Old-timer Billy Slater organizes a rodeo for kids.Old-timer Billy Slater organizes a rodeo for kids.Old-timer Billy Slater organizes a rodeo for kids.
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- TriviaFilmed in Wickenburg, Arizona
- ConnectionsFeatured in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Killer Shrews (1992)
Featured review
For those who enjoy seeing children thrown from the backs of raging broncos.
This is a pretty darn creepy late 40s short taking place in the West (apparantly Texas) in the late 1940s. I'm really not sure if this is staged or faked, but a showing of it today would anger both animal and children's right activists. It begins with a couple of mischevious youngsters trying to prank a local psycho named Billy Slater by tying a tin can to his horse's tail. Billy catches them, lassos them, and is just about to hang them, but he has a last moment change of heart and decides to spare their lives and instead have them organize a junior rodeo, which is really far more sadistic. He has the kids make posters and then the whole town comes. It is a ghastly freakshow, as poor, innocent kids are thrown from the backs of raging broncos, trampled, maimed, and just plain humilated. It's just as bad for the poor animals as well, who are all humilated and tortured (especially the poor calves). Like Catching Trouble, another vaguely similar short (that also showed on MST3K) it was totally acceptable in it's time, but today would draw outraged crys from both the PETA and the children's rights groups. It was shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000, and is lampooned quite hilariously. Along with Catching Trouble and Days of Our Years, this is one of the more disturbing of MST3K shorts.
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- Kojiro Abe
- Jul 20, 2002
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- Runtime9 minutes
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