Back in 2019, I did a post on the Fox movie My Friend Flicka, which I didn't care for. The movie was popular on its release in the middle of World War II, however, and Fox decided to spring for a sequel. That sequel, Thunderhead, Son of Flicka, has been in the FXM rotation for a few months now. Being one of the few FXM offerings that I hadn't blogged about before, I decided to record it. It's going to be back on FXM tomorrow (October 8) at 4:40 AM, so I recently watched it to be able to do a review on it.
Most of the main cast of My Friend Flicka returns, with the main star being Roddy McDowall as Ken McLaughlin, son of a horse rancher. Apparently, the horse ranchers let their horses run free during the winter months, gathering them back together in spring. Ken goes out to get his favorite horse, Flicka, and discovers that Flicka has finally given birth to her foal. But that foal has white hair, which might seem odd considering that neither Flicka nor the putative father, Banner, have white hair. Ken plans to rais the foal to be a racer and win lots of prize money.
Meanwhile, Dad (Preston Foster) invites a couple of people over to talk shop: neighbor Mr. Sargent and cavalry officer Maj. Harris, who buys a bunch of the McLaughlin's horses. The adults talk about an albino horse that invades the various ranchers' herds, absconding with a bunch of mares. The obvious assumption is that this albino raped poor Flicka but didn't take Flicka with him back to wherever it is that Albino runs wild. Or ran wild, since nobody has seen Albino in years.
Ken's foal, first named Goblin, is tough to break, which lends more credence to the idea that Goblin is the son of Albino, even though Ken later claims that he took Flicka over to the Sargent place and engaged in a bit of illicit animal husbandry, getting one of Sargent's stallions to copulate with Flicka and knock her up. But Goblin can run fast, and that gives Ken the idea of turning Goblin, eventually renamed Thunderhead, into a racehorse. This goes badly, however, as Thunderbird balks midway during a race and picks up a leg injury that really ought to have the responsible adults shoot the horse dead, although they only retire Thunderbird.
That's important to the plot because, wouldn't you know it, Albino finally shows up again to lure away more of the mares for his harem. Thunderbird runs off, and one hopes that he's like Luke Skywalker looking for an Albino taking on the Darth Vader role. That's not quite what happens, of course.
As you can probably tell from my description of the action as equine rape and referring to the original Star Wars trilogy, I didn't care for Thunderhead, Son of Flicka any more than I cared for My Friend Flicka. I didn't even get into the presence of Hildy, young daughter of one of the ranch hands. She's developed into a particularly obnoxious brat stereotype, with probably my favorite exchange of the movie occurring early on. Ken asks her, "Can't you mind your own business?", to which Hildy responds, "I can, but that wouldn't be as much fun." A budding Karen in the making.
Thunderhead, Son of Flicka is supposed to be a family film, however, so all of the adult themes aren't handled anything like the way I described them. Perhaps if they had been handled that way, the movie might be more fun.
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