Movie Review: The Miracle Rider
It is 1935 in the Panhandle area of Texas, home to the Ravenhead Tribe Indian Reservation. The Ravenheads are a peaceful, hardworking tribe. Sadly, their land is secretly situated on top of the largest deposit of X-94, an ore with tremendous explosive power, in the world. Somehow, a white man named Zaroff (Charles Middleton) has learned of this and has been secretly mining the X-94 while posing as an oil driller and ranch owner.
If Zaroff could just get the Ravenheads out of the reservation, he could move in openly and become the most powerful mine owner in the world. To this end, Zaroff tries to scare the natives off their land with a string of bizarre incidents attributed to the evil Firebird spirit. He is aided in this by one of the tribe, Longboat (Bob Kortman). It seems that Longboat is not full-blooded, and if this secret was known to the tribe, he could never become chief.
Good thing Texas Ranger Tom Morgan (Tom Mix) is on the case! A long-time friend of the Ravenheads since his father died protecting them from squatters, Tom is swift to realize that the events are not supernatural. He acts to protect Ruth (Joan Gale), a murdered chief’s daughter, while investigating the conspiracy.
Early on, Tom is misled into believing Emil Janss (Edward Hern), a merchant who wants to sell some unprofitable land he owns to the government for a new reservation, is behind the attacks and killings. Can Tom unravel the tangled web to reveal the truth before the Ravenheads lose their homes?
The Miracle Rider is a fifteen-part movie serial produced by Mascot Pictures in 1935. It was the last film work by Tom Mix. While he was still a big box office draw, as he had been in the silent era, Mr. Mix was getting long in the tooth and had nagging injuries that slowed him down. He still did many of his own stunts in this serial, but you can see him moving stiffly from time to time.
While there are science fiction elements in the story, they swiftly fade out. The solar-powered heat ray is never used again after the first installment, and the Firebird, a radio-controlled ultralight aircraft, is destroyed only a few episodes in. That leaves only X-94 itself, and the explosions never live up to the scale the dialogue says they should. On the other hand, the Western genre bits stay all the way, and there’s plenty of exciting horse chases, gunplay and fistfights.
Typical of its era, the treatment of Native Americans is dubious at best. The first installment opens with American heroes Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Buffalo Bill Cody trying to honor Indian territory, only to have greedier white men go and steal the land anyway, leading to war. Tom Morgan’s father is cast in this mold as well, and it’s clear that Tom is meant to be the spiritual successor of the other heroes.
Tom and the good guy Indian agent Christopher Adams (Edward Earle) behave as paternalistic protectors of the Ravenheads, who are superstitious, easily panicked and speak (except Ruth) in a vaudeville “Injun” dialect. Naturally, all of the Ravenheads with major speaking parts are played by white actors in makeup. Longboat is referred to as a “half-breed” and this is the major motivation for his villainous actions.
But still, there’s some rollicking action, a bunch of plot twists, and a couple of good cliffhangers (even if a couple have resolutions that are obvious cheats.) The antics of Tony, Tom’s preternaturally intelligent horse, are a hoot. Watch it with your kids, but prepare for some rather pointed questions afterwards.
