Black Gold (1963) is truly the "B" western you have when you're not having a "B" western. Just look at that running time! 99 minutes! Warner Brothers have got to be kidding! Let's tot up all the movie's virtues: Claude Akins, Fay Spain and William Phipps occasionally manage to surmount even the clichéd characters and banal dialogue they've been handed. The rest of the players – including the leads, Phil Carey, Diane McBain and Jimmy Best – fail. And, would you believe, Akins, Spain and Phipps make up the sum total of the movie's good points. Now let's look at the other side of the ledger. As already mentioned, the film's chief drawback is its unusually long running time. Maybe Warner Brothers had the crazy idea they could pass the film off as an "A" feature, despite the fact that neither Phil Carey nor Dianne McBain had a strong box office appeal? The fact that the movie was shot on a minimal budget by a relentlessly uninventive TV director wouldn't weigh much with audiences but its length would certainly worry them and cinema owners would not be rejoicing either. Not only would exhibitors have difficulty finding a suitable short-length co-feature, but they would be the first to notice how cheap production values really are in Black Gold. Add to the above list, repetitive dialogue, a minimal amount of actual location filming, small studio sets with phony backdrops and very obvious process work.
Review of Black Gold
