Win, Place or Show: How Will Secretariat Fare Among the 5 Greatest Movie Horses?

Every fall, like clockwork, a studio decides it's time for the season's definitive inspirational, feel-good type movie. You see, people really like inspirational, feel-good type movies! And judging from the genre's history, I can only assume, when trying to decide what feel-good topic to cover, the executives' conversations inevitably drift from underdog sports story to debilitating illness story to, eventually, someone saying, "So... how about a horse story?"

And why not? People love horses, too. Enter this week's equine biopic Secretariat -- but how does the '70s legendary Triple Crown winner stack up against other big screen horses? It may be a photo finish! Er, let me try that again: He certainly will show! No? How about something about a trifecta? Never mind. Here are five horses that were also in a movie at one point or another:

1. Seabiscuit

Seabiscuit is Secretariat's stiffest competition. Seabiscuit was the scrappy underdog horse that had an uncanny ability to somehow know he was in a race. There is nothing scrappy about Secretariat and he is not an underdog. This would be like making a follow-up to Rudy called Notre Dame Football: 1924-1988. Seabiscuit, a fine enough movie, was even nominated for a 2003 Best Picture Oscar that I completely forgot about until exactly this moment and will likely never remember again. Secretariat's chances of pulling off the same feat would also be the first time the name "Secretariat" and the words "long shot" were ever used in the same sentence.

WINNER: Seabiscuit

2. Artax

My fifth grade teacher showed my class The Neverending Story on the last day before winter break. The result was a horrifying scene of 23 11-year-old bawling Midwestern children watching a horse drown in the mud. And at least one of them, to this day, can't look at a horse without thinking about that scene. There's an older generation that had its innocence ripped away after watching Old Yeller; mine died with The Neverending Story.

WINNER: Secretariat

3. Black

The Black Stallion is like two horse movies in one: There's the beginning, involving a boy and a horse trapped on a deserted island -- kind of like the following year's The Blue Lagoon, only it's a horse instead of Brooke Shields. Then, by the end, it somehow becomes another horse racing film. Mickey Rooney, who knows his horse movies (he was also in 1944's National Velvet), received an Academy Award nomination. (Warning: A "black stallion" Google image search brings up very few pictures of horses.)

WINNER: Black

4. Black Beauty

Caroline Thompson, the screenwriter for Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas, made her directorial debut with Black Beauty -- based on the 1877 novel. If you really want to know what it's like to be a horse, Black Beauty's first person narration just may give you an answer. Then again, Black Beauty didn't have the most interesting of lives: He grew up on a farm, pulled a few cabs, and then retired. Not one single horse race or mud pit. Thus...

WINNER: Secretariat

5. Flicka

Roddy McDowall starred in My Friend Flicka, a 1944 coming-of age-story about a boy and his horse, Flicka. There was actually a trilogy of Flicka films, the others being Thunderhead: Son of Flicka and Green Grass of Wyoming. A fairly depressing story, young Ken lives on a Wyoming farm with his father. He's allowed to pick out a horse, which he indirectly almost kills. The rest of the movie is spent nursing the horse back to life. A remake, Flicka, was released in 2006 starring Tim McGraw and Alison Lohman. Cute, but no competition.

WINNER: Secretariat

Who else could this week's thoroughbred take on?