A Major Disappointment

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Val Lewton and Hugo Fregonese, that's quite a pair and this film makes justice to it. Fregonese directed some solid westerns like "The Raid", Blowing Wild" and "Saddle Tramp". It is hard to find a western that did not age and when looking for some aspect of it that will be cheesy, naive, improbable, deja vu,etc you will not find it. This is just the case. Stephen McNally is Sam Leeds, a gambler who loses his credibility to the town people, so when he tries to warn them about an incoming attack by the Apaches, they don't believe him. Coleen Gray is Sally, the woman he loves, but does not trust him and Willard Parker is Madden, his rival the local mayor. From the moment Leeds realizes there is going to be an attack, the film has a tense ambiance which keeps getting worse as people start dying in the church. Good cinematography by Charles P. Boyle who also did some remarkable westerns like "The Cimarron Kid" and "Horizons West".

After gunning down two people in a saloon a gambler by the name of "Sam Leeds" (Stephen McNally) is told to leave the town of "Spanish Boot" at noon by the local mayor "Joe Madden" (Willard Parker). Although Joe believes that Sam's presence is bad for the town there is also a woman named "Sally" (Coleen Gray) who both men are attracted to that might have also factored into this decision. However, since he has little choice he sets out into the desert only to discover that the Apaches are on the warpath and rushes back to Spanish Boot to tell them of the news. At first they don't believe him but when a small cavalry unit arrives they realize that they will need every gun they can get—and even then it might not be enough. At any rate, rather than disclose any more of the film and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was a pretty good grade-B western movie for this particular time. It certainly would have been a fine picture to show at the local drive-in. Slightly above average.

This really is a poor film.Whilst the basic story is a typical good old yarn, the performances (with the exception of James Griffith as the Army commander) are very one-dimensional and the characters are hackneyed and do not develop.The production values are also very low and make-up on some of the "Apaches" in the title are more akin to a horror movie than a western, consequently one's mind starts to wander which is not helped by such a pedestrian-paced storyline.And as for direction, there is a literally-laugh-out-loud scene when they sing where you can not only tell that everyone singing is from the Welsh valleys that even the main character does not lip-synch in time. Although there is a slight raising of tension towards the latter parts of the film it is only slight and not really enough to make you have any doubt about the ending.I love westerns and am trying to see as many as I can at the moment but this is one of which I wish I had not bothered wasting an hour and a half of my time.

As I watched this film I could not understand why they kept referring to Arthur Shields as Welsh. This is an actor who has specialised in Irish doctors and priests and who made no attempt to change his accent to play a Welsh preacher. And then came the song, Men of Harlech, in Welsh ! To watch everyone desperately trying to mime to the song was one of the silliest things I've seen in a very long time. Everyone has since seen how well this song can work in Zulu but to drop it into this average Western was decidedly odd. It was as if some one had a song to use and a someone else a script and the two were simply rammed together regardless of the fit.