Pretty Good

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Revolt at Fort Laramie is directed by Lesley Selander and written by Robert C. Dennis. It stars John Dehner, Gregg Palmer, Frances Helm, Don Gordon and Robert Keys. Music is by Les Baxter and cinematography by William Margulies.Upon watching this above average Oater one word kept coming to mind, brief! Be it the battle scenes, the finale and of course the running time, it'as all so brief. Which when you have such a powder-keg premise at the core of the pic, is hugely annoying.We have the Fort of the title made up of Southern and Northern soldiers, all standing together to repel the Red Cloud led Sioux Army. Then the First Battle of Fort Sumter opens on April 12, 1861, and what was once a harmonious force is now divided. Into the mix is shifty shenanigans involving gold, a lovers relationship under strain and murder! If only we could have had a bigger budget, another thirty minutes run time, and someone to throw a firecracker over it and BOOM!Still, it's an entertaining piece with well staged battles - one a siege and one on the river - good scenes such as the opposing soldiers singing against each other with their respective "homeland" anthems, and fun moments like Dehner's Major Bradner being restrained in leg irons to stop him sleepwalking to his doom! Baxter's score is mostly standard stuff but occasionally shows inspiration like incorporating the said North/South anthems, while the Kanab locations are beautifully utilised (so not Laramie then? So what). If only everything wasn't so brief. Grrrr. 6/10

I can't tell you how many Civil War films I've seen that pitted brother against brother, but this story had an interesting idea I haven't seen before. It had to do with a Cavalry outfit literally days before the start of the Civil War that's sent into turmoil when news is announced that Confederate forces have fired on Fort Sumter. I guess it's something you don't think about in history class, but here you had Southern soldiers ready to break with their Northern counterparts over their divided loyalties while serving together at a remote Western post. The kicker here is that a warring tribe of Sioux are waiting nearby to receive a ransom payoff to keep the peace, but now the Southern cohort has their eyes on a gold shipment that was intended for that purpose.If all that weren't enough, you have your Northern soldier (Gregg Palmer), Southern belle (Frances Helm) romance that's threatened by the new circumstance. The Major in charge of the fort is himself a Virginian, and in a scene I wouldn't have expected, Seth Bradner (John Dehner) promotes Captain James Tenslip (Palmer) to the same rank in order to resign his post and lead the Southern sympathizers across Indian territory on their way to a Confederate assignment.Sioux Chief Red Cloud (Eddie Little Sky, cool name!) doesn't quite know how to process this bit of information, so holds Major Bradner in exchange for the ransom they expected in the first place. Tenslip sees it as his duty to come to the rescue of his former brothers-in-arms, and leads his forces to battle the Sioux, but the film ends rather abruptly when the fighting's over, with the Southerners continuing to go on their way. It all ended rather anti-climactically, but at just over an hour, the story didn't leave much time to reflect on what just happened.

In the run-up to Maj Bradner's fateful announcement, we are led to believe that there is a "tension" between Northern and Southern soldiers at this far west outpost. Also, the announcement that we are expecting is not forthcoming. Great movie but left me scratching my head when Maj Bradner said that Fort Sumpter had just been attacked by Confederate forces and that President Lincoln had called for an "intervention." This error is later repeated by Captain Tenslip. What the major and the captain should have said was that Fort Sumner, located in South Carolina, had been attacked. It was this attack that precipitated the Civil War. Fort Sumpter was fired on by the British during the Revolutionary War!

At Fort Laramie they made a deal to give gold to chief Red Cloud in exchange for peace. While they are waiting for the gold to arrive, the civil war starts. Part of the soldiers, like Major Bradner who commands the Fort, belong to the South. A state of war starts being created between them and the others, whose leader is Captain Tenslip. At a certain moment half of the Fort is singing Dixie and the other half "John Brown's Body". Tenslip and Bradner's niece Melissa are in love and want to get married, but the night they are going to announce their engagement, they learn about the war. They are now on opposite sides. The director Lesley Selander was an expert in doing westerns, he even made Hopalong Cassidy films. Average western, good story, but tight production budget.