A Prime Example of the Very End of the Western Cycle that Wore Out its Welcome simply because of a Production Overload in Cinemas and on TV. There was an Unwritten Necessity for something to Happen to Re-Energize and Re-Invent the Genre.Enter Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone and the Rest is Film History.This one had Burt Kennedy and Audie Murphy showing Signs of Laziness, Indifference, and Perhaps Burn-Out. Solid Western Screenplay Writer Kennedy Recycles His Own Work, as does Murph as Both Trot into the New Decade Mounted on Past Glories.That's why an Aging Dan Duryea Steals the Show as a Gun for Hire, that still Senses Right from Wrong when He isn't Getting Paid. Murph does OK and allows Duryea to Stand in the Sunlight most of the Time. Joan O'Brien is Gorgeous and Holds Her Own among the Gunslingers and Indians that all Desire Her Charms...Duryea's Frank Jesse (that name, come on Burt, seriously)..."What a Man would do to get His hands on a Woman like that".Overall. Familiar, Slightly Above Average Western for the Time Period, but does Show Signs of Genre Atrophy and a Hope for Better Things to Come.

The Universal International Pictures release "Six Black Horses" is a predictable, low-budget, but entertaining horse opera with Audie Murphy, Joan O'Brien, and Dan Duryea. Harry Keller directed this largely standard-issue sagebrusher with an even, assured hand. This 80-minute Murphy vehicle was his last western. He got his start helming westerns, and he helmed "Seven Ways to Sundown" (1960) with Murphy. Keller keeps the action moving along at an amiable gait between bouts of expository dialogue. Our two heroes encounter savage Indians, bushwhacking sidewinders, and a deceiving dame. Nothing truly surprising happens, but the two lead characters make an interesting combo, and they encounter their share of tribulation. "Seven Men From Now" scenarist Burt Kennedy's screenplay features masculine dialogue enhanced by the mysterious heroine's agenda. As other reviewers have complained, Kennedy recycles scenes from "Ride Lonesome and anticipates a cockfighting scene in "Return of the Seven." Ben Lane (Audie Murphy of "Hell Bent for Leather") and Frank Jesse (Dan Duryea of "Winchester '73") join forces not long after the opening credits. Duryea delivers another of his charmingly roguish performances as a sympathetic bad guy. Set afoot by a lame horse, Ben trudges through the wilderness, toting his saddle, and spots a string of horse. He ropes himself a horse and learns to his chagrin later that the string of horses belong to a Mustanger (Roy Barcroft of "Arizona Manhunt") and his cohorts. Poor Ben winds up with his head in a noose when Frank intervenes on his behalf. Our heroes meet an enigmatic woman, Kelly (Joan O'Brien of "Operation Petticoat"), who offers them $500 a piece to escort her back to her husband in Santa Rita del Cobre. Before long we learn that Kelly wants to see Frank dead because he killed her husband. During an Indian attack, she comes close to shooting Frank, but a spear her in the shoulder complicates things for the lady. This is the kind of western where the action takes place on the trail. Inevitably, Ben and Frank have a falling out and slap leather. Despite Kennedy's derivative screenplay, "Six Black Horses" qualifies an enjoyable frontier tale that doesn't wear out its welcome.

The film had me curious about the title for a while since Audie Murphy's character tries to lasso a wild bronco in the opening minutes and it's one of six that's roaming across the scrub desert where Ben Lane lost his. I didn't see how that event was going to work it's way into the picture, but later on, Dan Duryea comes up with the line in my summary quote describing how he'd like to be buried when his time comes - drawn in a carriage with six black horses.Now that I've had some time to think about the story, I'm left puzzled by a number of things. The main one is why Miss Kelly (Joan O'Brien) went to the trouble of hiring the pair of saddle tramps to escort her across Indian territory after the initial failed attempt to kill Frank Jesse (Duryea) in Perdido. She exposed herself to an awful lot of danger just to get revenge on the man who killed her husband. In fact, didn't it look like she pulled up her own horse during the chase scene with the Coyoteros? She would have been a goner except that it was too early to end the picture just yet.And what's with the pampered pooch? I'm sorry, but seeing the nameless mutt riding his own horse throughout the picture just seemed comical to me, especially during that same chase scene. He must have been strapped in pretty well not to get bumped off, but why not let the dog run around on his own? That one really left me baffled.So I guess if you don't think about these things too much, the film is passable enough with decent action and surprisingly good cinematography. In his late thirties, Audie Murphy looks like he outgrew the baby face look he had in pictures of a decade earlier when casting him as a villain didn't quite seem to work. Dan Duryea creates enough empathy for his character that you kind of wish the two wouldn't have to draw down on each other once the end game is revealed. The way in which Ben Lane and Miss Kelly come together seemed like a bit of stretch for me as well, but if the hero was going to ride off into the sunset with his girl, they had to work it out somehow. As for Frank Jesse, he got those six black horses after all.

For two-thirds of this film I thought it was pretty good, but I ended up feeling that it had disappointed.It did seem improbable that a very attractive woman would risk a very dangerous journey with two wanderers she didn't know, but that's Hollywood for you. It seemed a very foolhardy way of seeking revenge, and, like another reviewer, I couldn't work out what she was trying to achieve by building up the fire so that it smoked. And from her knowing smirk it was she who had loosened a horse's shoe to delay the journey. And she chose a darned funny time to try to get her revenge, during the fight in the old mission, when the trio was already out-numbered.A nod of approval to the script-writer for putting into context the $1,000 that Kelly was offering to Ben and to Frank - three or four years' pay. But a big frown for the improbable long-distance effectiveness of Ben's revolver. (I wonder what Audie Murphy, with his WWII experience of fire-arms, thought of that.) I'm not sure what was achieved by including the dog, except to show that Ben was kind to ill-treated animals. During the chases, it looked fixed improbably securely to the pack-horse saddle.And the ending was an anti-climax.