Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Director: KURT NEUMANN. Screenplay: Karl Kamb, Robert Hardy Andrews. Story: Robert Hardy Andrews. Photographed in Technicolor by Charles Van Enger. Film editor: Frank Gross. Art directors: Bernard Herzbrun, Emrich Nicholson. Set decorators: Russell A. Gausman, Oliver Emert. Costumes: Rosemary Odell. Make-up: Bud Westmore, Jack Kevan. Hair styles: Joan St Oegger, Ann Locker. Production manager: Dewey Starkey. Music composed by Frank Skinner, directed by Milton Schwarzwald. Camera operator: Lloyd Ward. Set continuity: Connie Earle. Stunts: Fred Carson. Technicolor color consultant: William Fritzsche. Grip: Fred Buckley. Gaffer: Ross Saxon. Assistant director: Joe Kenny. Sound recording: Leslie I. Carey, Robert Pritchard. Associate producer: George C. Bethelon. Producer: Paul Short. Copyright 17 March 1950 (in notice: 1949) by Universal Pictures Co., Inc. U.S. release: 19 March 1950. Australian release: 22 June 1950. 7,032 feet. 78 minutes. U.K. release title: TEXAS KID, OUTLAW. COMMENT: The story is a familiar one, but thanks to an involving and engaging script, it is just as thrilling today as when first presented. Appealing performances from the entire cast also help, and so does direction way above the norm from Kurt Neumann. Production values, including location lensing and a spectacular climax, also prove a considerable asset.

In most of my reviews of Audie Murphy pictures I'll comment on how his youthful appearance worked against him, particularly in films where he's a villain or operating on the wrong side of the law. But as Billy the Kid, his real of age twenty six closely approximated that of William H. Bonney at twenty one, and on that score his casting here worked about the best I've seen in slightly more than a dozen pictures I've had a chance to watch.I'm curious why the film makers chose to change the names of most of the principals except for Billy, Pat Garrett (Frank Wilcox) and acting New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace (Robert Barrat). William Bonney's real life mentor and employer was William Tunstall, here called Roger Jameson (Shepperd Strudwick). Jameson's business partner and attorney is Alexander Kain (Albert Dekker), whereas Tunstall's partner was Alexander McSween. Major Harper (Dennis Hoey) would have been Jimmy Dolan, and Sheriff Rand (Ray Teal) would have been Sheriff William Brady, who's murder by Billy the Kid's band of Regulators escalated the Lincoln County War, and wound up turning public sentiment against The Kid. In this story, Rand isn't killed.For one of his first starring roles, Audie Murphy doesn't appear very charismatic, some would go so far as to say his acting here is wooden. Fair enough, though the reason he went into pictures was for film makers to capitalize on his record as a genuine hero in World War II. Probably his best regarded movie is the one telling his real life story in 1955's "To Hell and Back".As for the picture itself, it's passable enough as an entertaining Western if the license taken with the characters doesn't bother you too much. The opening of the film states that liberty was taken with the characters and chronology of events depicted, so with that in mind, you can settle back and enjoy it, especially if you're an Audie Murphy fan.

Had I been born a couple of decades earlier my boyhood crush might have been Errol Flynn but growing up when I did it was always Audie Murphy, that baby-faced non-actor who just happened to be the most decorated soldier of World War 11. (He turned his experiences into a memoir entitled "To Hell and Back" which was filmed in 1957 with Audie playing himself; as a child I must have seen this film countless times). Of course, being the most decorated soldier of World War 11 in itself is no guarantee of or justification for a career in the movies so what did Audie have that enticed producers to hire him? To my childish mind it was the idea of this innocent, fresh-faced kid whose very demeanor radiated gentleness being able to handle himself in a scrap, of not being afraid to stand up to the bad guys. I doubt if it was this that John Huston saw when he cast him as the young soldier in "The Red Badge of Courage". Perhaps Huston thought Murphy still looked young enough to pass himself off as a bewildered boy.That he couldn't act was irrelevant and perhaps because of that it was in a series of second-rate westerns he was usually cast. (There were exceptions; he seemed ideally blank and with just the right degree of annoying priggishness for the title role in "The Quiet American"). In "The Kid from Texas" someone had the bright idea of casting Audie as Billy the Kid, not as villain but as a poor-little-put-upon-me misunderstood youngster. It was an early film in his career and was probably even more of a non-performance than the ones which followed it, (just talking seems like an unnatural act to him). As for the film, it's a lame little Z-Western, brightly coloured and full of corn; Saturday matinée fare of the kind that would have given me a buzz half a century ago, simple and strangely innocent and light years away from the tortured psychology of Paul Newman and Arthur Penn's "The Left Handed Gun".

Audie Murphy was the best Billy the Kid. It is not easy for a young man with a baby face to play a famous outlaw and be convincing. The fact that Murphy was a hero in the second world war must have given him that confidence. The story starts as Billy begins working for an Englishman (Tunstall, with his name changed to Jameson), but his partner Kain does not like Billy who also becomes fascinated with Kain's wife (Gale Storm). Governor Lew Wallace who is present in this film more than in any other about Billy, tries desperately to stop the Lincoln County War. Billy ends up on the wrong side of the law and his gang here is reduced to two guys, one is a Mexican and the other does not stop singing "Streets of Laredo". Murphy is very fast when he draws, he must have done a lot of training. Even though not an ambitious production as the 1941 film with Robert Taylor, overall this is much better. There are good shootouts, a lot of action and a great Billy.