The Thundering Herd

Roku has this as buffalo stampede, but imdb has it as thundering herd.

Stars western regular randolph scott and judith allen, in her very first role. In the 1870s, with good prices being paid for buffalo hides, honest cowboys hunted them. And dis-honest thieves tried to hijack them. Co-stars noah beery, buster crabbe. Add a battle with the native american indians. Throw in a love story between the lead characters, and you've got a western. Many of the scenes were cut and pasted from the 1925 silent version, but they are much darker. It's pretty easy to see which are the newer scenes and which are the old. Some great shots of buffalo stampeding, with various snowy mountains in the background. Directed by henry hathaway. Very outspoken and gruff. Some funny quotes in his bio here on imdb. Looks like he worked on seven films with john wayne. Book by the famous and popular zane grey, who had written a zillion and one westerns. According to imdb, this was filmed at the alabama hills and in yellowstone. When you are in lone pine, see if the museum of western film history is open... they might be showing a film that evening, probably written by zane grey. Fun stuff!

Randolph Scott, Harry Carey, and Raymond Hatton trade buffalo hides and fend off bandits led Noah Beery, his fiancé's lecherous stepfather. Shot and left for dead when he comes for his bride, Scott wanders around with his partners, looking for a chance to claim his girl and running afoul of Indians upset at the decimation of the buffalo.

Though not as satisfying as some other entries in Paramount's Zane Grey series, it's still pretty decent with a great cast, excellent production values (for a B-western), and a fairly engaging, though somewhat darker than usual script.

One problem though, is that third-billed Buster Crabbe appears only briefly near the beginning of the film and disappears for the duration of the movie. They should have found some room for him!

This is one of a group of westerns that Randolph Scott's home studio of Paramount assigned to him. Filmed previously as a silent and taking use of a lot of the action sequences from the silent version, Thundering Herd's source was one of Zane Grey's novels.

This is not the Randolph Scott we became acquainted with post World War Two in the westerns he did then. He plays a callow youth here, although he's 35 in real life. He's in the employ of a Harry Carey and Raymond Hatton, partners in a buffalo hunting outfit. Carey and Hatton run an honest group, but there's a rival outfit headed by Noah Beery, Sr. which gets hides the easy way, murdering whites and/or Indians for them.

Randolph Scott has a hankering for Judith Allen who's Beery's stepdaughter. Of course so has Beery to the discomfort of his wife, Blanche Frederici. Throw in a buffalo stampede and an Indian attack and I think you can figure the rest out.

It's good action from Paramount's B picture unit.

The cast of "The Thundering Herd" is very impressive...with Randolph Scott, Buster Crabbe, Harry Carey, Barton MacLane, Noah Beery and Raymond Hatton--all very familiar western actors of the day. And, the story is based on a Zane Grey story. And, it has a salacious subplot involving a step-dad that is WAYYY too interested in his step- daughter. Yet, amazingly, it's not that interesting and you could easily do better. Now this isn't to say it's a bad film...but it should have been a lot better.

The story is about a nice guy (Scott) who is in love with a nice girl. However, her sleazy step-dad (Beery) has way too much interest in her and it's obvious the film is STRONGLY implying incest. When the nice guy goes to get his girl in order to marry her, the sleazy step-dad shoots him and beats him up! The guy is too hurt to do anything but let his friends care for him and his desire to save the girl and get revenge will have to wait until he's healed AND they've gone on the buffalo hunt. This includes a lot of nice footage of the animals at Yellowstone...otherwise the big confrontation is a fizzle and the film was quite dull. The lack of any incidental music didn't help any.

The stampede scenes were filmed at the Lamar Valley Buffalo Ranch in Yellowstone National Park.

There were only 24 buffalo left in the world on 1901, so Congress appropriated funds in 1902 to prevent their extinction and the few wild buffalo in Yellowstone were gradually mixed with some ranch animals from Texas and Montana.

The park rangers in the past would sometimes stampede the herd for movies and visitors.

There are now 3,500..4,000 buffalo in YNP, but any that wander outside the boundaries are shot or rounded up and sent to slaughter.