Trommeln im tiefen Süden

Other than moving quite slowly at times, especially in the beginning, this Civil War feature is not bad. The story is interesting, and eventually it has a fair amount of action and tension. The cast and characters are adequate, if nothing more, and while the settings and details sometimes stretch history and/or credibility, in a more general sense the situation rings true with the kinds of things that happened during the conflict.

The beginning sets up two potential conflicts, with a romantic rivalry intersecting with a friendship that will be tested by the fighting between north and south. It takes rather longer than necessary to establish things, but it moves at a better pace when the main story starts. The main plot, which concerns the desperation effort of a small band of Confederate soldiers to break up a crucial Union supply line, produces some interesting drama and is told with generally interesting details. It's a solid feature with enough to make it worth seeing.

William Cameron Menzies is perhaps the best production designer in American motion picture history (Gone With the Wind, et alia) and his work as director applies the design principles which he espoused, such as with this film, including a prime emphasis upon cinema as a graphic art, a visual rather than literal interpretation of a script, filling that metaphysical space between scenario and direction with an artist's point of view, while avoiding a potentially incorrect objective sensibility. The narrative tells of a pair of best friends and West Point classmates, Georgian Clay Clayburn (James Craig) and Yankee Will Denning (Guy Madison) who are wearing officers' coats of opposing artillery units during the War Between The States, and of the inevitable military engagement between them, featuring a most dramatic segment involving the difficult placement of Confederate cannons atop a mountain overlooking Union rail supply lines, shot with Menzies' intriguing pictorial effects and unique camera angles. An independent King Brothers production under the aegis of RKO, DRUMS IN THE DEEP SOUTH is not replete with good performances, although Craig is solid as is his custom, while Barbara Payton, as Clayburn's lover, tries hard and is at the pinnacle of her short-lived beauty, with Dimitri Tiomkin's lush score properly evocative for this generally prescriptive film.

I recently purchased a 4 DVD set, which included "Shoot Out", "Apache Rifles", "Sitting Bull" and "Drums in the Deep South." Like most westerns of its type, it has a very basic plot. Nonetheless, except for the beginning and the very end, I found it to be an interesting and captivating movie. It features elements of current love, love that once was but is no more, and of course, a pretty girl. Combine that with the added dramatic irony of two friends fighting each other without realizing it, and lots of fast paced action, it makes for a fairly good western movie. What I found to be very disappointing was that two DVD's (I exchanged it today for another copy of the same movie) both have glitches, such as the picture skipping a little bit (kind of a like a skipping CD or broken record, except it's pictures, not sound) and pausing here and there for no reason. Also, an amateur could have done a better job of restoring the colour (or was it adding colour to B&W). I'm glad to know at least, that I'm not the only one experiencing these problems.

I will not spoil the ending, but if I was a director re-doing the movie, I would revise the ending, or perhaps re-write it. And I found the dinner scene in the beginning to be rather lacking in action. Other than that, it was not too bad of a movie. In fact, fix the graphics and I'd really like it.

Corey Walker

I had a really hard time figuring out whether to give this a 5 or a 6. The film has a few things going for it but on the other hand it has some definite problems. I finally settled on a 6. I gave it a point for quirkiness.

The casting of James Craig was obviously intended to evoke Clark Gable and Rhett Butler. Too obviously. Craig's vocal performance seemed to indicate that he also wanted to play up the Clark Gable angle. It was a bit distracting during the love scenes but he seemed to, thankfully, drift away from it during the action sequences.

Guy Madison was cast because he was easy to look at. But his performance was anything but easy to look at. His character gyrated wildly from manic damnyankee enemy to soft hearted friend of the family. I couldn't tell if he was possessed or just in serious need of some mood stabilizing drugs.

I never developed an empathy with the leading male and female characters. Every time they passionately kissed I kept thinking about her poor naive husband off surrounded by Sherman's Army while she played footsie with his alleged old best West Point friend.

The special effects were very interesting and quite well done. But its hard to imagine that anybody ever grew any cotton in the rocky scrub that looked remarkably like Southern California during wildfire season. If you are going to spend the special effects money to matte in a giant plantation house you can at least matte it into a rich green landscape rather than a rocky gulch.

I won't even mention (well actually I will) the fact that the main geographical feature of the movie is a hollowed out, honeycombed, Devil's Tower from Close Encounters. Only this one is smack dab in the middle of Georgia! The makers of this movie would have had better luck just using the real Stone Mountain and pretended it was hollow. I kept expecting the mother ship to hover over the mountain.

The explosive ending seemed to be the result of the writer suddenly realizing that he had to finish his script in the next two sentences. I can't say I've seen a film that only needs 2 seconds to wrap everything up and turn off the lights.

But there are a few good things that made this movie appealing. Your generic Civil War movie has a smashing good Cavalry charge in it and lots of dashing guys on horses waving swords and flags. You know they do. This film went WAY off the beaten path. The heroes of this film are the artillery.....yes....you heard it right.....the heroes are exclusively the Confederate Artillery. That deserves a rating point right there. They even got the Confederate artillery uniform colors right. Its not often you see a Civil War film where the difference between a Dahlgren gun and a Brooke's Rifle is essential to the plot. The artillery battles were handled quite skillfully.

This is essentially a fifties matinee action picture. But the makers did manage to insert a couple of quite beautiful moments into the film. For a moment, a hard-hearted, oppressive, damnyankee skulker becomes human when he presents a photograph of his two babies and thinks wistfully of his family and his farm. More than one character mentions that he didn't start the war, that he was just playing the role assigned to him on the great stage. A few quiet moments about the war's real meaning and effect in this odd little shoot 'em up.

Make no mistake, Guy Madison invented the word "cool". Any dictionary dated before his birth that has the word "cool" in it, is a forgery.

Knowing this helps to cast him in the correct role. He was meant to be the "cool" character who makes sense out of situations in which lesser characters lose their heads.

Here, he is perfectly cast. He is the fourth character, actually, in the love triangle, which is where he does best.

The southern belle's husband appears only briefly, and is afterwards only spoken of in his endeavors in this Civil War adventure.

The other member of the triangle is an artillery officer for the South, who resembles Gable in looks, but in character is more like John Wayne.

Guy Madison plays the Union artillery officer opposing him. He is also a friend of all three of the other characters.

The story is a familiar one, one that has been made many times since, of Confederates on a mountain, trying to buy time for their army.

What really makes this film special is that it could have been cliché, but it avoids all of the clichés. The characters are probably much too believable and three dimensional for the modern beavis or butthead, but easy for most people to relate to and feel some empathy for. This is not for the IMDb bubble boy.

The soldiers are especially three dimensional. One Union soldier whom we expect to be the usual cliché jerk, actually becomes a very sympathetic character in this drama.

The events seem to be written as they occur. Nothing looks contrived, so when we find the coincidence of the friends meeting in battle on opposite sides, it becomes the only coincidence, making it quite credible, as in a world where there are a million possible coincidences an hour, one is sure to happen.

It is the natural flow and non judgmental occurrences, where the chips land wherever they may land, that make this special.

Excellent war Western.