Valley of Wanted Men (1935) Review - Cheap, Fast, and Dusty

Should you watch Valley of Wanted Men tonight? Only if you have a deep, slightly questionable love for cheap 1930s dusters where the cowboy hats are massive and the plot logic is completely optional.

If you want a polished classic, you will probably hate this messy little film. But if you just want to see some old-school stuntmen fall off horses for an hour, it's actually pretty fun.

The movie kicks off with a prison break that is honestly hilarious. Our three main guys basically just hop over a fence and run away, and the guards seem more confused than angry about it.

Once they escape, they head straight back to their hometown to find out who framed them. You'd think escaped convicts would try to blend in, but these guys just stroll around town like they're on vacation.

Frankie Darro is in this, and the guy is just a ball of pure energy. 🏃‍♂️ He always looks like he had about four cups of coffee right before the director yelled action.

He shares the screen with Paul Fix, a guy I always love seeing in these old poverty-row westerns. Fix has that wonderfully shifty face that makes you think he's constantly planning to steal someone's horse.

The whole thing has that incredibly rushed, low-budget vibe. It reminds me a lot of the chaotic pacing in The Third Alarm, where you can tell the crew was trying to finish the entire movie in about four days.

There is this one scene in a cabin where the audio quality goes completely sideways. The background hiss gets so loud it sounds like someone turned on a vacuum cleaner right next to the actors, but they just kept rolling anyway.

And the fistfights are just gold. During the big climax, you can clearly see a punch miss a guy's chin by a solid foot, but he still does a dramatic backflip over a wooden table.

It is definitely not a masterpiece, but at least it doesn't drag. The whole thing is over in less than an hour, which is exactly how long a movie like this should be.

Some weird details I wrote down:

• The prison guards who seem to have the reaction times of sleepy turtles.
• The way everyone wears their pants pulled up to their armpits.
• A horse that seems much smarter than any of the human characters. 🐴
• The fact that nobody in town recognizes three famous escaped convicts who aren't even wearing disguises.