The Thundering Herd This is one of a group of westerns that Randolph Scott’s home studio of Paramount assigned to him. Filmed previously as a silent and taking use of a lot of the action sequences from the silent version, Thundering Herd’s source was one of Zane Grey’s novels.
This is not the Randolph Scott we became acquainted with post World War Two in the westerns he did then. He plays a callow youth here, although he’s 35 in real life. He’s in the employ of a Harry Carey and Raymond Hatton, partners in a buffalo hunting outfit. Carey and Hatton run an honest group, but there’s a rival outfit headed by Noah Beery, Sr. which gets hides the easy way, murdering whites and/or Indians for them.
Randolph Scott has a hankering for Judith Allen who’s Beery’s stepdaughter. Of course so has Beery to the discomfort of his wife, Blanche Frederici. Throw in a buffalo stampede and an Indian attack and I think you can figure the rest out.
It’s good action from Paramount’s B picture unit.
