pixrox1 Review of The Iron Horse

The Iron Horse (1924)

There seems to be a lot of confusion about various DVD versions . . .

[7/10 · 17 January 2017]

. . . of THE IRON HORSE. The "Blow the Man Down"-incorporating musical score is NOT from the 1974 NOR from the 1995 releases mentioned here, but from Christopher Caliendo's composition recorded from June 28 to July 1, 2007, for the Fox 2-disc DVD release of that year, which includes the U.S. IRON HORSE permutation on Disc One, as well as the 17-minutes-shorter International IRON HORSE on Disc Two (along with a few "Bonus Features," one of which is a nine-minute piece about Caliendo's music for THE IRON HORSE). Naturally, I'm reviewing (and rating) the briefer HORSE, as director Ford always fluffed out his flicks with a half hour or two of extraneous "padding," and even THIS rendering of HORSE could stand to lose ANOTHER 20 or 30 minutes. The Transcontinental Railroad was America's "Moon Shot" of the 1800s. (Think about it: In 1961, President Kennedy ordered the Moon Shot, got gunned down a few years later, but men were on the Moon by 1969; similarly, in 1861 President Lincoln ordered the cross-country Choo Choo, got gunned down a few years later, but the track was finished in 1869.) Ford concocts a bogus lovers' spat here that delays the railroad completion by at least a year--this is as crazy as someone fabricating a flick in which a female stalker pulls up some adult diapers to race across the U.S. and wrestle her crush Neil Armstrong off the Apollo 11 Launching Pad!