Tumbleweed (1953)

In "The Man From the Alamo", Glen Ford plays a man who is elected to try to ride through the Mexican lines surrounding The Alamo to try to warn a community that they should evacuate before the Mexicans overran them. He was too late to save these people, but he missed being one of the victims of the attack on the Alamo. The community he next landed in clearly thought of him as a coward for abandoning the Alamo. In the present film, Audie Murphy finds himself in a similar situation. When the little wagon train he was leading through Yaqui territory was threatened with attack, he galloped in search of the chief Aguila, whose son, Tigre, had been saved from death by Audie a short time ago. Audie hoped this would be his ticket to convincing the chief to call off an attack. Unfortunately, the chief was not impressed. Instead, he had Audie staked out in the sun, with the prospect of cutting off his eyelids in the next morning , so that the sun would blind him. Unfortunately, while he was so occupied, the wagon train was attacked, and all killed except for the 2 women, whom Audie had hidden in a cave. When he reached the nearby town of Borax, the people wanted to lynch him, because they had heard of the massacre, and blamed him for deserting his post. This sets that stage for the rest of the film, in which both the town people and Aguila want to kill Audie. Although Aguila refused to believe that a white man would save the life of his son, Tigre's mother believed it. After the braves left their camp, she cut the ropes tying him to the stakes. Audie's good deed toward Tigre would save his life again, when Sheriff Murchoree(Chill Wills) locked him in the town jail for safety against the lynch mob. Tigre recognized that this wasn't going to stop the mob for long. Thus, he descended from the skylight, and freed Audie, they escaping out the back door. But the mob wasn't far behind. They had a shooting match, in which Tigre was mortally wounded, and Audie barely escaped. His horse was shot in the leg, causing it to limp, so when he saw a bunch of horses on a ranch, he asked to borrow one. He was loaned an all-white one named Tumbleweed, which didn't look too promising on initial inspection. But, he would prove his worth several times in Audie's further attempts to escape the posse and an attack by Aguila. I will leave you to see the rest of the story. See it in color at YouTube. Filming took place at Death Valley, Red Rock Canyon, and Vasquez Rocks, all in southern CA.

In Tumbleweed Audie Murphy plays a young scout of a wagon train which is massacred leaving only Audie and two women, K.T. Stevens and Lori Nelson as survivors. The women hid in a cave, but Audie had gone out to parley with the Yaquis and they held him instead.When Murphy gets back to the white settlement he's a most unpopular man. His only chance at regaining popularity and keeping his right to walk and breathe permanently is to find which white man gave the location of the train to the Yaquis for his own venal purposes.Tumbleweed is also the name of a horse that Audie gets from sympathetic rancher Roy Roberts for his flight. The horse kind of marches to his own beat, but his brand of horse sense proves invaluable to Murphy.There's a nice climax of an Indian fight with the Yaquis before the dying chief Ralph Moody reveals all. All in all a good western with Audie Murphy giving a good characterization of a wrongly accused man.

A young scout named Jim Harvey(AUDIE MURPHY)leads some wagons through treacherous Indian territory. As Harvey fears an attack, he has the wagons take shelter by some rocks whilst he goes to the Yaqui Chief to secure safe passage for the civilians. His efforts are in vain as the Chief has him knocked unconscious and tied up. With Harvey now helpless, the Yaquis ride off and massacre the civilians. The next day, Harvey manages to escape and gets back to the nearest town where he is met with anger by the townsfolk, who believe he conspired with the Yaquis to murder the civilians. As a lynch mob is formed, the Sheriff arrests Harvey. That night, the Yaqui Chief's son, whose life was previously saved by Harvey, breaks into the jail and helps Harvey escape. As the Indian is killed in the ensuing shootout, Harvey learns the shocking truth behind the massacre and rides out into the wilderness pursued by a posse to find the individuals responsible.A B western from the vaults of Universal is always a delight, no matter how bad the script, acting or production values. I've seen quite a few such westerns over the past few years and I will admit, Tumbleweed is one of the weaker ones. Still, that does not mean that it is a terrible film, the standard for the westerns made by Universal is set rather high for me personally, it is an enjoyable effort with spellbinding action scenes. The storyline is a competent and intriguing one and will keep you watching until the very end. The main problem is that the film is rather hollow and dry. It's starts off well but then slows down in the middle before picking up in pace towards it's climax. The middle of the film mainly consists of Harvey riding across the desert on his horse and talking to it, which gets very tedious after a while. The vistas of the parched sands and craggy mountains were pleasing and the cinematography was effective. The acting is usual standard for a B western with Audie Murphy doing what he does best, which I've seen in most of his other westerns. Chill Wills gave a decent performance as the Sheriff and look out for a significant turn from a young Lee Van Cleef as a deputy, a far cry from his roles as Colonel Mortimer and Sabata. It was great to see him progressing in the genre that suited him best. Although there were few, the action scenes were fantastic and gave the film a satisfying bodycount. There were some awesome stunts in the Indian fights and the horseback chase and subsequent fistfight among the rocks was particularly thrilling.Enjoyable time passer if you're bored on a cold winters afternoon. 7/10.

A truly fun old western and Audie Murphy was fantastic as always. One of the great fight scenes on film come at the end between Audie Murphy and Russell Johnson (The Professor from Gilligan's Island)Recommended viewing for western and Audie Murphy fans.