Monday, April 8, 2024

The Prairie Pirate (1925) Harry Carey


My grandmother once had a crush on Harry Carey. I don't know when that was. Maybe it was Harry Carey, Jr. 

Harry Carey was 47 when he starred in The Prairie Pirate. His character was on his way home to the ranch when bandits showed up there and attacked his sister. She barricaded herself in the house, shot a couple of them which was nice for a change, then hid in the cellar where she killed herself to avoid being assaulted by the monsters. This was implied and not shown explicitly.

Harry Carey finds her body and becomes a bandit himself as part of a plan to hunt down the men who attacked his sister. 

There's a subplot---a wealthy Spanish rancher, Don Estaban, has gambled away pretty much everything. His daughter pleads with him to stop doing it, but he goes off to the casino again so he can win back all the stuff he's lost. This time he puts the ranch itself up for security.

Harry Carey calls his new outlaw persona "The Yellow Seal". 

It wasn't nearly as violent as it could have been considering what those guys did or tried to do to his sister. Men becoming outlaws for a good cause were fairly common in the 1930s B westerns I've seen, but I assumed it was a Depression era thing. And I thought that having every western start with criminals attacking isolated farmhouses was a 21st century flourish. 

It seems like crashing a wedding with a gun to save the bride from a forced marriage would still be traumatic for her.  It wasn't like The Graduate.

They had a pretty good print of the film free on Tubi. It wasn't bad. I'm not sure if being silent helped.


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