Wolf Riders (1935) User Reviews

The movie that makes sure you know who produced and who directed!

[JohnHowardReid · 3/10 · 2 February 2018]

Jack Perrin made some real good movies and some real stinkers. We've already covered one of his silent turkeys, Thunderbolt's Tracks, so now let's look at one of his sound dogs.

This one is available on Public Domain DVD labels for the princely sum of two dollars. Actually, it's not worth two cents! Perrin himself is not too grating, but players like Lillian Gilmore (who fluffs her introductory line, but they left it in the movie anyway) and company are strictly from hunger.

Even normally reliable people like George Chesebro and William Gould seem amateurish. Only the lovely Nancy DeShon (in her first, alas, of only four movies) as the femme fatale delivers what could justly be described as a neat piece of acting.

As for the silly plot about an orphan who swears to his foster father that he'll never tell a lie and is then induced by the wise old man to do just that, I guess we should be thankful that the movie is so boring, no-one is likely to be swayed by its dubious philosophy of fighting lies with lies!

Harry S. Webb and Bernard B. Ray directed. Bernard B. Ray and Harry S. Webb produced. Don't get those two credits muddled up, whatever you do!

Making A 20-Minute Movie Last An Hour

[boblipton · 2/10 · 1 April 2024]

Indian chief Earl Dwire hands his son over to Indian agent Lafe McKee to be raised; the boy already knows how to ride and tell the truth. When he grows up to be Jack Perrin, he goes to work for his foster father. He;s delayed for a dance where he is to dance every dance with McKee's daughter, Lillian Gilmore, because he is tracking George Cheseboro who is stealing furs from 'the company' and selling them cheap to William Gould. He disarms Cheseboro, and is fiddling with something when Cheseboro knocks him out with a rock. Gould rides up, shoots Cheseboro, then frames the unconscious Perrin. When Perrin wakes, he brings in the corpse, but is nable to swear that he didn't kill him.

It's one of the horrid westerns produced by Bernard Ray and directed by the dire Harry Webb. The problem is that it is underwritten. An honest version would be a two-reel effort, but Webb stretches things out by slow, dully delivered dialogue and the use of long entrances. No one gets off a horse, starts towards a building, and then there's a cut to his entrance within. Instead the audience is subjected to the actor waking towards the building for a while. This stretches out what should be twenty minutes into just shy of an hour.

Perrin's starring career was near its end, killed by terrible B westerns like this. Webb would last until 1940; I believe he worked cheap enough that Poverty Row producers got their money back on the States Rights market. As for Ray, his career as a producer would be largely over by 1942, although he got some producer credits every few years through 1960.