ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

MartinHafer When the film begins, a rich man, Thomas Woodbury, dies. His son, Tony (George O'Brien), soon learns that for decades his father has been having a man named William Drew watched by private detectives. And, he learns that his father actually had a previous identity and lived originally in Wyoming. So, he decides to head to Wyoming and learn from Mr. Drew himself what the connection is between them. However, a few hiccups occur during his investigation. First, his plane crashes right into a pretty lady's bathroom while she's taking a shower. She's unhurt and Tony is DEFINITELY interested in seeing more of her. Second, one of Drew's employees, Steve Nash (Humphrey Bogart), is REALLY curious about Tony and why he wants to see Drew...and so he takes it upon himself to rough up the young man. But Tony soon escapes. What's really going on here? Who is Drew really and why would Nash act this way?This is an early film of Bogart and that's the reason I decided to watch the movie. The print is pretty lousy but considering how hard it is to find Bogart's early films, I watched it on YouTube despite its shortcomings. While most folks today recognize Bogart as a top- tier star, he acted in a bunch of films in mostly minor roles for nearly a decade before his talents were recognized. Films like "A Holy Terror" might explain why, as Bogart was oddly cast as a guy from Wyoming...despite his strong New York accent and manners.So is it any good? Well, since it's a cheap B-movie from Fox, it had a relatively small budget and certainly was NOT one of their premier productions back in 1931. And, I must admit that the secret that Tony discovers is a real DOOZY...making it worth your time waiting for this. But, on the other hand...the film just inexplicably ends...no fade out, no incidental music...almost like the just ran out of film! Odd...but still watchable.

adrianswingler I'm beginning to think that the biggest haters of Spaghetti Westerns are the fans of Hollywood Westerns. It would explain the mediocre reviews on this one. I'm just the reverse, and really enjoyed this movie.An early "talkie", there's no soundtrack as that concept didn't exist yet. Bogart's fifth full length movie, I liked his character in this one much more than usual. I'm not a fan of Bogie movies. Having him as the villain of the piece and a nasty one at that fits him much more, imho. He's constantly rejected by his love interest, not swooned over. Much better!I would argue that this movie shows that the Spaghetti Western style of Western was the natural progression, but that was derailed by the Hollywood Production Code and those in Hollywood that thought they had to be the conservative moral saviors of the country. It's not so much the cinematography and there's no musical score, it's more the way common Western elements are handled. I got a DVD with some Spaghetti Westerns on it the other day and an insert had some classic Western characters on it with the caption, "My heroes have always been cowboys". That made me realize how that's so Hollywood and very much the opposite of the Spaghetti genre. Bogart plays a SW type cowboy, not a Hollywood styled one. Revenge and mystery are the plot drivers, so, I really don't think it's a stretch to compare it to the Italian variety. The plot is solid and moves the action along. The acting is good. Being 85 years old it's interesting just to look at things from the point of view of a picture that was totally contemporary at the time.

bkoganbing Humphrey Bogart made his western debut in this film A Holy Terror based on the Max Brand novel Trailin'. It had been filmed ten years earlier as a silent under its original name with Tom Mix in the lead. Western star George O'Brien is in the lead with Bogey as one of the villains.Interestingly enough this might have been Bogart's best outing in a western. He was a villain later in Warner Brothers big budget westerns The Oklahoma Kid where he's too much of an eastern gangster and Virginia City where he sounds laughable as a Mexican bandit. Here he's just right as the foreman of a western ranch who gets a case of the green eyed monster when easterner George O'Brien starts eying Sally Eilers.But that's just a sidebar to the main story. O'Brien is a polo playing easterner whose dad, Robert Warwick, is found shot to death. Searching his papers O'Brien finds that Warwick's original name was changed and that he had kept tabs on the whereabouts of a certain Wyoming rancher for years.O'Brien goes to Wyoming to investigate and by the end of the film all his questions are answered. He might be an eastern dude, but his polo training makes him ride with the best of the cowboys as they learn to their regret. In fact O'Brien whose big break came in the John Ford silent western classic, The Iron Horse, got his start in the army horse cavalry before World War I.As for Bogart he's the foreman who gets his boss's intentions all wrong as far as O'Brien is concerned. He's not bad in the part though and is noticed, especially by his legion of fans for whom he's an existential legend.

classicsoncall You'll want to see "A Holy Terror" if you're a Humphrey Bogart fan, but it would be incorrect to consider this a Bogey film. George O'Brien stars and portrays Anthony Woodbury, the socialite son of a father who legally changed his name twenty five years ago, and at the same time had William Drew (James Kirkwood) placed under surveillance. Adverse to publicity and never allowing a photo, Thomas Woodbury/John Bard (Robert Warwick) is seen only briefly on screen when he is shown going for a hidden weapon as Drew arrives at his estate home to force a confrontation. When Tony learns of his father's hidden past, he's determined to learn more about William Drew and the circumstances of his father's death.The film's most interesting scene occurs when aviator Tony literally crash lands his plane into the home of Miss Jerry Foster (Sally Eilers). She begins a cat and mouse relationship with Anthony, who begins using the name Bard once he reaches Wyoming.The plot of the movie gets muddied when William Drew asks his ranch foreman Steve Nash (Bogart) to bring Bard to the ranch unharmed. Nash has an underhanded side, and involves his partner Butch Morgan (Stanley Fields) in the endeavor. Since Anthony wants to meet with Drew, and Drew is paying Nash a thousand dollars to bring Anthony to him, there's no reason for Morgan to pistol whip Bard and carry out the request like a kidnapping. Obviously done as a dramatic element for the film, the tactic doesn't make much sense, other than to provide a reason for Anthony to arrange his escape in a dramatic ride on horseback, with a rather effective looking leap over Devil's Gulch that the baddies won't risk attempting.The astute viewer can figure out the payoff - William Drew and John Bard were once in love with the same woman, who married Bard. But Anthony's father was really William Drew, and on that note the film ends rather abruptly."A Holy Terror" clocks in at just fifty three minutes, and that's probably a saving grace. The performances are rather stilted with not much more than the characters going through their motions. Bogart's turn as a bad guy is of some interest, building on the con man turn in his prior picture "The Bad Sister". It would be five more years before he gets his hands on a real meaty role as the villain Duke Mantee in "The Petrified Forest".