What a waste of my time!!!

The greatest movie ever!

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

At forty two, Audie Murphy looked considerably younger in this revenge tale of an outlaw crossing the Mexican border back into Arizona to avenge the murder of his newspaper editor brother. Jess Carlin's (Murphy) criminal past is never elaborated on in the story, so you have to take it on faith that he was a wanted man, at least in the town of Rimrock where most of the action takes place. Rimrock is run by town boss Luke Starr (Broderick Crawford), behind the murder of Roy Carlin, and making life difficult for younger brother.There's a cool early scene in which Jess Carlin enters a saloon and one of the poker table chairs is empty. A man strumming a guitar sings a line of a song warning Jess not to sit in on the game, advice taken by the gunslinger. Right after that, Carlin guns down two bounty hunters, leaving the first one alive, a former friend who needed the bounty money for a sick wife. Murphy plays the scene with a conviction that he didn't need to kill his opponent once the dust settled, something you don't see very often in a Western.You know, there wouldn't have even been a story here if one of Starr's henchmen had been a better shot with his rifle. From a fairly good vantage point, the outlaw missed and Jess Carlin escaped the ambush attempt to make his way to Rimrock. Now here's what bothered me about the story. The bad guys were willing to take out Carlin early on, but once he was in town at close range, even face to face at times, none of the henchmen ever made a play. They could have ganged up on Carlin at any point leaving Luke Starr unscathed, just the way they did with whiskey salesman Boyd Thompson (Gereard Tichy). But then I guess, the hero wouldn't have made it to the end of the picture.A couple other observations - before he had to press the point with the Woodstock Hotel desk clerk, Jess was offered a room at three dollars a day with plenty of windows and a bed with springs. Can't you just see Best Western using that as a selling point in one of their ads today? And I really have to search my memory for what point in time it became OK to show a nude woman on screen in a theatrical film. Not a live actor, but that painting of a reclining woman with a breast exposed displayed over the bar of the Silver Ring Saloon seemed rather scandalous for a 1966 movie. They didn't show naked women at Woodstock until 1969.

To get some enjoyment from this movie you at least have to like Audie Murphy and be rather uncritical about westerns. I qualify on both counts. Besides, this movie also has Broderick Crawford as the tough-talking bad guy. Past his Hollywood prime, Crawford here looks tired, overweight, and generally long in the tooth--but nobody talks tough like Broderick Crawford! The inimitable voices of these two actors--Murphy's gentle Texas voice and Crawford's gravelly growl--stand out in this movie, which otherwise is cast with Spaniards who are dubbed. The dubbing is occasionally distracting, and in the case of Antonio Casas as Frank Brady it is downright ludicrous.Filmed in Spain, "The Texican" has a decidedly non-American score, sounding something like the music in Italian spaghetti westerns. There are a lot of surging crescendos and an ominous-sounding vocal chorus.The less said about the actual story, the better. The fun is in watching Audie Murphy and Broderick Crawford do their thing. Murphy was a cowboy hero of mine when I was a boy in the 1950s, and of course in WW II he was a real hero--the most decorated soldier of the war.They say Audie Murphy worked very hard to develop a fast draw, and in "The Texican" there are some examples of his fine hand with a pistol. Here, some 18 years after his first movie, he still seems like a "nice young man"--neatly dressed, slim and trim, courteous when he can be, gentle-voiced.How did such a gentle man turn out to be so deadly with a gun--not just in the movies but in real life?

Although this movie was made in Europe with a predominately Spanish cast, you can tell this movie was made with stateside distribution in mind.Especially when you have Audie Murphy and Broderick Crawford in the leading roles.Good story about a fugitive who crosses back into the United States from Mexico to avenge his brother's death and clear his own name.This movie was directed by one of my favorite western directors, Lesley Selander.It has great widescreen photography. The dubbing of the supporting actors is better than usual.Far from original, but fast moving and well acted.Not as good as "No Name On The Bullet" or "Night Passage", but worth a look.

Audie Murphy, as usual, was believable in his role. The addition of Broderick Crawford added to "weight" of the characters. I found it to be a good and enjoyable movie.