Don't Believe the Hype

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

A familiar cast of western regulars make up the players in The Gatling Gun. Sad to say that a badly written and/or a badly edited story fill this plot with more holes than a Gatling Gun could give a wooden wall.A couple of troopers plus Reverend John Carradine and his seductive stepchild Barbara Luna steal a Gatling Gun from the army to give to the Apaches. One of the troopers is killed, but the other, Robert Fuller, is captured along with Carradine and Luna and Captain Guy Stockwell is assigned to bring The Gatling Gun and his prisoners back.But the Apache chief Carlos Rivas still wants that weapon and the rest of the film is concerned with his efforts to get it even though he doesn't know that it doesn't have a firing pin.The players here speak their lines truly without conviction. They all know that when the film is done it will grace their Thanksgiving table that year.

"The Gatling Gun" emerges as a pretentious, predictable, and pedestrian Cavalry versus the Apaches western about the eponymous weapon. Westerns about Gatling Guns had been made before this one. The most notable was the Gregory Peck cavalry movie "Only the Valiant" from 1951. "It Came from Beneath the Sea" director Robert Gordon and scenarists Mark Hanna of "Slaughter" and Joseph Van Winkle have penned a plodding adventure about a Cavalry patrol that retrieves a Gatling Gun which a misguided preacher had stolen to prevent wholesale violence between the Cavalry and the Apaches. Of course, one of these activists has ulterior motives that involve selling the weapon to a bloodthirsty Apache. Although this western was lensed in the early 1970s, the filmmakers portray the Indians as a sadistic bunch of savages. These redskins are neither downtrodden nor exploited by corrupt white officials on the reservation. Indeed, one white character does speak up in their defense, but "The Gatling Gun" amounts to a traditional John Ford western where every good Indian is a dead Indian. Mind you, nothing approaching subtlety ever hoists its sophisticated head in this 93-minute melodrama. Anything of thematic significance in the narrative is laid on as thick as a trowel by a loquacious lot of characters. The cast consists of several familiar names stuck in lackluster roles. Guy Stockwell is cast as a grim but insipid Cavalry commander. Most of the characters are stereotypes or just plain shallow. Patrick Wayne, Robert Fuller, and Barbara Luna are squandered in this military sagebrusher that takes place strictly in the desert. You never see a Cavalry stockade or an Indian reservation. Basically, "The Gatling Gun" concerns a number of whites banded together who wander through the wilderness while the Indians attack them intermittently. The only suspense that Gordon and his scribes develop is when will the Cavalry succeed in repairing the titular weapon so they can administer staggering blows to the opposition. Most of the time characters are working their jawbones rather than the levers on their repeating rifles. Anybody who remembers the CBS-TV sitcom "Green Acres" will chuckle at the only source of humor in this tedious oater: amiable Pat Buttram who cracks the closest thing that comes to jokes. Legendary horror actor John Carradine shows up momentarily during the early minutes before he takes an arrow in the chest. The most brutal depiction of death occurs when a cavalry trooper is strung up in a tree and the Apaches set him afire. It takes several moments for the enormity of the man's predicament to sink in before the officer puts him out of his misery.Once Lieutenant Wayne Malcolm (Guy Stockwell of "Tobruk") and his troops, including his black scout Runner (Woody Strode of "The Professionals"), recover the Gatling Gun, they learn that the firing pin is missing. They arrest Private Sneed (Robert Fuller of "Laramie") and keep him tied up by a wagon as they trundle the gun by wagon back to the fort. Malcolm has arrests Reverend Harper (John Carradine of "Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula") and his Apache stepdaughter Leona (Barbara Luna), too. Nevertheless, Leona and Sneed are allowed to move about without a guard with them. Meanwhile, the Native Americans led by Two Rivers (Carlos Rivas of "Topaz") keep tabs on the patrol. Of course, Two Rivers is not allowed to kill the horses which would effectively prevent our heroes from accomplishing their mission. Malcolm and his men encounter some civilians, Luke Boland (Phil Harris of "The Jungle Book") and his family, including his son Jim (Patrick Wayne of "The Alamo") and his rifle-toting daughter Martha Boland (Judy Jordan of "The Boatniks"), who are holed up in a house. The Bolands join up with Malcolm's patrol. One of Luke's friends, Tin Pot (Pat Buttram of "Green Acres")fiddles with the Gatling Gun and later devises a replacement for the firing pin. Just with Two Rivers thinks that he has Malcolm and his men cornered, he sends in his braves, only to watch as they are cut down by the Gatling Gun. Earlier, Sneed escaped but Two Rivers captured. Sneed told him that the gun didn't work, and Two Rivers sacrificed the lives of many warriors. When Two Rivers strikes for the last time, he watches in horror as the gun mows down his army and he surrenders."The Gatling Gun" is for die-hard western fans only. Most of the action is filmed in master shots, meaning that once a scene starts, there are few instances of closer shots. The script is so predictable that you can figure out who is going to die. The problem with "The Gatling Gun" is that the characters lack charisma because you never felt sympathetic toward their plight, even after they stumble onto Phil Harris and his family. The Timeless Media Group DVD whittles down cinematographer Jacques Marquette's widescreen compositions.

In many ways, this movie looks and feels much older than 1973, and I'm still not quite convinced that this is accurate. Yet, the social conscience of the 70's is there, if only in throw away lines and occasional, unexpected preachiness. The struggle for the WMD of the era, i.e. the Gatling Gun of the movie's title, involves a small band of US Cavalry, one "bad apple" (Robert Fuller playing effectively against type), and the Apaches, headed by the Spanish speaking chief "Two Knives." Thrown in the mix are the vixenish step-daughter of a self-righteous preacher (must have been a handful for that man of the cloth) and an All-American, sharp-shootin'"Annie Oakley Type" who in one brief scene appears in a dress and is described as "All Girl" (which she is!). Plus John Wayne's son, I think, and a couple of old codgers. Any and all of the characters vacillate here and there in their views on the treatment of the American Indian and their role in history but the Gatling Gun has the final word.

Disappointingly routine western. Not bad enough to be funny, not good enough to be enjoyable.The plot is a cliche: a bunch of bluejackets tries to protect a machinegun from an indian tribe in the desert. The indians are evil, the soldiers are (mostly) good and righteous, and the women are ornaments.2/10 because it's not overlong...