Stallion Road

RONALD REAGAN must have enjoyed his role in STALLION ROAD as a veterinarian. He spends most of his time on horses, as does his leading lady, ALEXIS SMITH, more tomboyish than usual and not the frozen ice princess she usually played.

Not much plot development during the first half-hour, although it's obvious that city slicker novelist ZACHARY SCOTT is not going to wind up with Alexis. She has her eyes on Reagan from the start. It's not easy to care about the characters in this horse opera because none of them are well defined and there's so little going on at the start. Blame that on Stephen Longstreet. He wrote the screenplay from his novel of the same name.

You know you're in trouble when the most exciting moment in the story is a high-jumping contest on horseback which Alexis wins against great odds. The balance of the story is involved with an anthrax outbreak which keeps Reagan busy tending to his horses.

ZACHARY SCOTT wears a bored expression as the writer out of his element among horses, the kind of look he perfected in many a film, and this time it's understandable, although he does get some of the wittier lines in the script. PEGGY KNUDSEN has fun as Reagan's man-chasing neighbor with a catty dislike of rancher Alexis. Seems that she too is smitten with Reagan, who pays more attention to horses than women.

If horses are your thing, you may enjoy this horse opera more than I did. Others beware--it's strictly formula stuff. Reagan, in an uninteresting role, is more bland than usual as the doc.