Die schwarzen Reiter von Dakota

When the film begins, you see Captain Shafter (Ray Milland) being thrown out of the Cavalry for attacking another officer. The exact circumstances are unknown.

In the next scene, years have passed and Shafter is heading west on a stage coach. He is going to re-enlist in the Cavalry under an assumed name...and wouldn't you know it that the guy he attacked years ago (Hugh Marlow) is there and looking to get revenge on Shafter. All this, by the way, is set during the period in which Crazy Horse is on the rampage and heading to a showdown at the Little Big Horn.

This is a very standard western and Milland is just fine. There is nothing particularly bad nor good about this one...a decent time passer with a satisfying finale.

"Bugles in the Afternoon" was filmed in the desert around Kanab, Utah, and because of that arid landscape, many viewers may assume that Fort C.F. Smith and the Custer Battlefield were located somewhere in the American Southwest. Please keep in mind that the actual battlefield is located Southeast of Billings, Montana near what is now the border with Wyoming. The area along the Little Big Horn River, and eastward to the rise of Rose Bud Creek is characterized by rolling hills, which on that fateful morning of June 25, 1876 were probably still covered by green prairie grass, not rocks and sand. Though somewhat muddled geographically, this is still a most entertaining movie !

The book "Bugles in the Afternoon" is regarded as one of the better novels relating to Custer's Last Stand, and this film is a reasonable adaptation, not that it devotes much time to the battle itself. Rather it concentrates on a love triangle, with some good cavalry action with the Indians that is almost incidental to the Custer massacre.

I blinked a little at Kern Shafter's appearance on arriving to enlist at Fort Abraham Lincoln; he looked extremely smart, even for the gambler he had become. I assume his motivation in rejoining the colours was nostalgia for army life,though this wasn't completely evident.

The well-known participants in the battle - Custer, Reno, Benteen - don't get much screen time, and the General himself has only a few lines. At least he looks the part, with the short hair he favoured for a hot campaign rather than his trademark long locks. Purists may raise their eyebrows at the cavalry using repeating rifles, when in fact they carried single-shot carbines, and pack-animals rather than the wagons shown supplied the troops in the general battlefield area.

But all in all, it's a reasonable cavalry Western, but not in the same league as those of John Wayne and John Ford.

An interesting variation on the story of Custer's last stand. It deals with the same battle with the Sioux, but at a site a few miles away from where Custer and his men were massacred. This premise is a nice angle to focus on although I'm not sure that any part of this has any historical battle. The scenery is breathtaking and we were treated to arrows in the back, Indians flying off horses, hand to hand combat and fisticuffs between soldiers. Ray Milland looks alarmingly like John Wayne, but I enjoyed his performance. Too much of the movie concentrates on a love triangle between Milland, his boss and seemingly the only female in the whole area. Quite frankly, both men needed their heads banging together and told to get on with the job in hand. But where would the drama be in that? Despite this whole feud becoming a little tiresome, this was an interesting piece and is well worth a view.

A strikingly resplendent Milland opens the film in full Union garb, but all his brass and stripes are immediately removed as he is dishonorably discharged from military service - why, the film fails to explain, setting the tone of incomplete and poorly presented information that pervades it to the end, with a Milland-Carter-Marlowe love entanglement, General Custer and Little Big Horn thrown in for spice. Sadly, dialogue suffers from inanities and more than once did I wrestle with a desire to just stop it after some 40 minutes.

BUT!... 40 minutes is a massive investment so at that point I upped from the sofa and raided the fridge, felt better and made a massive effort to see it to the end. Which I did. I wish I had a bugle to sound for every idiotic scene, line and facial expression, and I would have put any military parade to shame. I even thought of Peter Sellers blowing his horn at the start of THE PARTY (1967) in a send-up on GUNGA DIN (1939).

When Captain Garnett (Marlowe) decides to take a shot at Milland in the middle of an Indian attack, apparently to avoid blame while removing Milland from the above-mentioned love triangle, I had enough.

What a waste of talent and - even worse! - of my time valuable time! Milland's OK acting and some effective landscape photography earn this dud 5 stars.