The Indian Fighter (1955)
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/Cinemascope 88m
Director: André de Toth
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau, Lon Chaney Jr, Walter Abel, Elsa Martinelli
Synopsis:
An army scout arrives in Sioux country to use his ties with the natives so that a wagon train of settlers can safely pass through to new territory in Oregon. However, undesirable elements are only too ready to spark an Indian war by flouting the rule against trading whisky for gold.
Review:
Released through United Artists by the star's own production outfit, and handsomely shot on location in Oregon, this mostly conventional 50s Western nevertheless has certain points of interest. Alongside the routine characterisations of trusting and suspicious red and white skins alike, there is the unreformed trapper embodied by Douglas, who is on the one hand ready to risk his life to save white scum in defence of due process, while at the same time resentful of eastern incursions into his 'domain', his exclusive co-existence with the Indian represented by a coupling with Martinelli's squaw and rejection of Diana Douglas's offer of settled matrimony. Fine if you can take the star's particular brand of rogue virility, his idea of seducing the chief's daughter being to arm-wrestle her into a clinch and pull her by the hair into the nearest brook - and it works! Skinny-dipping Martinelli brings some novel sensuality to the traditionally demure moccasinned sweetheart, and her survival to the end points to the gradual evolution of the 'Indian Western': miscegenation now allowed. Elisha Cook, third Jr in the cast alongside Hale and Chaney, plays a pioneer photographer whose attempts to 'capture' the allure of the West meet with qualified support from Douglas's mountain man.
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/Cinemascope 88m
Director: André de Toth
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau, Lon Chaney Jr, Walter Abel, Elsa Martinelli
Synopsis:
An army scout arrives in Sioux country to use his ties with the natives so that a wagon train of settlers can safely pass through to new territory in Oregon. However, undesirable elements are only too ready to spark an Indian war by flouting the rule against trading whisky for gold.
Review:
Released through United Artists by the star's own production outfit, and handsomely shot on location in Oregon, this mostly conventional 50s Western nevertheless has certain points of interest. Alongside the routine characterisations of trusting and suspicious red and white skins alike, there is the unreformed trapper embodied by Douglas, who is on the one hand ready to risk his life to save white scum in defence of due process, while at the same time resentful of eastern incursions into his 'domain', his exclusive co-existence with the Indian represented by a coupling with Martinelli's squaw and rejection of Diana Douglas's offer of settled matrimony. Fine if you can take the star's particular brand of rogue virility, his idea of seducing the chief's daughter being to arm-wrestle her into a clinch and pull her by the hair into the nearest brook - and it works! Skinny-dipping Martinelli brings some novel sensuality to the traditionally demure moccasinned sweetheart, and her survival to the end points to the gradual evolution of the 'Indian Western': miscegenation now allowed. Elisha Cook, third Jr in the cast alongside Hale and Chaney, plays a pioneer photographer whose attempts to 'capture' the allure of the West meet with qualified support from Douglas's mountain man.
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/Cinemascope 88m
Director: André de Toth
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau, Lon Chaney Jr, Walter Abel, Elsa Martinelli
Synopsis:
An army scout arrives in Sioux country to use his ties with the natives so that a wagon train of settlers can safely pass through to new territory in Oregon. However, undesirable elements are only too ready to spark an Indian war by flouting the rule against trading whisky for gold.
Review:
Released through United Artists by the star's own production outfit, and handsomely shot on location in Oregon, this mostly conventional 50s Western nevertheless has certain points of interest. Alongside the routine characterisations of trusting and suspicious red and white skins alike, there is the unreformed trapper embodied by Douglas, who is on the one hand ready to risk his life to save white scum in defence of due process, while at the same time resentful of eastern incursions into his 'domain', his exclusive co-existence with the Indian represented by a coupling with Martinelli's squaw and rejection of Diana Douglas's offer of settled matrimony. Fine if you can take the star's particular brand of rogue virility, his idea of seducing the chief's daughter being to arm-wrestle her into a clinch and pull her by the hair into the nearest brook - and it works! Skinny-dipping Martinelli brings some novel sensuality to the traditionally demure moccasinned sweetheart, and her survival to the end points to the gradual evolution of the 'Indian Western': miscegenation now allowed. Elisha Cook, third Jr in the cast alongside Hale and Chaney, plays a pioneer photographer whose attempts to 'capture' the allure of the West meet with qualified support from Douglas's mountain man.