.

Ward Bond shows up briefly, which is always a treat. He’s got that signature gruff face even back then, long before he became a regular in those massive John Ford films.

The dialogue is mostly just guys shouting "Get 'em!" or "Whoa there!" over and over. It feels like the writers, Wilton West and Jack Natteford, just wrote the script in an afternoon over a few beers.

Some weird notes I took during the movie:

• The hats are so big they look like they have their own gravity fields.
• A guy gets hit on the head with a heavy rock and is totally fine two seconds later.
• The gunshots sound exactly like someone popping bubble wrap near the microphone.
• The music just randomly stops and starts with no transition at all.

It’s not a masterpiece by any means. But it has this weird, cheap charm that you just don't get with modern movies. If you have an hour to waste and want some brainless nostalgia, it's worth a look.