The star of this thirteen-episode 1937 Western serial, presented here in a splendid 4K restoration but without any bonus features, is Johnny Mack Brown (billed, however, as John Mack Brown), who as simple John Brown had led his college football team, the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, to triumph in the 1925 Rose Bowl before signing a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
His career at MGM seemed on an upward track until 1931 when he was replaced by Clark Gable in a film (one rumor is that his firing came under pressure from William Randolph Hearst, who was jealous of his relationship with Marion Davies). Adding “Mack” to his name, he successfully transitioned to low-budget Westerns; Wild West Days was the third of five serials he starred in between 1933 and 1939 (his second for Universal, directed by workhorse Ford Beebe) while he was also churning out dozens of formulaic oaters.
The plot is fairly ordinary: Kentucky Wade (Brown) arrives in Paradise Valley along with his pals Trigger Benton (Bob Kortman), Mike Morales (Frank Yaconelli), and Dude Hanford (George Shelley). They are immediately drawn into helping rancher Larry Munro (Frank McGlynn, Jr.) and his sister Lucy (Lynn Gilbert) fight the efforts of a sinister group of outlaws called the Secret Seven, covertly led by newspaper editor Matt Keeler (Russell Simpson), to run settlers off their land and coerce Munro to reveal the location of a rich platinum strike on his property.
Notable among Keeler’s henchmen are seedy Buckskin Frank (Charles Stevens) and crooked gambler Doc Hardy (Walter Miller), but their gang is made all the more dangerous by the alliance Keeler has made with the local Indian tribe led by Chief Red Hatchet (Chief Thunderbird), whom he supplies with guns. Wade and his crew check off all the obligatory boxes in the genre: Kentucky is the stalwart, well-dressed, unflappable hero, and Trigger his crusty sidekick, while Morales is the comic-relief Mexican and Dude the charmer who romances Lucy and sings a couple of songs.
Their adventures in dealing with Keeler and his nefarious band include the usual elements—plenty of chases on horseback and scrambles across rocky plateaus, numerous shootouts and fistfights, and an assortment of breathless escapes and episode-ending cliffhangers (many involving horses poised to trample Wade).
There is also a good deal of evidence of the low budget, mostly in the form of clumsy process shots and stock footage inserted from earlier movies. The result is hardly distinctive, but especially given the crisp print it should satisfy fans of such sagas. While its portrayal of Native Americans is hardly politically correct by modern standards, it affords the opportunity to sample the work of one of the most prolific stars of B-movie Westerns from the mid-thirties to the early fifties. Optional.