The Red Stallion

I am one of the people who enjoy short and sweet, somewhat predictable films. Having said that, I liked this little film. We as a society have become so "sophisticated" that some of us won't allow ourselves some enjoyment from the past. Yea, there are parts in the film that could have been more realistic, but the point of the film was to tell the story of a boy and the horse he loved! Don't judge this film, please, by what others have said. While their feelings are true for them, it's sad that they aren't able to look past the flaws in the movie. Life is flawed, sometimes you get the wrong end of the stick. Get used to it. Sometimes it's nice to have a "Hollywood" ending, and other times it's appropriate to switch it up. This film is from the late 1940's,and it still has a timely message.Enjoy!

THE RED STALLION is a nice little family picture from 1947 from Eagle-Lion Studios, attractively shot in Cinecolor. Ted Donaldson stars as Joel, a pre-teen who is raised by his grandmother (the always wonderful Jane Darwell) on her rural ranch. Joel comes across a bear one day fighting a horse and fires his gun to scare the bear away. He discovers the horse has been killed by the bear while protecting her newborn colt. Joel takes the pony home and names him "Red". He also learns the mother horse was a thoroughbred but her former owners do not want the colt so he is allowed to keep it.

Grandma Jane has bad news, however, she owes $11,000 to her creditors and when a company closes that she had arrangements to sell her stable of horses, her home and property are scheduled to go up on the auction block. Jane persuades her creditors to give her 30 more days in hopes of coming up with some way to save her property. Joel meanwhile gets the idea that if he can train Red properly, he might be able sell him as a potential race horse to a well-to-do neighbor.

This is a nice gentle old-fashioned family picture reminiscent of those long-ago children's novels of decades past about young people and their animals. It's a modest little picture and it hits it's modest target very well. Jane Darwell is wonderful as the loving grandma and Ted Donaldson is a very good young actor. Good support comes from Robert Paige, Noreen Nash, and particularly Robert Bice as the Indian ranch-hand, alas for reasons known only to the screenwriter, Willie Best is along in a stereotypical simple and spooked black character in a small part. Perhaps best of all is the wonderful dog actor Daisy from the BLONDIE movies playing Donaldson's devoted pup Curly - this dog is one of the best "actors" of the four-legged movie stars, very funny and amazingly trained, able to lead a horse, hook ropes, etc.

One amazing sequence in the last half hour has a fight between a bear and Red that has to be seen to be believed, at times seemingly very stunningly realistic with both bear and horse battling and then at points turns ludicrous when it's obvious a stuntman in a bear suit has stepped in for some of the scenes (including a hilariously bad bit where at one point the bear jumps the horse and is basically riding him like a human!) nevertheless some of the work done by the stuntman is pretty amazing considering a horse is stomping when the "faux" bear is on the ground.

THE RED STALLION is no classic but it's a nice little animal film for those who enjoy the genre. According to the final credit the film was made under the guidance of the American Humane Association.

Sweet story. No doubt about that... but the technical stinkers threaded in the film, particularly having to do with bears just has to be addressed.

Bears are typically herbivores, and occasionally feast on carcasses left behind by other predators, save for the polar bears species.

Bears attacking a horse to satisfy a penchant for horseflesh is next to nil in reality. A horse, who is gaga crazy afraid of bears because of past "killling by a bear" of his mother ---pursuing an attacking bear is pretty much inconceivable. So that violence was completely unnecessary and did little to improve the story.

Had they either a) made it realistic; b) filled out more of the animosity angle between horse and bear instead of pops of action between the two; or c) left it out altogether, the reel time could have focused on the plot ... a boy and his horse trying to save his home, ya da yada...

Too shallow. Nothing really hangs together. It's a sloppily thrown together film that will entrance some, but not the serious movie goer of any era.

The train station closes down. This means that Jane Darwell can no longer ship horses out. Her creditors set the foreclosure auction date. Her grandson, Ted Donaldson tries to train his big red stallion for the track in hopes of selling him for enough money to keep the place.

It's a Brian Foy production for Eagle-Lion and a well calculated step in upgrading from PRC product. There are subplots like trainer Robert Paige warming up iceberg Noreen Nash. There are trick sequences, like Donaldson telling Daisy (borrowed from the Blondie series to fetch the horse; doubtless this was recalled when he directed more than 50 episodes of Lassie for television. But the sheer joy of this movie lies in its long shots and Trucolor images crafted by Virgil Miller. At one point, Willie Best is asked what he thinks of the western scenery. "The trees and mountains get in the way," he says. With Ray Collins and Pierre Watkins.