The Roaring West Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

The Roaring West Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 2, 2020

In a way, maybe it takes a little bit out of the fun of watching a serial like The Roaring West or another recently reviewed Buck Jones effort from Universal, The Red Rider, on a Blu-ray set like this, since unless you’re a planner and very disciplined, you may be tempted to either just binge watch or at least sample an episode or two in one sitting. That would seem to take some of the energy out a prominent feature of many serials, as is alluded to in a branding on this very release which touts it as being part of a “Buck Jones Cliffhanger Collection”. Jones was a rather major star in his own way back in the 1920s and 1930s especially, as I briefly cover in our The Red Rider Blu-ray review, but at least some of that stardom came courtesy of “weekly serials” like these that offered a few minutes of diversion before the main feature the audience had paid to see. As such, there was kind of a rote quality to some of Jones’ work during this era, and The Roaring West comes off as serviceable and occasionally quite scenic, but never really very exciting. The story seems considerably padded in order to deliver fifteen episodes, and there’s an almost Groundhog Day -esque ambience of the same things happening over and over again as Jones, playing stalwart rancher Montana Larkin, attempts to make his riches with a gold strike in them thar hills.

The brief plot summary here on this site which a member evidently ported over from the IMDb kind of hilariously states:

15-episode serial involving the land rush, gold mines, stolen maps, etc.

And it’s in that “etc” that The Roaring West finds both some of its passingly distinctive flavor as well as its tendency to dart to and fro in a kind of attention deficit disorder attempt to distract the viewer until the next supposed inescapable horror awaits Montana and/or hangers on like would be main squeeze Mary Parker (Muriel Evans). As anyone who has gotten a kick out of some of these old programmers is undoubtedly aware, the “cliffhangers” are almost always resolved in near miraculous fashion, often with footage that is a complete mismatch for the tease of imminent destruction given at the end of the prior episode. That aspect may be part of the expected section of “etc”, but The Roaring West has an ungainly number of characters galloping through its story, and the emphasis on any given person at any given time seems increasingly random as the serial progresses.

The basic setup once again pairs Jones with a whimsically named sidekick (something that seems to be a specialty in at least some Jones serials), in this case Jinglebob Morgan (Frank McGlynn, Sr.), though it's Jinglebob's brother Clem (Harlan Knight) who repeatedly gets kidnapped by the bad guys led by Gil Gillespie (Walter Miller), who want Clem to disclose the location of the claim he, his brother and Montana hope to exploit. (Some jaded types might be tempted to make a "drinking game" out of how many times Clem gets abducted and then more or less immediately freed by Montana and his acolytes.) A number of patently silly subplots intrude, with Montana also trying to woo Mary intermittently throughout. There's some rather appealing outdoor photography here, including some frankly at times inartfully matched stock or archival footage, but despite the requisite number of chases and shootouts, nothing ever really musters up much energy here.

The Roaring West Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Roaring West is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of VCI and MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. VCI's Blu-ray history has been a bit spotty, and so it may sound like I'm damning with faint praise when I say this is one of the better looking transfers we've had from the label, though it, too, tends to look filtered and have some anemic contrast (especially in some night or day for night scenes) as some other VCI releases have. As I've mentioned in some other reviews of VCI material, there does appear to be something that looks a bit like natural grain here, though it's much more noticeable in moments like the optically printed credits, optical dissolves, or other opticals like some of the some wipes that offer segues between screens (see screenshot 17). However, when you get past any of these interstitial moments, the grain field becomes minimized to a degree that it can be hard to see. That can tend to give a slightly waxy look at times, but detail levels are at least decent throughout. The element utilized has its fair share of age related wear and tear, including lots of scratches and nicks and a few more serious moments that look like actual emulsion damage (see screenshot 19). My score is 2.75.

The Roaring West Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Roaring West features a boxy and thin sounding LPCM 2.0 mono track, though dialogue is typically rather well rendered throughout, given the age of this piece. There is background hiss evident and on occasion what I'd term as being "waves" of amplitude that kind of sweep through and spike briefly, only to ebb just as quickly. A propos of nothing other than my sometimes unexpected reactions to music, I found the jaunty string piece that underscores all the "recap" text at the beginning of each episode to be kind of comical, especially as it occurs directly after the more traditionally rousing theme music.

Note: Someone either forgot to do or add subtitles to the last two episodes of the serial.

The Roaring West Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Roaring West Featurette with Daniel Griffith (1080p; 7:50) offers C. Courtney Joyner offering an assessment of the serial in passing, but really spending more time on Jones' career as a whole. Some of the film clips shown here are weirdly anamorphically squeezed, so that those "long, tall" strangers are really long and tall.


• The Roaring West Photo Gallery (1080p; 4:39)


• Original Trailer (1080p; 2:58)

Note: All of these supplements can be found on the second disc of this two disc set. Also, the supplements have been authored so that chapter skipping ahead is not available.

The Roaring West Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're only passingly interested in these vintage Universal serials, my advice would be to try out The Red Rider first, as (for me, anyway) it provides a bit more consistent excitement and a better handling of the "multi episode" arc that serials are forced to employ. This particular outing seems padded beyond measure, especially when the same kinds of calamities keep cropping up. That said, there's some nice location footage here, and even if some of the stock footage is wonky looking, it, too, can be rather interesting, as in a log run in a mountain mining location that could have come directly out of a film that came out the year after this one did, Goldwyn's epic Edna Ferber opus Come and Get It. Technical merits are a little spotty on this one, so I recommend those who are interested in making a purchase to parse the screenshots accompanying this review.