Six Black Horses
Six Black Horses
NR | 24 April 1962 (USA)
Six Black Horses Trailers

Audie and Dan Duryea are hired by a mysterious woman to take her across Indian country to her husband. On route, she tries to seduce Audie by offering to give him Duryea's share of the money if he will help her achieve her real goal: kill Duryea for having killed her husband. Audie dreams of a getting enough money to buy a ranch of his own, but his loyalty to his friend prevails. In the end, Duryea is killed anyway by the Indians and gets his wish: a funeral carriage pulled by - you guessed it - six black horses.

Reviews
Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?
Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation
Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict
Staci Frederick Blistering performances.
LeonLouisRicci 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.
Marlburian 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.
alexandre michel liberman (tmwest) 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.
stryker-5 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.
You May Also Like