Wild Stallion

This is a decent late period Monogram western, starring Ben Johnson with quite an interesting cast -- supporting actors all, including a lot of names that I would grow up with as a kid, like Edgar Buchanan, Hugh Beaumont and Hayden Roarke; turn on your television during Prime Time between 1958 and 1970 and you'd see at least one of them every night.

The attempt to tell the story of how Johnson's character grew up in terms of his relationship with the horse is an interesting idea and certainly the actors all give it a good effort, but writer-director Lewis Collins never quite gets his head out of the Saturday matinée and the result is a decent kiddies' movie with lots of sentiment but not quite enough in the way of heart.

"Wild Stallion" is a western from Monogram Pictures. And, like many early to mid-1950s westerns from this studio and Republic, it was made using Cinecolor, a two-color film stock. Because it only used two base colors to create color, its palate was pretty limited...giving you 'colorish' films. In other words, some colors simply didn't show up well, such as purples and deep blues because the colors used were an orangy-red and a greenish-blue. A few colors came out really well in these films...but often the films looked very orangy or pinkish. While the Turner Classic Movies print looks excellent for Cinecolor after many decades of decomposition, it still is a bit pinkish...and normal skin tones look a bit odd and the white horse in the film looks more like an albino. But believe me...for a Cinecolor film this one looks great. So why did studios use this inferior color filmstock? Money....full color film (such as Three Color Technicolor) were very expensive but the Cinecolor company found a way to produce color (of sorts) for the same price as black & white films.

The story is told in a long flashback by John Wintergreen (Edgar Buchanan), an elderly Cavalry sergeant who is retiring. He tells a young soldier a story about Dan Light and his white stallion.

It seems that long ago, a family was homesteading in the Black Hills of South Dakota. When young Dan was out fishing, a group of renegade Indians arrived at his family's ranch--killing his parents and burning the place to the ground. The only survivor of the attack was a young white horse which managed to escape into the hills.

When Dan arrived back home, he found his parents and buried him. Soon Wintergreen arrived and helps him. He feels sorry for the kid and so he escorts him to a nearby fort where Dan is raised.

Years pass and Dan doesn't join the Cavalry. Instead, he works for them...capturing wild horses and training them. His philosophy wasn't so much breaking the horses but getting them to trust him through love and kindness. However, despite trying very hard to find that white horse, it keeps eluding him and is the leader of a huge herd of wild horses. The rest of the story is about Dan trying to capture and tame the animal....as well as his possibly joining the Cavalry after a lifetime of being a bit of a lone wolf.

The best thing going for this story is that it's NOT a typical western. The usual cliches are lacking and Johnson and Edgar Buchanan both do lovely jobs in the film. While not exactly a must-see film...it's charming and enjoyable.

Wild Stallion tells the odyssey of a boy then a man and the horse who became part of is life. Young Orley Lindgren survives an Indian attack that kills his parents and like Corporal Rusty on Rin Tin Tin grows up with the army and becomes Ben Johnson.

Also surviving is Top Kick the white colt that Johnson owned as a boy who now is the leader of a pack of wild horses. The bond is there between Top Kick and Johnson even though the horse is a challenge. But Top Kick proves to be a one man horse despite the cavalry's plans for him.

This is a nice easy to take family film that holds up well after fifty years. Ben Johnson is much like the likable young cowboy he played in Mighty Joe Young who also has romance on his mind for Colonel Hayden Rorke's daughter Martha Hyer.

If you like horse stories, Wild Stallion is a film for you.

After 67 years from the original release date, and after just watching this classic western for the first time on the TCM network, count me in as a big fan of this films three (3) stars. The veteran horse wrangler John Wintergreen (Edgar Buchanan known best for his role as Uncle Joe Carson on the 1963-1970 family TV series Petticoat Junction), the parentless young horse wrangler who grows from the student to the professional horse wrangler Dan Light (Ben Johnson), and last but not least the smart and beautiful white horse named Top Kick.

By co-mingling the story of a young boy named Dan Light who has lost both of his parents and the family homestead to a renegade bunch of Indians, the young Dan Light meets up with the veteran horse wrangler John Wintergreen who takes him under his wing and earns him both an education at the military fort and subsequently his annual income wrangling wild horses for sale to the military fort who raised him into adulthood.

The young Dan Light tells John Wintergreen that his father had been raising a seven (7) month old white stallion on the farm who ecaped capture at the hands of the renegade Indians by joining a herd of wild horses in the mountains. As the young teenaged boy Dan Light grows up he has never forgotten about his white wild stallion and most of his learning in the mountains to capture wild stallions is focused on returning his lost white stallion back to his rightful ownershi[p as the white stallion is the only thing he has left from his lost childhood where his parents were murdered and his farm burnt to the ground by a pack of renegade Indians.

Of course there is beautiful woman who is romatically linked to two men to whom she can choose from, one being a captain at the fort and the other being Dan Light. There is also a bully of a military captain inside the fort who breaks his horse mounts in a cruel and inhumane way, and the stubborn Dan Light who for ten (10) years has been chasing after that wild white stallion who has been on the run and escaping capture for the past ten (10) years.

This is a "top notch" western genre film and the white stallion "Top Kick" will not disappoint any avid western film lover like myself.

I give the film a rating 8 out of 10!

Wild Stallion is directed by Lewis D. Collins and written by Dan Ullman. It stars Ben Johnson, Edgar Buchanan, Martha Hyer, Hayden Rorke and Hugh Beaumont. A Cinecolor production with music by Marlin Skiles and cinematography by Harry Neumann.

Unassuming family friendly Oater, Wild Stallion tells a simple story of a boy who loses his horse but upon entering adulthood seeks the equine out for a reunion. Story is book ended by Indian attacks, the first of which leaves young Dan Light an orphan and without his beloved Colt, and the middle section concentrates on Dan growing into a man, his loves, his yearnings and his dealings with the Cavalry. There's a mature thread in the mix dealing with the ethical treatment of horses, and it all builds to a finale where both man and beast have their heroic moments in the West. Hooray!

Nicely photographed around Simi Valley and Chatsworth and competently performed by the cast, Wild Stallion achieves its goals without fuss and filler. 6/10