Six Black Horses (1962)

A drifter (Audie Murphy) and a hired killer (Dan Duryea) accept a woman's (Joan O'Brien) offer of $1,000 apiece to take her through hostile Apache territory to be with her husband. But the woman isn't forthcoming about her real reasons for the trek. Directed by Harry Keller (THE UNGUARDED MOMENT), this routine oater is basically a three character film with only two interesting characters. Murphy's character isn't very interesting. It's a pity that Murphy never found his Budd Boetticher or Anthony Mann the way Randolph Scott and James Stewart did and were able to create some of the best westerns of the 1950s. Murphy wasn't much of an actor but he wasn't a bad one and could be effective in the right role. Murphy's work for John Huston (RED BADGE OF COURAGE, THE UNFORGIVEN) suggests that perhaps Huston was able to tap into Murphy's psyche and might have been a good director for him but Huston wasn't a genre director. Fortunately, Dan Duryea and Joan O'Brien play characters with enough ambiguity (we're never quite sure if they're good or bad) to hold our attention through the film's running time. With George Barcroft and Bob Steele.