Black Beauty

This adaptation of Anna Sewell's classic children's story doesn't really hit the mark, despite starring the winsome Mark Lester. Director James Hill obviously knows how to work with animals, having made both Born Free and The Belstone Fox, and screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz also had a hand in many notable British films from the late 1950s onwards. But their combined talents couldn't save this muddled and undistinguished Euro-pudding, produced at German and Spanish studios with a pan-European cast, but made in English. Read the book instead or check out Caroline Thompson's enjoyable 1994 adaptation starring Sean Bean.