ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

lemon_magic This is a very odd piece of pop culture detritus from the Encyclopedia Brittanica group. I'm not sure what the 'educational content' of this the film makers meant for us to draw from this short.Um...Rodeos are fun? Tying cans onto horses' tails results in punishment swift and certain? Old cowboys in Texas have too much time on their hands? Life in rural Texas is so desperately dull and suffocating that even an amateur rodeo looks good after a while? Being an orthopedic surgeon in a rodeo town is the surest path to riches? It isn't really all that bad, of course; it's just meandering and goofy. But you couldn't get kids in a modern classroom to watch something like this unless you swacked them into a low level hypnotic state with Thorazine beforehand. MST3K does a great job making fun of it, of course, and their version is probably the best for modern audiences to see.

Hancock_the_Superb Well, another short torn to pieces by Mike, er, sorry, Joel and the Bots, this being one of their better works. Plot involves some old hick rancher forcing two mischievious kids to organize a junior rodeo ("We're doomed!" says Crow). Eventually, the whole town shows up just to get kicked, gored, and thrown to the ground by horses and bulls, while a narrator who sounds suspiciously like Henry Fonda (though fortunately isn't) muses over how fun it must be to be pummeled by these 1,000+ pound beasts (except the calves, of course). Ouch. I find it kind of hard to criticize many MST3K shorts, since they tend to be educational films that, while corny, if nothing else show you a good depiction of what they're supposed to be telling you about. (Not to say the MST3K versions aren't funny . . .) This one, however, apparently was made for "entertainment" purposes, and should be missed - unless the SOL crew are doing it. I'm not going to rate the short itself, for the sole reason that I don't think I can. Ah, hell, let's give it 2/10. Nine stars for the hilarious MSTing, though.

Kojiro Abe 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.

icehole4 This short film is based on a junior rodeo that two kids and an old man organize. They show scenes of several young people doing rodeo activities, like calf riding, calf roping, bull riding, and the like. These days, it would be called child endangerment.Avoid this unless you're watching the MST3K version. Joel and the bots make this turkey watchable.