THE RAWHIDE TERROR (1934)

 

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.