The Rawhide Terror

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

The limitations of film-making technology in the early 1930s is apparent, with somewhat iffy sound design and image quality. Nevermind that there are countless other instances of pictures made then or much earlier that are as sharp and clear as day, but sure; in fairness, this was made independent of major studio resources. I don't know if there were any particular constraints on this production that specifically limited the efforts of its contributors, but it's also noteworthy that the acting is almost uniformly stiff, blunt, and unconvincing, and likewise the direction. One also readily observes how incredibly direct the storytelling is, as exemplified in dialogue, scene writing, expository intertitles, and otherwise plot development that collectively leave no mystery whatsoever to the course of events. Almost from the time the tale begins, the audience knows exactly what's going to happen. I suppose that to some degree this comes with the territory for a feature clocking in at under 50 minutes, but still the incidence is a little startling for how rarely we see such inelegance in cinema.

None of these facets by themselves inherently mark 'The rawhide terror' as a bad movie, but taken up all together, the entertainment one could derive from it is severely diminished. From start to finish the entirety of the picture is astoundingly, unnaturally plainspoken, if not also a tad stilted or forced. Even the sequencing and editing at large raise a skeptical eyebrow, and the cinematography that feels strangely amateurish. As if all this weren't enough, the writing was also in substantial, desperate need of being both expanded upon and tightened in various ways: the major plot points are glaringly obvious, and everything in between nevertheless flounders with bizarrely insufficient coherence, cohesiveness, clarity, detail, or basic communication. In essence, the writers flatly told us the core of the plot at the outset, then just haphazardly threw the rest together.

At least the filming locations are nice, and the horses.

If there were even the slightest more care taken toward any element of this production, the end result would have been improved. As it stands, I'm not convinced that anyone involved here even possessed the fundamental skills to do any better. I'm downright flummoxed at how weakly every aspect of 'The rawhide terror' was treated, arguably even the sets, props, costumes, and makeup. There was a kernel of a worthy idea underlying the story, but after that everything pretty much fell apart with far too little quality or rudimentary capability to do anything about it. I suppose I admire the gumption to produce a film under these circumstances, but this is a title that one has to actively labor to enjoy for how stunningly flimsy it is. I don't know who I would ever earnestly recommend this to, or why, because I don't know who would earnestly enjoy it. Scattered fragments of capability save this from being counted among the worst movies I've ever seen, but at this level, that doesn't really mean anything. Whatever it is you think you're going to get out of 'The rawhide terror,' I strongly suggest you look somewhere else instead.

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.

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.