Wildcat Saunders Review: Boxing, Cowboys, and a Very Good Horse

Should you watch this movie tonight? Honestly, only if you have a deep, slightly weird love for dusty 1930s cheapies where guys in giant trousers punch each other. 🤠

If you hate creaky audio and plots that make zero sense, please go watch literally anything else.

Wildcat Saunders is a bizarre little mashup. It tries to be a boxing movie and a western at the same time.

Jack Perrin plays Wildcat, a boxer whose manager sends him to a ranch to get in shape. Why a ranch? Who knows, maybe gym memberships were too expensive in 1935.

Naturally, the ranch foreman is secretly a jewel thief who stole a hundred grand in diamonds. Because of course he did.

If you have watched other cheap westerns from this era, like The White Rider, you already know how this looks. The camera barely moves, and the sunlight squint is very real.

But the boxing stuff adds a hilarious layer of weirdness. You get Jack Perrin doing roadwork in the desert, wearing these incredibly high-waisted shorts.

He looks less like an athlete and more like someone who got lost on the way to the beach. 🏖️

The best actor in the whole thing is easily Starlight the Horse. I am not kidding.

The horse actually looks like it knows where to stand, unlike some of the extra guys who just wander in and out of the frame.

There is this one scene where a guy gets punched and he falls over like a cardboard cutout. It is so slow, you can practically hear the director yelling "okay, now fall down."

Also, Fred 'Snowflake' Toones is in this. His character is... well, it is a product of its time, which means it is pretty uncomfortable to watch today.

But if you can look past the creaky bits, there is a strange charm here. It is only about an hour long, so it does not waste your time.

It is definitely more fun than other low-budget sports comedies like The Knockout, mostly because of the horses.

Do not expect any deep thoughts here. It is just a guy punching cowboys in his underwear, and sometimes that is exactly what you need.

Some weird things I noticed:

• The soundtrack sounds like it was recorded through a tin can.
• One of the bad guys has a mustache that looks like it might fall off if he sneezes too hard.
• The sheer amount of dust in every outdoor scene made me want to cough.

So yeah. It is silly, it is cheap, but it has a horse named Starlight. Give it a go if you are bored.