Wagon Wheels (1934)

Although I'm not a big fan of John Wayne's The Big Trail (1930), I rated both versions of that film 3/5 stars. Much better than whatever this is.

So Clint (Randolph Scott) and a couple other guides are set to take a wagon train west to Oregon. Nancy (Gail Patrick) wants to join the wagon train with her four-year old son. Her husband is dead, and Clint tells her no, her equipment isn't up to the journey, and neither is she.

She gets some better equipment from another guy -- it's never really explained what he wanted from her or how much he charged her. Maybe he was just being nice.

Fortunately for the wagon train, there are no buffalo around to stampede, but at least there are Indians. They attack. It's hard to tell how far the wagon train had gone by this point, but they were crossing a bigger river, like maybe the Missouri. Maybe they've made it as far as that... Clint and the others are able to chase the Indians away, and they never come back. Nor do they have any other issues, apparently, because the film just naturally skips the journey through the Rockies and so on. Everyone makes it safety to Oregon (except for one of the other guides), and, of course, with her four year old son's permission, Clint marries Nancy. I guess he appreciated that she was tougher than he thought, making it to Oregon and all. And, women in Oregon were hard to find, so he was lucky to get her.

This is just a bad movie. I was curious: Were the wagons and the wheels oversized when we first see them? It felt like it. Later in the movie, the wagons and the wheels seem normal in size, but at first, for whatever reason, they seemed HUGE.

Rating: 1/5 stars

Comments

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #4 -- The Federalist Radio Hour

I first heard of Sean Davis last week. He created an online magazine called The Federalist in 2011, and he currently has about 500,000 followers on X. It was about last week that he posted something amazing. He suggested if the Supreme Court doesn't rule the way they should, not only should Trump just ignore the ruling, if they keep obstructing the administration, he should just dissolve the Court altogether. And I thought, wow. This guy is saying outrageous stuff like that, and there's an audience for it. So, I decided I'd listen to an episode of The Federalist podcast: April 17, 2025 -- Deportation, Due Process, and Deference to the American People (40 minutes) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deportation-due-process-and-deference-to-the/id983782306?i=1000703904873 In the 40-minute conversation, the host and guest discussed why due process wasn't required for illegal immigrants. The case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was mentioned for a brief second, but...

In Utero

In 1994, I wore my In Utero shirt to college. I’d walk down the hall, and people would look at the shirt. I still remember a professor looking at it, not apparently hip to the scene. She asked, “Bret, is there something you’re trying to tell us?” I had no idea what I was trying to say. Kurt Cobain had just shot his head off with a shotgun. Before that life-changing event, I hadn’t been the biggest fan of Nirvana, but I did recognize the immediate impact “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had on music, or at least on MTV. Nirvana had seemingly killed and buried Hair Metal, and they had done it single-handedly. What exactly was this “Alternative” sound? It was weird, because soon it felt like everything was “alternative,” and that didn’t make any sense. Once everything is the same, how can it be anything but standard, normal? Nirvana was okay, but at least at the time I was wearing the merch, I was much more into Offspring and Green Day and Tool. And that’s about as far as I went into...

I Must Betray You -- Ruta Sepetys

I appreciate the pacing. The author's epilogue includes her mission statement -- historical fiction as a way to keep history alive. Romanis is an obscure place, but she hopes people reading the book will take an interest in its history. She also makes the point that there are no clean endings. So, the evil dictator and his wife were killed, but the problems they created didn't magically go away, the country still had to find its way and move forward, and it was a process.

The Writer's Poke

Search This Blog