Buffalo Stampede aka The Thundering Herd (1933)

I never considered myself a fan of Westerns growing up. That all changed in 1993 with the release of Tombstone. Before that, I just assumed that Westerns were all more or less like, well, Buffalo Stampede

What do we have here? Randolph Scott in his 30s. A much different man than in his late 1950s films, for sure. Here he plays Tom. He does a couple of cool tricks making exits off his horse and a stagecoach. He likes Milly (Judith Allen), a gal that seems to be under the control of Mr. Jett (Noah Beery).

The idea of the film is that white men want to slaughter buffalo and make a killing on the killing.

At one point, the buffalo stampede. I guess Milly is endanger, but she's pretty capable of taking care of herself.

Some of the white people are being attacked by Indians, too, who probably don't want the white people killing all the buffalo. The Indians only kill what they need.

But other white people "stampede" in and chase the Indians off. And since this movie is only an hour long, that's it. It just abruptly ends. Tom and Milly, for what it's worth, end up together. She "makes a funny" by even proposing to him (after he's proposed to her earlier). Maybe this just reinforces that they see each other as equals.

She's the kind of gal you can bring on a buffalo hunt.

Rating: 1.5/5 stars

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