Buffalo Rider

I can't believe that no one has ever commented on this truly awful movie. perhaps no one except me and my cousin Ron saw this movie, which we did on a cold snowy evening in Bowling Green Kentucky in '78. I was only 12 years old and yet even at that age I knew I had witnessed one of the worst movies of all time. the scene I remember most was when our hero, the buffalo rider, parks his buffalo at the local bar and goes inside to warm up and enjoy an adult beverage. One of the local tough guys walks up to our hero and asks, "hey, is that your buffalo outside?" sort of the modern day equivalent of "hey, is that your Harley outside?" if you ever get a chance to watch this snoozer, enjoy it for the laughs and bad acting which are plentiful.

Buffalo rider tells the story of Jake Jones, a man who asks a question that most of us have probably already asked ourselves; what would happen if I attempted to ride a buffalo? The answer is, "It would make an incredibly terrible movie". Buffalo Rider appears to be made from two separate film crews who did not communicate with each other and then threw together all of their footage at the last minute and tried to form a movie out of it. It's part Western, part nature documentary, but ALL bad.

There is no doubt in my mind that most of the plot was constructed after filming took place. The reason why people ride horses instead of buffalo is because buffalo do whatever the hell they want; there are plenty of scenes where the narrator says something like, "Well, Jake wanted to (insert thing or place Jake wanted to do or go), but Samson (the buffalo), decided that he wanted to (insert place or direction Samson was currently going)." Samson the buffalo just does whatever he wants; walking back and forth and going up and down hills with no direction or consistency to the movie's "plot". In once scene the narrator literally says, "Samson decided to try to scrape Jake off his back", to try to explain why the star of the movie just got slammed into a fir tree.

Here's an interesting thought; at one point in time, either the writer of the directer of this film said, "I don't care how or why, but I want us to put a raccoon in the middle of a frozen river and then break open a dam upstream so we can watch the raccoon get swept away in the ensuing flood." You think I'm joking? What if I told you that this movie features not one, but THREE different raccoons struggling to not drown in three different scenes? There is SO much wrong with this movie. At one point it actually pulls a Beerfest, where a character in the film is killed (thus giving our "hero" motivation for revenge), and is replaced by the same actor playing a different character. Oh, and there is blatant animal abuse everywhere. You think an animal-struggling-to-survive-a-flood scene would be hard to watch? Well then get ready for the "Animal A Attempting to Drown Animal B by Holding Animal B's Head Underwater" scene! It's fun for the whole family! ESPECIALLY if the whole family loves watching buffalo being shot dead, because this movie has PLENTY of that! If you want to watch this movie, watch the Rifftrax version (google it), as that is the only version worth watching.

Never before in the history of cinematography has there ever been so many shots of people's back on camera. Nor has there ever been so many shots of actors walking away from the camera, of course with their backs turns towards the camera.

Part way through the narrative, the film changes its focus on to wild life such as raccoons and fighting bears. Then some how, the footage transitions back towards the target narrative mostly through inexplicable means.

The film cannot decide if it wants to be nature documentary or an action film. Speaking of narrators, for unknown reasons, there are in fact more than one narrators working on the film. Thanks to the guys at Rifftrax for bringing that to my attention. The film seems like an hour and a half long nature short rather than an adventure themed cinematic film.

For the curious viewer, no. This film does not in fact have much buffalo riding. At least for the expectation of a film with name Buffalo Rider.

Should you watch this film? That's up to you, though I do highly recommend the Rifftrax version.

It was a cinematic masterpiece of epic buffalo proportions and the best film I have ever seen with a man riding on a buffalo. Although long, drawn out, poorly acted, with poor cinematography, poor sound quality, and a wandering nearly nonsensical plot, the buffalo and his rider will steal your heart. Many animals probably died in the making of this film, but it was filmed in 1977 and released in 1978 when people clearly didn't care about that. If a man riding on a buffalo doesn't spark your interest, maybe a man punching a cougar will. Rick Guinn (the guy on the buffalo) delights as actor, animal handler, and stunt man. Samson (the buffalo) entertains with his swift kicks and trampling abilities. Folks, this movie is not to be missed by anyone who loves a buffalo and a guy riding one.

Consider yourself warned as this movie definitely cannot post that 'no animals were hurt during the making of this film'. I honestly think a lot of the actors and the one baby in this film were also probably hurt during the making of this film. This film is quite rough, suffice to say as it is almost a cross between a nature documentary and a movie. A movie that lectures us on how the buffalo were hunted to near extinction, but literally looks like the people in the film are gunning live buffalo down!

The story, what story? Literally, we get a narrator talking about buffalo and hunters for a while and then Buffalo Jones is introduced and he is apparently the Buffalo Rider of the title, but he is never referred to this in the film, but rather as Buffalo Jones, whose main skills seems impaired judgement as he has a horse, but wants to ride a buffalo, who sees these men and can tell they are dangerous, but lets himself get shot anyway. Then we witness a raccoon in a frolicking adventure battling a cougar which tries to drown the raccoon who then gets swept up in a huge flood and then a babies parents are killed and old Buffalo Jones is going to rescue said child right after he punches a cougar in the face!

The film is just crazy. The lead guy looks like a cross from a dude in a rock band and Donald Sutherland and the bad guys just stop in here and there to make it seem like the film is just not an animal nature documentary gone awry. If it were a nature doc, the animals fighting each other would be just nature's way, but in this film, we have bears fighting and you know the makers got them to fight, you have buffalo trampling wolves and several other instances of animal cruelty going on.

So, the film is rough if you cannot stand the sight of animals in pain. I can watch it, knowing that the animals would be long dead even if they were not subjected to this, but some of the scenes definitely made me wince; especially that bear fight. Just not sure why a film like this was made as it is about a man that loves animals, but then the animals that were used were definitely mistreated.