Rex Allen and Henry Fonda lend familiar voices to the narration of this tale of Tibbs and a bunch of cowboys rounding up 400 head of wild horses and driving them to Fort Pierre. A nit picky detail - someone should have let Fonda know that the town's name is pronounced "Peer", not "Pee-Air."
While not an award-winning movie by any means, "Born To Buck" provides some entertaining rodeo action, both on the open range and in Stanley County's Casey Tibbs Arena.
Having traveled much of the Lower Brule to Fort Pierre landscape shown in the film I have not once come across a wandering moose or a large mountain covered in lodgepole pine trees, but geographical inaccuracies were much more common in films of this vintage. I love the silhouetted cutout of Casey on a bucking horse that zooms in and out of the frame for transitions between scenes. It reminded me very much of the spinning bat symbol used in similar transitions in the "Batman" TV series that was popular at the same time this movie was produced.
I'm not sure anyone would be able to get away with the scene of horses swimming the Missouri River in today's movie industry, but it's very interesting to see.
As a side note, I highly recommend the Casey Tibbs South Dakota Rodeo Center, where you can pick up your own copy of "Born To Buck." For more information on this very well-done museum, visit Casey Tibbs Center.
Any word on the follow-up to this movie that I thought some filming was done on? I think it was called "Buck Bronco Buck." As a Fort Pierre native, I remember them making the movie and my dad and brothers were in it, as were some of the people we knew. Johnny Tibbs, Casey's brother, was one of them. That's his dog Buster in the movie. They lived just down the block from us.
ReplyDeleteThat's a completely new one to me. I'll have to see what I can do to track it down.
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