Expected more

Amateur movie with Big budget

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Great western, I enjoyed Audie Murphy's performance.At 38 minutes into the movie there is a story told by Frank about a past love in Bisbee who he later discovered was married to another man. He says it taught him a lesson, "Always check the brand to make sure you are not driving another man's stock". That same story is told 50 minutes into Fort Dobbs (1958) by Clett (Brian Keith) and he says "Always check the brand first and that way you'll know if you are running somebody else's' stock".Burt Kennedy (story)was a writer in both movies so he got a lot of use of this tale!

"Six Black Horses" is a mild and mediocre western with only one real point of interest. Burt Kennedy's screenplay plagiarises his own screenplay for "Ride Lonesome"! Not only does Kennedy re-use some of the plot points - the redskins offering to trade a horse for the lushly feminine white woman/the sudden race across flat lands to a refuge just over the ridge - but also recycles some of his dialogue: "Some things a man just can't ride around" /"just thinking about it gives me a shiver deep down inside"/"a man needs a reason to ride this country". Like "Ride Lonesome" and several other westerns written by Kennedy, "Six Black Horses" is a journey movie. A woman (Joan O'Brien) offers two saddle-sore drifters who are adept with guns (Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea) a thousand dollars each to escort her across Indian territory. Predictably, they encounter various dangers and, sadly, everything is resolved predictably.There is nothing special about "Six Black Horses". Most of the situations and relationships are tired clichés, and none is depicted with any originality or imagination. Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea were old hands at this sort of thing in 1962, and they do not put a foot wrong. Joan O'Brien is more interesting, partly because she was an extremely attractive woman, even by movie star standards, and partly because her role carries some mystery. It is regrettable that her movie career did not prosper for longer.If the gun fights had been expertly choreographed by a directer who knew how to do it (like John Sturges or Don Siegel), "Six Black Horses" would not be so forgettable.

There is no comparison between the westerns Murphy did in the fifties with those made in the sixties. Six Black Horses has the excellent Dan Duryea and the interesting Joan O'Brien but the great outdoor action scenes of films like `The Kansas Raiders', `The Cimarron Kid' or `Duel at Silver Creek' are missing. Duryea is a hired killer who saves Murphy's life and Joan O'Brien the woman who hires them both to take her to a town which is very hard to reach because of the `Coyoteros'. Duryea's character has the peculiar name of Frank Jesse, his mother must have been an admirer of the James Brothers. Bob Steele who was the main actor in so many C Westerns shows up briefly at the beginning. Duryea, in spite of being a hired killer, is such a likeable character with good feelings in relation to Murphy that you keep wishing there will be no showdown between them.

Audie Murphy said of his film career that he himself remained the same throughout, and the scripts didn't vary much - it was only the horses that changed. This rather ordinary western fits neatly into the Murphy catalogue.A cowpoke befriends a fellow drifter who rescues him from a lynch mob. In the town of Perdido the two pals are hired by a beautiful woman to escort her across indian territory. It turns out that Kelly (Joan O'Brien) has an ulterior motive.Dan Duryea and Murphy combine well enough as the chalk-and-cheese buddies. The film contains a good mariachi funeral, and the dialogue-free opening sequence is well done, telling the story in visual language. The picturesque setting of sandstone outcrops and flat scrubland (filmed in Utah, of all places) provides an attractive backdrop for the action.When all is said and done, however, "Six Black Horses" is a fairly brainless oater from the early 1960's. You know the sort of thing - the latina dancing-girl in the saloon has a red flower in her cleavage, and in the shoot-out at the old mission, the indians' bullets keep pinging off the same spot on the parapet, while the indians themselves obligingly mass in the open, allowing Audie to get a good shot at them.Verdict - Always check the brand, lest you end up with a Murphy turkey.