I am not partial to the serial genre’s tendency to shoehorn famous historical figures into their plots, like The Painted Stallion (1937) which had Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett helping out the hero Ray “Crash” Corrigan on a wagon train to Santa Fe, or Flaming Frontiers (1938) where Buffalo Bill popped up occasionally to rescue Johnny Mack Brown from danger. Now I don’t mind when the historical figure is the main character, like Overland with Kit Carson (1939) or Jesse James Rides Again (1947) as the story revolves around them.
Universal’s Battling With Buffalo Bill (1931) is an interesting twist on the usual real life person based serial. Where usually the historical figure is engaged in an entirely fictional series of events, this serial is based on the book The Great West That Was written by William F. Cody. So from that statement you might be led to believe that the events in this serial actually happened, but no, that isn’t true. The plot line is a fictional battle between settlers and a ruthless gang leader that was typical of the western. But because the writers cherry picked some bits from Cody’s book, like being an Army scout (and Cody probably embellished his own accomplishments anyway), the serial has the implied appearance of being more factual than it’s competition.
In the mining boom town of Hard Rock, Jim Rodney (Franic Ford) runs the local saloon and gambling emporium. When he discovers there is a large gold deposit in the area, he plans to drive all of the miners out so he can have it for himself. To that end he has his men steal horses from the nearby Cheyenne tribe, during which a squaw is killed, which ferments tension between the Indians and the townspeople way more Rodney probably wanted.
Rodney learns that Dave Archer (Rex Bell) is planning to buy a stamp mill so the miners can process their ore locally. He sends his top henchmen Breed (George Regas) to stop the delivery of the money to Blackfoot. Meanwhile, the Cheyenne pick this moment to attack Hard Rock in retaliation for the murder and theft done to their tribe. Rodney surreptitiously skips town for his hideout.
Army scout Buffalo Bill Cody spots the Indian war party and rides back to the local cavalry patrol he is scouting for and they ride to save the town. The town’s people, led by John Mills (William Desmond), valiantly fight off the attacking braves but eventually run out of ammo and the war party overruns their barricades where they engage each other in hand to hand combat. During this, Mills’ daughter Jane (Lucille Browne) is grabbed by a brave, who rides off with her.
Bill sees this and pursues the brave. He rescues her from the brave and rides back toward safety. Bill’s horse is shot out from under him and as he and Jane lay trapped under the wounded animal, the war party rides hard to trample them into the dust……
The first thing I noticed about this serial is the almost total lack of music in the serial, the opening credits are over star Tom Tyler galloping across the hills with the only sound being his horse’s hoofs striking the ground. But the serial isn’t totally without music. Anytime a character enters the villain’s saloon, banjo music comes on the soundtrack. It’s as if Ray Taylor took his cue from Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) and only had music appearing where there was an onscreen source for it.
Being an early sound serial the recaps are done by an onscreen narrarator. Unlike some of the narrarators that were also being used in early sound serials, we don’t have some nicely dressed professional sounding voice actor. What we get here is a grubby looking, bearded desert rat giving some of the most colorful recaps ever heard in a serial. My favorite is his constant reference to villain Francis Ford as that “Ornery Horn Toad jim Rodney”.
This is a good, fast paced Western serial, with plenty of horse chases and lots of gun and fist fights between the hero and either the villain’s henchmen or the hero and Indian braves. The cliffhangers do get a little monotonous, how many times can you see the hero, or secondary hero, fall off a cliff, about to be trampled under horses or shot in the back while the cavalry arrives to save the day.
The plot does contain a couple of interesting twists. Instead of having heroine Lucille Browne and hero Tom Tyler heading toward a tentative romance, it is secondary hero Rex Bell who has a very open romance with her from the very beginning. Also where most serials will have an underling as sheriff to help pull off schemes while the big boss stays in the background, here the main villain rigs an election and gets himself elected Town Marshall and then frames Bell for one of his own murders
The town setting is nice. The building look like what a real pioneer town would look. The buildings appear to have been slapped together with whatever wood was available, no sidewalks and the streets are a muddy mess. It’s more Sergio Leone than, say, Henry Hathaway.
The acting is universally good. Tom Tyler, in buckskins and a goatee, makes for a rugged Western hero. Always a riveting action star, he is a commanding presence here who could have inspired Clint Eastwood with his sparse dialog sardonically delivered.
Bell is a good secondary hero, more brash thanTyler always rushing off without thinking. Bell’s character comes off as intelligent but reckless, which softens the aggrevation over his actions getting himself in deadly situations.
Browne is, happily, more active than usual in this serial. She rides a horse and shoots as well as the men. Unfortunately this would be the only time she would be this aggressive, as her other serials had her playing the cliched shrinking violet who constantly screams at the least sign of trouble, like in Last of the of the Mohicans (1932).
Francis Ford, brother of director John Ford, is one of the weasliest villains I have ever seen. Always slipping away when things look bad and leaving his men to deal with it. Smarter than he is tough, he manipulates his men with stories of great wealth, then lets them take the brunt of the action, while planning to cheat them out of the hidden gold when it is over. A sneering back shooter, he is a true black hatted villain, the Ornery Horn Toad.
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