There are some Poverty Row westerns that even I can’t defend.
A group of bandits, disguised as Indians, attack a pioneer family. The father and the mother are killed but their twin boys survive. One wanders into the wilderness while the other stays with the remains of his family and waits for help. Years later, the town of Red Dog is thriving, with the former bandits as its leading citizens. Someone has been gunning down the former bandits. The townspeople demand that Sheriff Luke (Edmund Cobb) do something about the man that they’ve nicknamed the Rawhide Killer. First, however, Luke has to deal with Jim Briggs (William Barrymore), who has been abusing his son (Tommy Bupp). It also turns out that Jim Briggs is the Rawhide Killer and he’s looking for vengeance against those who killed his parents. Jim’s brother also lives in the town. Guess who!
The Rawhide Terror gets off to a good start with the bandit attack but it falls apart soon afterwards. I don’t know if it was just because I was watching a bad print but the sound quality was terrible and the lack of an original score really highlighted just how boring it is to watch men silently ride their horses from one side of the screen to the other. This movie was only 47 minutes long and half of it was made up of shots of people riding horses. Add some really bad acting and you’ve got a western that was bad even by the standards of a 1934 second feature.
Two men are credited with directing the film, though the production was actually supervised by Victor Adamson, the father of the notorious schlock filmmaker, Al Adamson.
Through the Shattered Lens 