Highly Overrated But Still Good

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Action galore within a well-crafted and beautifully presented story make this one of the very best B westerns ever made.Randolph Scott's mustache is rather jarring, to those of us who have never seen him with one, but he gives an excellent and athletic performance, joined by one of the finest casts ever assembled in a B western.Bad guys are really bad, with Noah Beery giving one of his best performances as the worst of the bad guys ... although Mrs. Bad Guy is about as rough and evil as any woman I've ever seen in a B western.This is not only brilliant story-telling, but it is brilliant acting.And brilliant directing.Henry Hathaway surpasses other possibly better-known and more highly regarded directors with his moving camera and his shots of moving horses and wagons and buffalo. (His last years, though, saw him faltering badly as he almost ruined, with the aid of a miserable script from Marguerite Roberts, "True Grit." But admire his work here and don't think about how badly he stumbled toward the end.)One wonderful aspect of "The Thundering Herd" is an active female lead, played by Judith Allen. OK, maybe there was a stunt man, but so what? The character is one to admire, and one to wish there had been and were now more of: a strong and active female who did more than cower in her man's arms.Excellent writing, and an excellent and exciting bunch of characters, and an excellent action-packed finale."The Thundering Herd" is available at YouTube in a pretty good print. I highly recommend this movie.

Zane Grey Westerns were apparently good early vehicles for Henry Hathaway and Randolph Scott. Hathaway's first directorial effort was 1932's "Heritage of the Desert", which also featured Scott in his first starring film role. Scott also appeared in 1934's "Wagon Wheels", a remake of 1931's "Fighting Caravans", both based on the Grey story of the same name. One of the plot lines of this picture follows that of 'Caravans', whereby the hero Tom Doan (Scott) has intentions of marrying the story's romantic interest (Judith Allen as Milly Fayre), but a couple of grizzled old timers (Harry Carey and Ray Hatton) find it objectionable. Guess who wins out? There's also a creepy element offered here with the character of Randall Jett (Noah Beery), who has designs of his own on stepdaughter Milly. This doesn't sit well with Mrs. Jett (Blanche Friderici), who for my money, might be the meanest female character I've run across in just about any picture, and that includes Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch of the West. Jett's also a mean cuss in his own right, operating a rival fur trade operation to the Sprague outfit, based on banditry against whites and Indians alike.The film utilizes a fair amount of stock footage at the opening as well as in sequences involving the buffalo stampedes of the title, which I learned from other posters on this board were first used in the silent version of this movie from 1925. There were a couple of other cool elements as well, like the use of a leveraged timber to temporarily replace a broken wagon wheel, and Randolph Scott's use of a tree limb during a running dismount to see his gal. The only question I have as far as the story goes - whatever happened to Buster Crabbe?

The stampede scenes were filmed at the Lamar Valley Buffalo Ranch in Yellowstone National Park.There were only 24 buffalo left in the world on 1901, so Congress appropriated funds in 1902 to prevent their extinction and the few wild buffalo in Yellowstone were gradually mixed with some ranch animals from Texas and Montana.The park rangers in the past would sometimes stampede the herd for movies and visitors.There are now 3,500..4,000 buffalo in YNP, but any that wander outside the boundaries are shot or rounded up and sent to slaughter.

This film is what they used to call a quickie (62 minutes), but it is quite above average in part because of Henry Hathaway´s direction. The story, written by Zane Grey, is about buffalo hunting. Harry Carey is the good guy who runs a hunting outfit and works together with Randolph Scott. Noah Beery is the bad guy who also runs an outfit, he sends his men to steal buffalo hides from other hunters, disguised as Indians. Scott is in love with Beery´s stepdaughter, who is hated by Beery´s wife (she is quite a villain).These hunters kill thousands of buffalo just for the hide, so the Indians get revolted and decide to attack. Stock footage was used from the silent version made in 1925, but it blends very well with the rest of the film.