Black Horse Canyon

Excellent western in Technicolor! It's about a wild black stallion that Mari Blanchard wants for stock rearing purposes. Joel McCrea and Race Gentry as her neighbors set about to help her capture the horse. Another neighbor, Murvyn Vye,also wants the horse for his own purposes. As things proceed, both McCrea & Gentry fall in love with Blanchard. There are no shootouts only some fighting. The scenery is incredible. I've always liked McCrea--especially in the westerns that he did. He was an excellent horseman in real life. Another interesting aspect of this film was the close relationship between McCre and Gentry. McCrea had raised Gentry after the death of his parents &they have a very close and neat relationship.

Whereas I know very little about Director Jesse Hibbs - TO HELL AND BACK is the only other film he directed that I recall watching - I have always liked Joel McCrea, one of the most unassuming actors I have ever had the privilege to see on the silver screen.

In line with most of his performing output, McCrea does not deliver a memorable performance as he helps Mari Blanchard find and break a tough black horse that manages to free other equestrian creatures from their pens, and is anything but welcoming of humans and of being saddled and mounted.

Blanchard does not stand out in any way, Race Gentry is quite engaging as Ti, the young man in love with her. Good time passer 7/10.

This screenplay was designed, performed, filmed, and sold for all those theaters standing in the sunny June afternoon on shady town squares.

Little groups of junior high kids out on summer vacation, meet at the swimming pool to leap off the high dive after lunch then stroll to the movies all together, hair still dripping, shouting and teasing and throwing rocks and barely touching hands and blushing furiously amid the great gusts of summertime laughter. Their world was an Impressionist painting, every thing around them more unfocused and more trivial the further it was from a lover's face. Then into the lobby, where two tickets and two soda pops and a giant box of popcorn was a dollar which was a big percentage of a week's income earned from a paper route, but what was money for? And then into the relief of the cool darkness after the brilliant, hot outdoors and finally the frantic fear of touching hands again, terrified of rejection and even more afraid of a shy, thrilling acceptance.

This was the audience and Black Horse Canyon was the perfect movie, a simple tale of wild horses, haylofts and corrals, riding and saddles and hackamores... everything more unfocused and more trivial the further it was from a lover's face... McCrea the consummate, laconic cowboy and Blanchard the beautiful lady who needs a little protection from dastardly rustlers - but not very much because she really can handle most things herself.

"Black Horse Canyon" is an Impressionist's vignette, an American Dream, about hard work, and fighting the good fight, and about falling in love on sunny June afternoons.

Joel McCrea is one of those no-truck-with-women guys, raising Race Gentry out in the west. When Mari Blanchard needs help catching and breaking a mustang that's gotten free, the two of them help her out. Gentry yearns for her, but Miss Blanchard sets her cap at McCrea. He seems mostly amused, but there seems to be more to it.

It's a handsomely shot Universal "Shaky A" with scenes of the horse lifted from 1949's RED CANYON. McCrea offers his lines in his usual straightforward manner, Gentry struggles to make the transition from boy to man, and Miss Blanchard, who was the inspiration for Al Capp's Stupifyin' Jones, oozes sex appea.

Black Horse Canyon is directed by Jesse Hibbs and adapted to screenplay by Geoffrey Homes and David Lang from the novel The Wild Horse written by Les Savage Junior. It stars Joel McCrea, Mari Blanchard, Race Gentry and Murvyn Vye. Music is by Joseph Gershenson and cinematography by George Robinson.

Although the print of the film I saw was sadly old and scratchy, this is a lovely photographed Western out of Bloomquist Ranch, Douglas, Arizona. A place, it seems, that bizarrely wasn't used in any other Oaters. This along with the magnificent horse at the centre of the plot, makes this a comfortable recommendation for the B Western fan. Story is pretty mundane stuff, a group of people with different motives attempt to capture the wild black stallion for stud purposes. This ensures that we are exclusively out in the open landscapes and privy to much chasing, lassoing, bucking and snorting. There's a bubbling under the surface love triangle, which we know how it's going to end up, and a good fist-fight crowns the proceedings. Gentry and Blanchard are weak, while Vye's villain is barely realised, but McCrea turns in yet another solid and knowing performance. All the cast, you sense, understand that Outlaw the horse is the star of the show. And rightly so. 6.5/10