★ 7 / 10
El Chivato The Kid from Texas (AKA: Texas
John Chard
El Chivato The Kid from Texas (AKA: Texas Kid, Outlaw) is directed by Kurt Neumann and written by Robert Hardy Andrews and Karl Kamb. It stars Audie Murphy…
El Chivato
The Kid from Texas (AKA: Texas Kid, Outlaw) is directed by Kurt Neumann and written by Robert Hardy Andrews and Karl Kamb. It stars Audie Murphy, Gale Storm, Albert Dekker, Shepperd Strudwick and Will Geer. Music is by Milton Schwarzwald and cinematography by Charles Van Enger.
11th July 1879, Lincoln County, and a young man born of the name William Henry McCarty Junior is about to write his name into the annals of infamy...
"I'll get every man who had a hand in this killing if it's the last thing I do"
It's a "B" feature in production terms and it's a hodge-podge of historical facts, but in the trajectory of Western movies it's a rather important piece. It also happens to be great entertainment for the Western fan.
It would be the film to launch Audie Murphy on the road to Western iconography, whilst simultaneously becoming a valid early addition for cinematic representations of the Billy the Kid legend. Historically the core basis of the film is accurate, though the chronology is all over the place. There's also a bizarre decision to use different character names for McSween, Tunstall and Dolan, three of the major players in the Lincoln County War.
However, the portrayals of the principal real life people is surprisingly well balanced, there's no attempts at romanticising the issues, no side picking, because both sides are equally driven and culpable for the carnage and misery that would play out during this time in Western history.
As an Oater on entertainment terms it delivers wholesale, there's some staid acting, not least from Murphy, who you can see is feeling his way into how he should react in front of a camera. Yet there's a magnetic charm to Murphy that would serve him well in this specialist genre field. It also helps to have a very reliable supporting cast backing him up, be it the wonderfully named Gale Storm's beauty, or Dekker and Geer being acting professionalism personified, there's a lot to enjoy here on the thespian production front.
The requisite amount of action is in full effect, as are key moments in the real story that provide some great scenes; such as the infamous jail break, while the colour photography is most pleasant. Ultimately it's a revenge story for the "B" Western loving crowd, where the villains are slippery and the anti-hero a damaged dandy. Sometimes you gotta peer through the gloss to get the facts, but what fun that proves to be. Yee-haw. 7/10
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★ 7 / 10
rooster_davis
I have a lot of respect for Audie Murphy, the most decorated US solder of WW II. However I have to admit that what I find most memorable about him are his…
I have a lot of respect for Audie Murphy, the most decorated US solder of WW II. However I have to admit that what I find most memorable about him are his acting roles, particularly in Westerns. He always played a deceptively young-looking gunfighter and had the real-life moves to back him up on camera. One excellent example is early in the film Duel at Silver Springs where he shoots the gun out of Lee Marvin's hand while sitting at a saloon card table - he was lightning fast on the draw. I like Murphy here as Billy the Kid because he's still young-looking enough to be reasonably convincing. There is another movie called Billy the Kid from 1941 with Robert Taylor in the title role and he doesn't look anything like a kid - shortly after I started watching that one I switched it off. Taylor was over 30 years old and looked possibly even older than that. (On the other hand the opening scenes of To Hell and Back have Murphy at age 31 playing himself as a military inductee of 18, and to me, that also did not work.) Here, Murphy at 25 or so still looks young enough to pull off the role of a "kid".Anyhow, back to this movie, it's one of the versions of Billy the Kid I enjoy watching because Murphy plays his part convincingly. And it has the added bonus of having been shot in Technicolor, making it easy on the eyes too.
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★ 6 / 10
Alone In A Crowd
boblipton
Audie Murphy's first western for Universal is a blank-faced version of the story of Billy the Kid that white-washes almost everyone. The script tries to push a…
Audie Murphy's first western for Universal is a blank-faced version of the story of Billy the Kid that white-washes almost everyone. The script tries to push a few romantic notes into the narrative, with him and Gale Storm obviously falling in love instantly, but neither of them doing anything about it, because she's married to Albert Dekker. Dekker himself has the best role as a guy wh wants to do the right thing, but is too weak-willed to stand up for anything under pressure.I don't know if it was that way in the script, but Murphy's playing of Bnney, the lack of explanations or, indeed, many lines works well. I imagine director Kurt Neuman cut his lines and told him to under-react. The result is a simple, effective portrayal of someone wh feigns passivity, when what he really wants to do is kill.
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89%
AUDIENCE
6.3/10
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