Die schwarzen Reiter von Dakota

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.

Hugh Marlowe must have felt just like Richard Blaine in Casablanca when Sergeant Ray Milland was assigned to the same post. Back in the Civil War they fought it out over a woman with Marlowe getting slashed with a saber and Milland getting busted out of the army.

But Milland's come back as an enlisted man in the 7th cavalry where Captain Marlowe is now assigned and there's Helena Carter to get the boys hormones a going'.

Fortunately this triangle story with the replacement apex is against the background of the fight at Little Big Horn. Lots of nice slam bang action make up for some of the sillier aspects of the romance.

Good Saturday afternoon western for those like me who like them.

Ray Milland looks rather too old and polished for the uniform of a cavalry sergeant, and it could have done with less of Dimitri Tiomkin's noisy score.

But the quirky framing employed in the prologue to this good-looking, action-packed Technicolor potboiler co.scripted by Geoffrey Homes (best known for his film noirs), which includes a bargain-basement reenactment of Little Big Horn, hints at the fanciful visuals of director Roy Rowland's very next film, 'The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T'.

And it's always nice to see Barton MacLane play a good guy for a change.

Bugles in the Afternoon is directed by Roy Rowland and adapted to screenplay by Daniel Mainaring and Harry Brown from the Ernest Haycox novel. It stars Ray Milland, Helena Carter, Hugh Marlowe, Forrest Tucker, Barton Maclane and George Reeves. A Technicolor production with music by Dimitri Tiomkin and cinematography by Wilfred M. Cline.

Solid enjoyable fare that doesn't push any boundaries. Story finds Milland as Kern Shafter, a cavalryman cashiered out the service for running through Edward Garnett (Marlowe). After drifting for a while, Shafter ends up at Bismarck and joins the Seventh Cavalry at Fort Abraham Lincoln. Unfortunately, his new superior is none other than Captain Edward Garnett! As the two men vie for the same woman, Josephine Russell (Carter), Garnett continually puts Shafter into perilous situations as the Indian War rages. With the arrival of Custer (Sheb Wooley) to lead the men for an attack on the Sioux at Little Big Horn, Garnett and Shafter will each find their day of destiny.

It's all very colourful and muscular, with well staged fights and nifty stunt work. The love triangle core of the story doesn't grate or swamp the film in pointless mush, however, it seems strange to have the massacre at Little Big Horn in your story, yet only have it as a minor side issue to a couple of guys feuding with each other. Milland and Tucker, the latter as an Irish Private who befriends Shafter and welcomes pain as a test of manhood, both score well with engaging turns, while Carter also does good work with what could easily have been a token girl in the middle role. Location photography in Kanab is delightful (Cline would prove to be a dab hand in Westerns for the rest of the decade), and Tiomkin scores the music with verve and vigour.

There's some stereotyping of the Indians, and this even though there are some real Native Americans in the cast, while Marlowe is done no favours as his villainy is poorly written, but a better than average time waster this proves to be on a wintry afternoon by the fire. 6.5/10

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.