PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Here are three "weird westerns," all of which appeared together in a DVD collection, but are otherwise unrelated. All three are also combative adventures, for what that's worth.
THE RAWHIDE TERROR, the weirdest and most incoherent of the three, may be the only B-western of which the "monster" is the star. In a prologue, a wagon with a father, mother, and two kids is waylaid by a dozen white men masquerading as Indians. The bandits kill the mother and father but unaccountably leave both male children alive. The older brother wanders off laughing madly, and the younger is left alone.
Some fifteen years later, the former bandits have become pillars of the community in a small town called Red Dog. However, a mysterious killer, "the Rawhide Killer," begins strangling all of the men one by one. The mad murderer is a lanky fellow wearing a slouch hat, vest, and a rawhide strip over his face. Since no one knows who he is without this "mask," the strip doesn't serve any real purpose, particularly when it's strongly hinted that the Killer is the maddened survivor of the wagon-murders.
The short film, originally projected as a segment of a western serial, was retooled into a B-feature when the serial-plan fell through. Thus it's hard to tell who the story's "hero" is, a wandering cowboy, who has a fairly decent fight with Rawhide-guy, or Red Dog's sheriff. The latter character gets more attention in the film's jumbled latter half, concluding with the tossed-off revelation that the sheriff is actually the other orphaned kid. But the Killer, though played with gusto by William Barrymore, gets most of the narrative attention.
THE VANISHING RIDERS turns around the usual tendency of weird westerns to have the villains create the illusion of phony ghosts. Good guy Bill Jones (played by an actor whose real name was, oddly enough, the same as the real moniker of "Buffalo Bill") wants to bring a gang of outlaws to justice. To this end Bill and his kid sidekick Tim decide to play on the superstitious fears of the outlaws (this is, interestingly, four years before the debut of Batman). The crusader and his youthful partner dress themselves and their horses up in skeletal outfits and drive the outlaws crazy for a while, until it's time for the hero and his helpers to beat down the villains with an extended fight-scene.
This B-western is at least tolerable compared to the zaniness of RAWHIDE TERROR, but the only real entertainment shows up when an old fellow (who has "comedy relief" written all over him) unknowingly insults the leader of the outlaws to his face, only to be spared by the leader's sense of humor.
WILD HORSE PHANTOM, a cheap modern-day western from the PRC filmmakers, gives RAWHIDE TERROR a run for the "most incoherent" prize, even though on the whole PHANTOM has (slightly) better direction and production values. The title is the most off-putting aspect, since none of the horses in the story are important to the story. Even the steed owned by series-hero Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe) isn't significant, though the beast gets second-billing. There are a couple of candidates for "phantoms" in the story, but neither have anything to do with anyone's horse.
Carson works with the warden of a prison to let outlaw-leader Link Daggett escape prison with his gang in the hope that the crooks will go looking for their cached loot. Carson is involved because the money was stolen from the bank of a certain town, and if the money isn't returned, a bunch of farmers will lose their farms. I have serious doubts as to whether any real authorities would release a whole gang to achieve this end, and indeed, the crooks murder another ex-con. This scene takes place so that the con's comic-relief buddy Fuzzy will be motivated to attach himself to Carson's attempt to follow and eventually re-capture the gang. That said, the needless murder of an innocent is clearly OK as long as those salt-of-the-earth farmers don't lose their lands.
The gang seeks out an "old dark mine," but Daggett can't remember just where the loot is, which provides an excuse for both the heroes and the villains to wander around in the caves for long stretches. A few times a macabre laugh rings out, but this isn't much of a "phantom," for it's just a neighboring rancher trying to scare the intruders away from the loot he's discovered. A far more justifiable phantom is an oversized bat-- allegedly recycled from PRC's horror-cheapie DEVIL BAT-- which attacks Fuzzy, leading to some comical moments. There's no attempt to explain the bat's provenance, though much later Fuzzy finds a much smaller bat hiding in his clothes, which is possibly a present from the big one. The antics of Al "Fuzzy" St. John are the only fun part of the overly complicated story, since even Crabbe's riding and fistfights come off as dull this time.
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