The Miracle Rider

Plot summary

Zaroff (Charles Middleton), a rancher and oil company owner, wants to drive the Ravenhead Indians off their reservation so that he can mine the rare element X-94, a super explosive, found there and sell it to the highest bidder. Texas Ranger Tom Morgan tries to stop him and save the tribe.

Cast

Production

This was Tom Mix's last film and his only sound serial. Tom Mix was still an A-list star in 1935, alongside Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Mary Pickford. He was paid $40,000 for four weeks work on The Miracle Rider, which he used as urgent funding to support his circus.

The serial combined the large cast and interlocking plots of a silent serial with the science fiction and cliffhangers of the sound era. Filming of the outdoor action sequences took place primarily at the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Calif., on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The movie ranch, which had been in use as a filming location since the early silent movie era, was known for its rugged landscape and giant sandstone boulders. One of those boulders became known as Tom Mix Rock in later years, after it was discovered that bootholes had been carved in the rock to help the actor shoot a scene atop the rock for The Miracle Rider.

Stunts

Tom Mix, whose voice was strained and nasal due to a repeatedly broken nose and a bullet through his throat, did a lot of his own stunts, although some were doubled by Cliff Lyons.

Chapter titles

1. The Vanishing Indian
2. The Firebird Strikes
3. The Flying Knife
4. A Race with Death
5. Double Barreled Doom
6. Thundering Hoofs [sic]
7. The Dragnet
8. Guerilla Warfare
9. The Silver Road
10. Signal Fires
11. A Traitor Dies
12. Danger Rides with Death
13. The Secret of X-94
14. Between Two Fires
15. Justice Rides the Plains

_Source:

This was Mascot's only 15-chapter serial.

"Zaroff" is obviously inspired by Basil Zaharoff, a notorious early twentieth-century arms merchant, often cited as one of the so-called "merchants of death", who supposedly helped bring on World War I.