AllMovie

Under the aegis of veteran program-feature producer Bryan Foy, the fledgling Eagle-Lion company made great strides during its first year of existence. Filmed in Cinecolor, The Red Stallion is on the surface a standard yarn about a ranch boy and his beloved horse, replete with a mortgage-on-the-ranch plot wrinkle. With Ted Donaldson as the boy and Jane Darwell as his down-to-earth Grandmother, however, the film is far better acted than many of its ilk. As Joel Curtis (Donaldson) tries to raise his pet foal into a race horse, he faces innumerable obstacles, both financial and natural. In the latter category, there's a particularly suspenseful throughlne involving the enmity between the horse and a wild bear. Though the outcome of The Red Stallion is predictable, what leads up to that outcome is well worth the price of admisison.