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Perhaps it is only natural that the script should be friendly to the central character. Through most of the picture he is presented as a man more robbed than robbing, an honest Missouri dirt farmer who was driven to desperate ventures by the cruel Yankee-panky of his neighbors in the days that followed the Civil War. "He's just a man," somebody sobs, "who loves his family and his home." Matter of fact, as Robert Wagner plays the part with soft suburban face, the hero could pass for a rising young broker. As for all that gunplay, it seems to have been nothing more than James & Co.'s old-fashioned interpretation of the Personalized Approach.
The Brave One (King Brothers; Universal-International). One wild, dark night on the Mexican altiplanicie, the wind screamed and the rain beat and the lightning felled a great branch on a cow, a mother of fighting bulls. By sheer might of instinct, the valiant beast survived long enough to drop her bull calf and to bellow until help came. It was a small boy (Michel Ray), the son of a Mexican vaquero, who found the hungry black buster where he wailed indignantly in the cold and wet, and carried him back to finish his first night in a warm bed. Gitano (gypsy) the boy called him. The two were inseparable, but very little else was safe within a rope's length of that savage young fighter. He charged the chickens, butted the bucket, larked with the laundry; when the time for branding came, it took seven good men to catch the black yearling and four to hold him down.
As a two-year-old, when the ranch held its tienta (test) for the young bulls, Gitano astounded the company with his fighting qualities: he knocked the picador's horse sprawling and gored one of the capemen. The boy was proud, but he was sad too. In two years Gitano would be sent to the corrida to be artistically butchered for the pleasure of the public.
The rest of this little picture, which despite a clumsy production is probably going to flood the Easter Bunny with zillions of requests for baby bulls, describes the fantastic things the boy does to save the life of his pet. Nevertheless, the moviemakers have seen to it that the picture comes to a bloody climax in one of the most thrillingly realistic bullfights —starring the famous Mexican matador, Fermin Rivera—ever seen in a commercial film. It's great stuff for the youngsters, but apt to be rough on people of more tender years.
* Laius in the Greek myth was the father of Oedipus. Laius tried to kill his son in infancy, but the boy grew up and killed his father instead.
* Among them: Jesse James As the Outlaw (1921), Jesse James Under the Black Flag (1921), Jesse James (1927), Days of Jesse James (1939), Jesse James at Bay (1941), Jesse James Jr. (1942), Jesse James Rides Again (1947), Jesse James' Women (1954), Jesse James v. the Daltons (1954). A coming attraction, Hell's Crossroads, was originally titled I Was Jesse James' Next Door Neighbor.