After 67 years from the original release date, and after just watching this classic western for the first time on the TCM network, count me in as a big fan of this films three (3) stars. The veteran horse wrangler John Wintergreen (Edgar Buchanan known best for his role as Uncle Joe Carson on the 1963-1970 family TV series Petticoat Junction), the parentless young horse wrangler who grows from the student to the professional horse wrangler Dan Light (Ben Johnson), and last but not least the smart and beautiful white horse named Top Kick.
By co-mingling the story of a young boy named Dan Light who has lost both of his parents and the family homestead to a renegade bunch of Indians, the young Dan Light meets up with the veteran horse wrangler John Wintergreen who takes him under his wing and earns him both an education at the military fort and subsequently his annual income wrangling wild horses for sale to the military fort who raised him into adulthood.
The young Dan Light tells John Wintergreen that his father had been raising a seven (7) month old white stallion on the farm who ecaped capture at the hands of the renegade Indians by joining a herd of wild horses in the mountains. As the young teenaged boy Dan Light grows up he has never forgotten about his white wild stallion and most of his learning in the mountains to capture wild stallions is focused on returning his lost white stallion back to his rightful ownershi[p as the white stallion is the only thing he has left from his lost childhood where his parents were murdered and his farm burnt to the ground by a pack of renegade Indians.
Of course there is beautiful woman who is romatically linked to two men to whom she can choose from, one being a captain at the fort and the other being Dan Light. There is also a bully of a military captain inside the fort who breaks his horse mounts in a cruel and inhumane way, and the stubborn Dan Light who for ten (10) years has been chasing after that wild white stallion who has been on the run and escaping capture for the past ten (10) years.
This is a "top notch" western genre film and the white stallion "Top Kick" will not disappoint any avid western film lover like myself.
I give the film a rating 8 out of 10!