The Black Cyclone (1925)

Directed by Fred Jackman
Starring Rex the Wonder Horse, Lady and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams
Produced by Hal Roach Studios

A youth, orphaned by a tragic accident, gets by through pluck and resolve.  But Mary Pickford is nowhere to be found.

A rogue who uses cunning and strength to win the heart of the girl.  But no sign of Douglas Fairbanks.

No, this is The Black Cyclone.  And The Black Cyclone stars Rex the Wonder Horse.

Really.  That's his name in the credits.

The main story of The Black Cyclone is this: Rex, a black horse, is left alone in the world when his mother is bitten by a rattlesnake.  He learns to survive and becomes a powerful steed who falls in love with Lady.  He helps Lady get out of a tight jam or two, but ultimately she is taken by The Killer, a merciless, evil horse who kills the leader of a herd and takes it as his own.  Rex is drawn to a human who has suffered a similar fate (separated from his love, driven from his town).  Ultimately, the pair team up to take down their respective enemies.

Of course, this is a movie starring horses in 1925, so it's so much more than the above.

As always, we start with the good.  And for about the first twenty minutes, it's very good.  The editing of the scenes weaves a tale that is simple and timeless as we see Rex lose his mother, try to copy a bear in retrieving honey (it does not go well) and meeting his soulmate.  The horse can't emote, but it can hit its mark and gallop against some gorgeous scenery.  The title cards fill in the rest.

Then, the humans get involved.  And things go spectacularly off the rails.  We meet Jim Lawson who is in love with a girl named Jane.  Trouble is, the local bad guy likes Jane too.  He ambushes Jim one night in what has to be one of the most poorly staged gunfights ever filmed.  They literally run around in a circle while seemingly firing into the ground.

Miraculously, Jim somehow manages to shoot his foe, but this only "stuns" the villain who has a posse to back him up.  So off Jim goes to hide in the wilderness.

Jim and Rex cross paths when Rex gets caught in quicksand and the cowboy saves him.  Nevermind that the quicksand was pretty clearly knee deep water and that the trick Jim uses to free Rex is completely unexplained.  Rex decides this human is the one to help him retrieve Lady.

At the same time, Lady manages to escape from The Killer and head off to find Rex.  The couple reunites and Rex wants to introduce Lady to his human friend.

Here, we get the signature moment of the film.  Jim is sleeping.  A mountain lion sneaks up, ready to pounce on the vulnerable hero.  Rex rides in to save the day, squaring his debt to Jim.  At least that's what the film is trying to convey.

Instead, we get Jim sleeping in front of a campfire.  Cut to a mountain lion which looks to be on a different set in a different country.  Cut to Rex and Lady arriving through a shot that is repeated from one used earlier in the film.  Rex and the mountain lion stand off from their completely different backgrounds.  And then?  Stop motion animation!  From out of nowhere, we get this bizarre moment of stop motion animation cut with close ups scenes of Rex doing... something.  And it works out as Rex prances the mountain lion to death.

The closing of this is where it veers into complete Mystery Science Theater 3000 territory.  The bad guy is looking for Jim in the wilderness and sees Jane going to meet him.  So he gives chase.  We get repeated uses of the same close up.  We get jerky camera movements and images completely out of frame.  And, in my favorite so-bad-it's-good moment, we see the two riding toward the camera when a third person on a horse inexplicably rides across the screen in the background.  I guess that was the best take?

The final dual fight sequence is bizarre as both Rex and Jim confront their enemies.  Jim cements his status as worst cowboy ever in a terrible fight sequence.  And the horsefight (yes, I just used the word horsefight) shows Rex and The Killer throwing hooves at each other and doing other things until... well, a title card tells us Rex has won.  Nothing on screen would actually indicate that, but omniscient narrators are rarely wrong.

The Black Cyclone is a tough one to judge.  The novelty and fairly tight editing of the first act are wondrous.  The middle act is a meandering snoozefest.  And the last act is a choppily edited trainwreck.  It would work as a short film, but it doesn't work as a feature.  The last bit is almost worth a watch because it's terrible enough to be humorous, but the middle third is just dull.  If you can find it, the first twenty minutes are good for a viewing.  Other than that it's barely:

** out of *****