The Rawhide Terror

Rawhide Terror, The (1934)

* (out of 4)

Incredibly bad "B" picture that started off as a 12-chapter serial but when the money fell through the producers decided to just make a western. To bring more money in they sold the picture as the first horror/western but this film is so bad it makes both genres look bad. A killer known as "The Rawhide Killer" is strangling various members of a small town and no one seems to know why. This movie was produced and written by Victor Adamson who's son would go on to make various drive-in classics like Dracula vs. Frankenstein and Horror of the Blood Monsters.

Plot (or what there is of it)-- Moving West the parents of two boys are murdered by predatory white men pretending to be Indians. Years later, a grotesque killer called the Rawhide Terror picks off men from a town nearby to where the two boys were orphaned. So what's going on.

If you like a lot of aimless riding around greater LA, then you may like this feeble oater. The main problem is that it's an edited-down version of a half-done chapter serial. Too bad someone didn't turn on the lights since the characters come and go in no particular order, while cheap chase scenes go on and on. Then too, characters change names for no apparent reason, so if you can figure out the interplay, you belong at MIT. Now I don't blame the producers for getting what money they could out of the abortion, but I really pity anyone who paid to see it. The results do manage a creepy moment or two with the Terror's gruesome face, but except for horror movies' favorite location-- Bronson Canyon Cave-- the oater's a real bomb.

The only reason I watched this is because it was advertised on the internet as "A horror Western" Hmmm a mixed genre film featuring cowboys and horror elements . It's not something you see every day. After seeing the movie it's not something I want to see again

A caption tells us "In the nineties twelve renegades disguise themselves as Indians to rob settlers" You have to remember this is a Western so any mental images of Peter Sellers dressing himself up in a turban and robbing rave goers at a beach in Goa are quickly dispelled. Considering the renegades are so ruthless they won't take any prisoners it's never revealed why they have to disguise themselves in the first place

As the film continues it becomes more and more apparent that this in no way any type of horror movie . It's just simply a revenge Western where a boy grows in to a man off-screen and when he reaches adulthood it's a case of a man having to do what a man has to do. I felt rather cheated by this and you will be too if you're expecting horror thrills

I did perhaps console myself in watching a film from an era when talkies ere just becoming common place while baring in mind it's a massive amount of films were being made from yesteryear. But no it's a dreadful film composed of stilted acting , haphazard editing and badly framed sequences. And no it's not bad enough to be good either. A complete waste of 47 minutes

Traveling across the prairie in a covered wagon, a family is attacked and the parents slain by a band of outlaws posing as renegade Indians. With the murderous deed done, the eldest of the two surviving brothers disappears hysterically laughing into the brush, never to be seen again.

Years later, the outlaws are now legitimate businessmen of the town of Red Rock, being terrorized and systematically murdered by a mysterious fiend known only as the Rawhide Killer, a buck-toothed loony with a strip of rawhide across his nose!

Being quite possibly the stiffest western of the 1930's, it does have a bit of charm thanks to the odd nature of the mad killer, his incredible wardrobe, and some inventive use of murder techniques.

Writer-producer Victor Adamson, better known as Denver Dixon, was the father of drive-in filmmaker Al Adamson, the director of another much maligned western, Five Bloody Graves.

On YouTube is a not-very-good of a print of "The Rawhide Terror" that is in no way a "horror" film, but it is a horror of a Western.

Supposedly it started life as a serial, which might explain some of the gaps in the narrative, but perhaps good editing could have saved it, if there had been more of the story compacted and the story complete.

Though Art Mix is billed first, Edmund Cobb ends as the main character, and that ending is just ... well, out of the blue.

There is not much reason to watch this, except to complete your knowledge of the history of B Westerns. There is little excitement, there is the Hollywood convention of a psychotic who laughs all the time, as symbol of his insanity -- or in other films of his marijuana use.

There is a good cast, and Herman Hack, credited with 811 roles, actually gets lines in this one.

William Desmond gets a nice part, and Frances Morris, who had a long and busy career -- 248 credits listed here on IMDb -- was the leading lady.

It was fun to watch her mount a horse, but she wasn't a very good rider at this point. Maybe she learned later.

I've changed my mind: There ARE reasons to watch. Just don't expect a very good script, or good direction, or good editing.