The Red Fury

The Red Fury refers both to an unnamed stallion that rancher Will Jordan owns and a young Indian boy played by Juan Gonzalez works to tame. The kid is a passenger on a train with his father and falls off the train and on to the Jordan ranch.

Jordan's a crusty old cuss who's lost his wife and family years ago and lives alone and miserable on his ranch. The boy and the rancher don't take to each other right away, but when the kid saves the old man during a fire, they bond completely.

Bonding with the rest of the people in the neighborhood's another proposition all together. They've got typical western prejudice against Indians, led by rival rancher Cal Bartlett who also sees Jordan's Red Fury as a rival to his own horse that he's breeding to race. His daughter Wendy Lynne leads the kids in school into not accepting young Mr. Gonzalez.

There are two prominent female roles in the cast, former Warner Brothers television starlet Diane McBain, now a forty something storekeeper and Katherine Cannon as the schoolteacher from the east who tries to help the young Indian lad. In a small role is the skipper, Alan Hale, Jr. who plays the town doctor.

The Red Fury is not a bad family film, it's got some decent moral values in it, but the pace is way too slow, it drags considerably in the telling of its tale.