The rambly plot concerns Martha (O'Hara), a recent widow who has arrived in America with her daughter Hilary (Juliet Mills) and a Hereford bull named Vindicator. Martha intends to fulfill her husband's dream of cross-breeding the Hereford with Texas longhorns.
Vindicator is sold at auction, and here the plotting gets extremely murky as far as who has bought Vindicator, who's going to deliver him where, and who's going to try to steal him. David Brian makes a brief appearance in these early scenes as a buyer for rancher Alexander Bowen (Keith), and Jack Elam is (what else?) a bad guy.
Ultimately Martha, Hilary, and Vindicator travel to Bowen's ranch with Sam Burnett (Stewart). Along the way they rescue Bowen's son Jamie (Don Galloway) who is trampled in a stampede and...well, it's all a long, complicated story.Bowen is a rough-edged Scot who lives like a pig, but once he gets used to Martha cleaning up his "fort" he comes to like her enough to propose; she's uncertain, seeming to have a yen for Sam instead. Sam, meanwhile, isn't around much as he's preoccupied with trying to make sure there will be little Vindicator calves come spring.
While all this is going on, Hilary and Jamie fall for one another...
I've always heard this film wasn't particularly good but hoped I might like it more than expected, given the leads. However, the first half of the film is quite confusing and hard to follow, compounded by the fact that the movie is all over the place and doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. It randomly shifts tone from light comedy scenes such as Stewart's repeated brawls to Jack Elam being a disturbingly cold-blooded killer.It's also got pointless characters who come and go, such as Ben Johnson playing a friend of Sam's. He vanishes early on, as does David Brian. Harry Carey Jr. has a little more to do, but not much.
The film settles down a bit in the second half, once everyone arrives at the Bowen ranch, but even here it's rather baffling. It's hinted that Stewart and O'Hara's main characters are in love, yet they're apart for most of the second half of the film, while she spends screen time with Keith. There's zero relationship development here between Stewart and O'Hara; everything we know about Sam and Martha is predicated on the time they spent together in the first half of the movie.Fortunately Galloway and the charming Mills are on hand to keep things somewhat more interesting, but the film really suffers from a poorly planned script (by Ric Hardman). I can see this film being on in the background while doing chores some lazy Saturday, just for the cast, but all in all it's a pretty drawn-out 97 minutes which just barely makes sense.
The movie also has an odd "mixed" look, blending excellent location shooting with soundstage exteriors and some truly awful back projections which reminded me of some poor shots from live-action Disney films of that era. THE BRIDE WORE RED (1937), seen a couple days ago, had some of the same issues trying to blend locations and studio backdrops, but one expects a film made three decades later could do better in this regard.
The best thing going for the film is simply spending time with the cast. The film was a reunion for O'Hara and her male costars, as in 1961 she had costarred with Keith in THE PARENT TRAP (1961) and the following year she and Stewart appeared in MR. HOBBS TAKES A VACATION (1962). This was also O'Hara's second time to play the mother of a Mills sister; in THE PARENT TRAP she was the mother of Juliet Mills' younger sister, Hayley.THE RARE BREED was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen and filmed by William H. Clothier in Panavision. The score was by John Williams, billed as "Johnny" at that point in his career.
The Kino Lorber Blu-ray picture is wonderful, a sharp print which is one of the best reasons to watch. The disc also includes a commentary track by Simon Abrams and the movie's trailer, along with a trailer gallery for nine additional films available from Kino Lorber.
Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray.
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