Hell Hounds of the Plains

Hell Hounds of the Plains (1926) stars Yakima Canutt as Deputy Yak Hammond with the fetching Neva Gerba as his romantic interest. Yak was in the lead role rather than a stuntman and/or supporting character that he later specialized in. Supposedly he had voice problems that kept him from playing the lead in talkies. It is a fair oater, with Yak busting up a gang of horse thieves led by his girlfriend's brother, much to the chagrin of her upstanding paw when the varmint's identity was revealed at the end of the movie. Double irony, as the prospective father-in-law had made catching the gang's leader a precondition to giving Yak his daughter's hand in marriage. Features a great knock-down drag-out fist fight between Yak and the villain, and Yak was the man who invented the realistic movie slug fest. The film also offers a fine performance by Yak's mount, Boy the Wonder Horse, who scrambles down ravine walls, jumps off cliffs and dives into the water with or without Yak aboard.

Hell Hounds of the Plains (1927)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Deputy Yak Hammond (Yakima Canutt) is trying to make his relationship with Esther Lawson (Neva Gerber) more serious but her father demands that he start a group known as the Hell Hounds from robbing the horses in town. The father says Yak can marry his daughter if he catches the bad guys but the father doesn't realize that the ringleader is his own son. HELL HOUNDS OF THE PLAINS is a decent "B" Western that manages to be entertaining even though it's technically poorly made. I say that because there are just so many scenes that are shot so poorly and really don't contain anything good looking. This includes several scenes early on where the story is told so poorly that one has a hard time following what exactly is going on. Even the editing is quite poor and there's certainly no good pacing to the film. With that said, the Western clichés are actually quite good and this includes some great stuff involving the horse thieves and even the relationship between Cannutt and Gerber was well handled. I really can't say either one gave what we'd call a "good" performance but they're good enough for this type of material. One certainly shouldn't come into this expecting the work of John Ford but silent Western buffs should find enough entertainment here to make it worth viewing once.