Movie Review: Wildfire (1945) directed by Robert Emmett Tansey
Wildfire is a mighty stallion, leader of his herd of free horses. He does his best to protect his people from the two-legs who would enslave or kill them. What he does not know is that the evil human Pete Fanning (John Miljan) and his band of horse thieves have been spreading rumors that Wildfire is somehow taking the best stock from the local ranchers’ corrals to add to his herd. And now a couple of those ranchers have come hunting Wildfire.
Fortunately, honest horse traders Happy Haye (Bob Steele) and Alkali Jones (Sterling Holloway) are nearby when the shooting starts, and manage to dissuade the ranchers from their illegal hunting while Wildfire only has minor wounds. The kindly Bob takes Wildfire back to their corral to treat his wounds until the wild horse is able to walk on his own.
As part of their job, Happy and Alkali take their current string of horses for sale to the nearby town only to make quick enemies of Fanning and his partners in crime. Luckily, singing sheriff Johnny Deal (Eddie Dean) is a mite too smart to fall for frame-ups and deputizes Happy after Alkali is shot. Unluckily, it turns out that Fanning has Judge Polson (William Farnum) in his pocket, and gets his men released, the sheriff discharged, and Happy accused of the crimes Fanning and his gang did.
Happy, Alkali and the sheriff are going to have to do some fancy riding, shooting and fist fighting to get out of this one, with a little help from the now recovered Wildfire.
This is a fairly stock B-western movie of the time period, unusual primarily for being in color when this was very rare even for higher-budget films. Bob Steele starred in quite a few of these (though he was last seen on this blog as a possible ghost in The Green Woman.) Sterling Holloway (you may remember him better as the voice of Winnie the Pooh) plays Alkali as a little more competent than the usual run of comic relief sidekick, Jimmie Dean gets a couple of nice songs, and also a romantic subplot with lady rancher Judy Gordon (Virginia Maples).
Wildfire, despite being the title character and the one the movie is nominally about, is secondary at best. The movie comes in just under an hour, and adding five or so minutes of Wildfire being awesome would not have hurt. At least he gets a happy ending of returning to the wild.
The copy I watched was apparently made from a very poor master, there are projector errors a couple of times.
Recommended to B-movie Western fans, as a good introduction to the work of Bob Steele. It’s short so would make a good double feature, perhaps with one of the John Wayne classics.
… ‘Alkali’?
It’s a location nickname, like “Tex” or “Colorado.” It means he either comes from or is associated with an alkali flats area like White Sands, New Mexico.