The Red Stallion (1947) User Reviews

Nice Horse Story For Family Audiences

[HarlowMGM · 7/10 · 4 December 2010]

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.

"Sometimes we have to make our own miracles."

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 20 April 2016]

This movie takes me back to my days as a kid in the Fifties watching TV shows like 'Fury' and 'My Friend Flicka', although this one came out almost a decade earlier. Young kids bonding with animals was a familiar theme back then, though this one got by me until just the other day on Encore Westerns.

Filmed in Cinecolor, it almost looks like the picture is a colorized version of a black and white film, especially at the beginning of the story. Young Joel Curtis (Ted Donaldson) discovers a foal in the woods after it's mother was mauled by a bear. Inadvertently naming it 'Red' due to it's coloration, Joel decides to keep the horse and raise it on the family farm, run by Grandma Aggie (Jane Darwell). With the farm eventually facing foreclosure due to outstanding debts on the property, Joel imagines that Red might be the answer to saving the farm by training him as a race horse and selling him to a wealthy breeder who races horses for a living.

It was pretty much a foregone conclusion to this viewer that Joel and Red would never become separated no matter what lengths the picture took to get to the final horse race in which Red shows his mettle. This was one of those stories that proved you could believe in miracles if you helped the Lord above with some old fashioned hard work, determination and confidence in one's self.

To my mind though, the unsung hero in the story was a little pup named Curly who was the star of the show any time he appeared on screen. The versatile canine was part of the Rudd Weatherwax stable that also produced Lassie, and his antics in the picture are a delight. Curly helped train Red to run a circular track by racing along inside the posts, and probably had the film's funniest moment when he hung on to the rope for Red's first time out of the home made starting gate. I wonder what would have happened if he had let go.

Typical boy and his (fill in animal name here) boredom.

[BrettErikJohnson · 1/10 · 26 October 2004]

A boy out hunting rabbits with his dog comes across a dead horse, a newly born foal and a bear. He shoots at the bear but he misses and then takes the foal home to raise as his pet. Soon enough, Grandmother's ranch and its contents are set to be auctioned off if she doesn't come up with thousands of dollars. No problem...the kid has a great plan. All he has to do is quickly train his horse to become a championship racehorse.

In all of my years on this planet, I have yet to come across a list of animals separated into the groups God's Creatures and Spawn of Satan. This is another film where horses are sacred but bears and fuzzy bunnies need to be slaughtered. That point aside, there is a completely laughable plot element in this movie. The bear actually "stalks" the kid's horse. It always seems to be around and it is always waiting for the chance to torment the titular red stallion. Every time it shows up, the dog starts yapping its head off and the boy tries to shoot the darn bear but he always misses.

*MILD SPOILER* Anyway, it all culminates in an actual showdown between the two animals. They engage in a completely ludicrous fight to the death. The bear claws at the horse and the horse smashes the bear with its hooves. The bear would run away and the horse would give chase. The battling would then begin once again. It went on for a seemingly long time and I just have to say that a horse and some guy in a bear costume attacking each other was a rather surreal visual experience.

So does the stallion survive its deathmatch against the bear? Will the boy ever get the chance to turn his beloved Red into a world-class racehorse? Will a film from 1947 have the guts to go against a common movie formula? Most importantly, will I ever be compensated for all of the lame movies I have wasted away my precious life watching? The world may never know. 1/10

Slow and boring

[watchtiger1 · 1/10 · 3 April 2011]

Slow to start, very bad cinematics. It looks like it was filmed on a Super 8 Home movie camera for one thing. It looks like it was colorized.

The young male (Joel) in the movie speaks with a too young a tone in his voice which is annoying.

The acting is very bad and it's obvious this movie was a rip off of Black Beauty and Black Stallion.

It becomes apparent it is a rip off the above films when it is revealed by grand mother that "Red" is bred from racing horse stock and is in deed a race horse.

Not worth the time to watch.

Too Many Technical Stinkers to Overlook

[kindtxgal · 2/10 · 24 November 2018]

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.

A boy and his Horse,with some real problems added

[Hollycon1 · 8/10 · 7 March 2006]

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!