Ride A Wild Stud — Ride A Wild Stud (Blu Ray)

Ride A Wild Stud is a haphazardly made roughie western from the late 60s. It’s a fairly loosely plotted affair, where much of the time, it’s unclear who is who, aside from a few key characters. Though there’s an effectively unpleasant & crumby-looking lead bad guy, and a fair bit of uncomfortable sleaze present. Here from Dark Force Entertainment is a bare bones Blu-ray release of the film.

Ride A Wild Stud is from the year 1969- it was directed by Boise, Idaho-born Oliver Drake. Between the early 1930s and early 1970s, he had thirty-five features to his name. These go from whodunit Today I Hang (1942), more than a few straight westerns such as Fighting Valley (1943), Moon Over Montana (1946), Roaring Westward (1949), and Outlaw Treasure (1955). He helmed the camp Vegas set horror The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals(1969), and sleazy drama Angelica: The Young Vixen(1974).

The film runs at just an hour and six minutes, and one does wonder if some of the plot structure/ sense was cut out of the film, to focus on the roughie elements.  It’s set during the Civil War, where Confederate bandits are kidnapping women & imprisoning them in a brothel.

After the badly cut-together pre-credits, which feature rather senseless dialogue/awkward looks, and rather bland gunplay, where we’re unsure who is who. Then we see a raid on a house- the first twenty-some women, who I think is called Irene(C.C. Chase), is knocked out & crudely fumbled. Then the other older woman in the house is stripped/ gang raped, before running away to be gunned down.

We then move to the film's main location- the bandits' hangout/ drinking hole/ brothel- where women's bare breasts are fumbled, they are suddenly thrown down to be raped, or get generally leched on. Irene is put at a table with two other(unnamed) unfortunate women who are trapped in the place.

Aside from Irene, the other notable/ named character is Bill Doolin(Frenchy Le Boyd)- a greasy/lank-haired, slightly tubby, and rather unwashed-looking bandit who focuses on Irene, who we find out is a virgin.

The roughie side of the film takes in a few scenes of rape, either in the dust, in the river or on tables, and these are relatively unpleasant, though not too extreme. Otherwise, we have a mine blown up, a stagecoach shoot out, a few rolling in the dirt fist fights, and a rather rushed, if effective enough, finale where the bad guys get their comeuppance.

As mentioned in my introduction, the film is very haphazardly put together & cheaply made. The soundtrack swings between tuneless strummed acoustic guitar music and ’50s overly dramatic orchestral stock scoring.

As a roughie western, Ride A Wild Stud is certainly not the most coherent or as shocking as some of the better examples of the genre, like Hot Spur. But as mentioned, Le Boyd is effective as the sleazy main attacker, and the whole thing has an odd sort of crude charm- though I do think the score may try some folks' nerves.

The film has apparently been given an HD scan- sure, it looks bright enough, though there is still a fair bit of squiggling print damage. As mentioned earlier, this is a barebones affair- and it truly is, as we get just the film and nothing else.

So, Ride A Wild Stud is a release for fans of rough ‘n’ ready sleaze, meets low-grade western. It’s not the best this grubby sub-genre has to offer, but it’s watchable enough in its exploitation crudeness.