Cinema: Bull Session

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The Rare Breed is all conventional outdoor fun, enlivened with fist fights, rugged scenery, and the green-eyed beauty of Maureen O'Hara, who makes Technicolor seem a necessity. But the 4-H sex appeal of this genial western centers principally upon a white-faced bull named Vindicator. A hornless Hereford, he arrives in America well before the turn of the century, chaperoned by Maureen and plucky Juliet Mills as a well-bred English mother and daughter with some eccentric ideas about animal husbandry. Their hefty British bull is just the thing, they swear, to beef up the herds of lean longhorn cattle then prevalent in the West.

In fact, time proved them right, but Director Andrew McLaglen (son of Victor) uses the bare bones of history mostly to flavor his yarn. Even human mating instincts operate almost exclusively in relation to the bull. One eager beefer corners Maureen behind a candlelit table for two, panting, "Run out on me now, and your bull will wind up on that table tomorrow night."

James Stewart, as a grizzly old saddle tramp, saves the ladies from stampedes, seductions and desperadoes. He also delivers them safely to Texas Cattle Baron Brian Keith, who gives the film's liveliest performance as an unsanitary Scottish laird, up to his red beard in the debris of a crumbling ranch fortress that looks like condemned property. Maureen starts tidying up the place, Juliet busies herself with the rancher's neglected son (Don Galloway), while Vindicator is turned out to the open range, left to face a herd of cows who may or may not prove receptive to his aristocratic airs. All the livestock soon plods away discreetly into the snow. Back at the ranch, the people play their own brand of choose-up partners and struggle valiantly to keep boredom at bay. They just about make it.