The Texican

The Texican is directed by Lesley Selander and written by John C. Champion and Jose Antonio de la Loma. It stars Audie Murphy, Broderick Crawford, Diana Lorys, Luz Marquez and Antonio Casas. A Technicolor/Techniscope production with music by Nico Fidenco and Robby Poitevin and cinematography by Francisco Marin.

Murphy and Crawford find themselves in Spain making a Paella Western that quite frankly is for completists only. Plot essentially has Murphy as a man seeking the truth of what happened to his recently deceased brother. Crawford is the town bully, resplendent with scowls and henchmen, a collision course is inevitable.

It's professionally enough mounted and has the requisite pasta flavourings; clumsy dubbing, parched vistas, catchy music, moral ambiguity and etc etc. It's not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, it's just very lazy and not challenging, either narratively or for the named stars. In the traditional sense it's a throwback to the American "B" Westerns of the 1950s, only it lacks zip for the action scenes and the stars are going through the motions. But fair credit to Murphy, he looks in great condition, as slick as ever, something which belies the problems he was having with his mental health off screen. Crawford on the other hand looks ill and fumbles through his dialogue with boredom evident.

Average fare here all told. 5/10

To get some enjoyment from this movie you at least have to like Audie Murphy and be rather uncritical about westerns. I qualify on both counts. Besides, this movie also has Broderick Crawford as the tough-talking bad guy.

Past his Hollywood prime, Crawford here looks tired, overweight, and generally long in the tooth--but nobody talks tough like Broderick Crawford! The inimitable voices of these two actors--Murphy's gentle Texas voice and Crawford's gravelly growl--stand out in this movie, which otherwise is cast with Spaniards who are dubbed. The dubbing is occasionally distracting, and in the case of Antonio Casas as Frank Brady it is downright ludicrous.

Filmed in Spain, "The Texican" has a decidedly non-American score, sounding something like the music in Italian spaghetti westerns. There are a lot of surging crescendos and an ominous-sounding vocal chorus.

The less said about the actual story, the better. The fun is in watching Audie Murphy and Broderick Crawford do their thing. Murphy was a cowboy hero of mine when I was a boy in the 1950s, and of course in WW II he was a real hero--the most decorated soldier of the war.

They say Audie Murphy worked very hard to develop a fast draw, and in "The Texican" there are some examples of his fine hand with a pistol. Here, some 18 years after his first movie, he still seems like a "nice young man"--neatly dressed, slim and trim, courteous when he can be, gentle-voiced.

How did such a gentle man turn out to be so deadly with a gun--not just in the movies but in real life?

What makes this paella western standout is Audie Murphy and Broderick Crawford, both of them were at the nadir of their career. Audie, in particular, is good as a gun fighter crossing the border to avenge his brother's death, and its really strange - and enjoyable - to see him ride the Spanish plains, dodging spaghetti style gunshots with the sound of orchestral music - it's like tradition-style meets spaghetti. Old guard mingled with new, and it works. Years of acting experience has boded well for Audie, he seems confident, is quite humorous and his playful romantic antics with the pretty Diana lorys is quite engaging. There's some exciting gunplay, good atmosphere and a windswept finale. Pity he didn't make more of these paella westerns as it could've prolonged his career, but Audie didn't like to travel aboard to make westerns, plus, as he said, he had to do all his stunts and pack his own lunch.

Wanted man Audie Murphy risks his life returning to Texas in order to avenge his newspaperman brother who was murdered by sleazy town boss Broderick Crawford and his number one hired killer Aldo Sambrell.

Essentially American made, this is different than most U.S. helmed westerns shot in Spain in that it uses a primarily local crew and supporting cast, making it seem more like a real spaghetti western than other films Hollywood passed off in those days as Italian or Spanish made.

Into the film's heavy atmosphere walks a strangely out of place Audie Murphy. Short, neat, clean-cut and all-American, he's the last person you'd expect to see in a dirty, gritty spaghetti western town. He's almost like a visitor from a parallel universe! That said, it is interesting to see him in something different.

Fitting right in though is Crawford, playing the type of seedy character he built his Academy Award winning career upon and Aldo Sambrell, one of the most recognizable faces in European westerns, though virtually unknown by name.

As a film, The Texican isn't the most memorable of the genre, but it's pretty good with a nice wind-swept finale.

Times were getting hard for Audie Murphy in the '60s. He started getting financial problems, his personal life was going to hell, and the kind of westerns that had made him a star were starting to dry up. So he went to Spain to make this Spanish western. That fact did not bother me when I heard about this movie. Many of my favorite westerns are European westerns, so I was pretty intrigued to see what Europeans would do with a Hollywood star like Murphy.

I was disappointed with this movie in the end, however. I will admit that the sets are fine, and there is some good desert scenery. But I found the story surprisingly slow and dull. Murphy's character knows who the culprit is that murdered his brother, but he does pretty much nothing about it until the very end of the movie. Until that happens, the audience is treated to endless (and boring) chat, a bland villain, and a pretty bland hero as well.

The faults of this movie can probably be explained that while this was a European western, there was no Italian involvement. The Italians were the ones who really made European westerns shine, from the music to the scripts. Watch one of these kinds of European westerns instead of "The Texican", even if it doesn't contain a star as big as Murphy. You'll most likely be greater entertained.