The Walloping Kid (Silent)

Young prizefighter Jack Hampton is forced to give up his boxing career due to the wishes of his wealthy father. He wants him to manage his ranch out west, where the elder Hampton suspects foul play is going on. Jack arrives at the train station, only to see another man greet ranch foreman Don Dawson as…Jack Hampton! Eager to find out what's really going on, Jack pretends to be a rough-and-tumble cowpoke and signs on as a hand at the ranch. He soon learns that the "fake" Jack Hampton is a range detective tasked with busting up Dawson's illegal rustling operation. With Jack using his pugilistic skills, the two men work together to rid the Hampton Ranch of wrongdoers once and for all.

One of the littlest-known (and cheapest) Westerns of all time, The Walloping Kid is one of several rarely-seen collaborations between two of the most…unique individuals to ever work in the genre. Writer, producer, and director Robert J. Horner has been referred to as the "Ed Wood" of western filmmakers. Horner - whose legs had been amputated at the hips as a child and got around on a dolly with wheels - made over 40 low-budget Westerns in the 1920s and 30s through his company Aywon Pictures (pronounced like the steak sauce) some for as little as $1,000. His films were notorious for their shoddy production values and were often only completed by borrowing money from his principal actors. This included one Elia Bulakh, a Cossack in the army of Tsar Nicholas II who escaped to America during the Russian Revolution (he did this by slitting the throat of a guard with a beef can lid.) Somehow winding up in Los Angeles, he got involved in the film industry doing bit parts in Westerns as "Boris Bullock." Horner, however, saw some star quality in him and rechristened him "Kit Carson" after the legendary American frontiersman. The pair made a short series of Westerns in 1925 and ‘26 where Bulakh used the Carson moniker, with The Walloping Kid appearing to be the only one extant. Later Bulakh made another name change by redubbing himself "William Barrymore" in an attempt to tie himself to the famous Hollywood family before fading into total obscurity. Horner, plagued by money troubles and accusations of sexual harassment by his female stars, was essentially finished in the motion picture business by 1935. He died in 1942 of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 47.

BONUS: Battling Travers (1925): Dick Hatton foils a payroll robbery, but then gets in trouble with the law when they mistakenly think he is the thief. Hatton was a minor-league Western star during the silent era, only making films for small, relatively obscure companies, meaning that very little of his work survives today. He was tragically killed in a car accident on July 9, 1931, shortly after the arrival of sound.