Simply Perfect

hyped garbage

A Masterpiece!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is a movie that constantly teeters on the brink of being awful, yet somehow continually proves itself to be interesting and entertaining. Here's what I liked:Rod Taylor pulls off the role of charismatic "pistolero" loner quite well.I don't know how plausible it is for a former British army officer to be commanding U.S. troops, but John Mills character adds a unique texture to the Western setting.The characters in the movie were very well developed in terms of complexity. Ernest Borgnine and James Whitmore provide excellent supporting acting.I liked the fact that a strong Mexican theme was introduced through the love interest. It was nice to see a Mexican aristocrat portrayed and not the usual ragged, barefoot street vendor/flunkie.Although the Indians were presented as stereotypical murderers threatening the heroes, they were given legitimate cause for their extreme actions.I enjoyed a couple of "super macho" scenes, one involving a extended fist fight between Taylor and Borgnine and the other involving an extended Tequila drinking bout by Taylor and Whitmore.A shout out to lovely Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi. She's very effective as a complex love interest for Taylor.Here's some things I didn't like:There's maybe too much time spent developing the back stories of the main characters. The movie needed more action oriented subplots, especially since it was told as a flashback i.e. We already knew the ending.I found the general pacing too slow, starting with Chuka's long pony ride through the snow at the beginning.Maybe the Arapahoes were starving, but Rod Taylor sure wasn't. Hard to imaging getting that pudgy wandering around the desert on a horse. You think the guy could have worked out a little for this part.I don't know how to shoot a pistol, but I'm sure Taylor's firing technique is extremely poor. Hard to believe he never misses.This was shot almost entirely on set. I like Westerns to have significant location shoots in the West, not in Burbank.The Burbank set itself was very cheap and the whole movie had a cartoonish feel. This was dissonant with its rather grim and violent plot.Was it necessary to reveal that Colonel Valois is no longer a "complete man" because he was sexually mutilated by natives in the Sudan? This was a bizarre non-sequitur introduced late in the movie.There is zero comic relief, at least intentional comic relief.

The story occurs in 1876 , Chuka (Rod Taylor) is a grizzled gunfighter who helps an unexperienced though honorable cavalry officer to roust renegade soldiers and a tribe of Arapahoe Indians . When the main characters arrive at the fort a soldier being flogged for desertion (though hipping or whipping had been prohibited by the U.S. Army as of 5 August 1861) . There Cavalry commandant (John Mills) is saddled not only problems with Native American but irritability among his own troops (Louis Hayward) . Chuka eventually puts the bridle on tight and protects a pair of damsels (gorgeous Luciana Paluzzi and Angela Dorian or Victoria Vetri , famous Miss Playboy) in distress . The Indians are out on a rampage of killing , vengeance against the white intruders and with the aim for getting food .This is an unusually brutal tale of a hard-bitten gunslinger assembling a detail of misfit cavalrymen to hold-off rampaging Indians . Rod Taylor and an expert all-star-cast shine in this gripping story about a surrounded garrison and director takes a fine penned screenplay creating a cavalry-Indians tale that is far from ordinary , exploring the anguish and desperation of soldiers . It's the habitual theme about an unit stranded by enemies and their grueling efforts to break the siege , issue imitated many other times . The picture contains nice moments but partially unsatisfying for the reason of the claustrophobic environment . Produced by Rod Taylor , this Western is predictable and conventional but entertaining . It displays a colorful and adequate cinematography by Harold E. Stine . In addition , atmospheric as well as evocative musical score by Leith Stevens . The motion picture was professionally directed by Gordon Douglas . He's an expert on adventures genre such as ¨Black arrow¨ , ¨Fortunes of Captain Blood¨ , both starred by Louis Hayward and Western , as he proved in the films starred by Clint Walker such as ¨Fort Dobbs¨, ¨Yellowstone Kelly¨ , ¨Gold of seven Saints¨ , Gregory Peck as ¨Only the valiant¨ in similar plot to ¨Chuka¨ , Richard Boone as ¨Rio Conchos¨ considered the best , and on legendary bandits as ¨Doolins of Oklahoma¨ , ¨Great Missouri raid¨ , among others .

Sorry i could not resist the headline.This Western must have been made on the very cheap because everything seems to be made of balsa wood.Rod Taylor seems to have a six shooter which is as accurate as a snipers rifle and which fires 12 shots for every 6 rounds loaded.John Mills has a look which says"this will pay next years tax bill".What about poor Louis Hayward,i didn't even recognise him.It is little wonder that Westerns were on their way out with efforts like this.It has to be another in the pantheon of those films that are so bad that they are actually very enjoyable.So if it comes your way and you want a good laugh then watch this film

This may be one of the strangest A-List movies ever made. It has a superb international cast (U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Italy), but the story is unbearably childish, intolerably boring, and riddled with errors and plot missteps that defy belief. Just a very few: no cashiered foreign officer could possibly get a commission in the U.S. Army, much less rise to the rank of Colonel; no Colonel wears major's leaves as his rank insignia; no Colonel ever commanded a fort consisting of what appears to be no more than a squad of soldiers (not to mention that no frontier fort was ever held by a mere squad); no Americans served in the British Army's Sudan Campaign; Chuka NEVER misses his shots at the rapidly moving Indians, regardless the range and the fact that, rather than aiming, he lunges, throws out, his pistol when firing, which absolutely GUARANTEES a miss; poor Louis Hayward (at the end of his career) agrees to lead a mutiny, which no officer in the U.S. Armed Forces has ever done; there was no concept, ever, of a fort to which were banished incompetent, criminal officers and cast-off, second-rate men (where do they GET ideas like that?)---this could go on forever. Given the idiocies of the plot and parade of one moronic scene after another (e.g., the Commanding Officer going around the dinner table and grievously insulting every single officer in his command), it must be admitted that the highly professional cast did its very best with the hopeless script (written by someone with no knowledge of the military or the American West)---but that was like trying to breathe life into the first 500 pages of the Manhattan telephone directory. Years from now this film---given its stellar cast---will be pondered upon as one of the great mysteries in Hollywood production and film-making.