Noble enemigo

The War of 1812 is the setting for this low-budget but nostalgic western. The reality is that Tecumseh established an Indian confederacy to drive out white settlers but here the chief is portrayed as tolerant and peaceful towards white settlers. The film has the look of a Saturday matinée double bill entry and although there are a few clashes between the Indians and the colonists, the movie offers nothing new. Jon Hall is the star here and goes under cover as a government agent to find out who is stirring up the Indians. Jay Silverheels is the title character and is better than he needs to be as the wise and dignified Shawnee chief. Michael Ansara as the warlike Prophet leads the Indian uprisings and his attacks on the colonists and British spies are major plot angles. The bright, rich technicolor hues enhance the picture and the music accompaniment is also good.

Brave Warrior is directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and written by Robert E. Kent. It stars Jon Hall, Christine Larson, Jay Silverheels and Michael Ansara. Filmed in Technicolor with photography by William V. Skall, the plot is loosely based around the events of the War of 1812 and the Battle of Tippecanoe.

"This is a story of two men in a town all drawn by a strong destiny into the maelstrom that was to be the War of 1812 between the United States and England. One of these men was an American, Steven Ruddell, the other was Tecumseh, greatest of all Indian chiefs. Who had his head quarters at the town of Tippecanoe, home of the Shawnee Indians. The fuse was burning close to the powder keg of war when a flat boat carrying a shipment of salt from Vincennes, capital of the United States territory of Indiana, sailed up the Wabash river bound for Tippencanoe………"

History gets fudged as the makers produce a film that looks real nice, but is a dull as dish water on an entertainment level. Silverheels turns in a good show, but the makers fail to give the character the dignity he warranted, while Skall's capturing of the scenic locale at Simi Valley, California, is of a high calibre. Everything else feels unnatural, almost as if the production team hadn't a clue how to make this little slice of history into a feature length movie. Mercifully it clocks in at a short 73 minutes, but for many, myself included, that's 73 minutes too long. 3/10

The dialogue might be wooden and condescending, veering on patronising, but there's some fair action and decent man-to-man fighting among the Shawnee Native American tribes, back in Indiana, at the turn of the 19th century.

The story's supposedly set around ousting out the British from the frontier-land, as the emerging U.S claim the land for themselves. The idea here, is that which ever side wins over these Indian tribes will score, strategically. When these white dignitaries hold 'discussions' in meeting rooms, these are dry and boring and where the worst script atrocities occur, especially when there is a Shawnee Chief present to (mildly) offend.

Looking, however at its positive aspects and maybe its key audience on release - young boys wanting a cowboy and Indian film, it fares a lot better, with the aforementioned action and stirring rough and tumble. The film looks quite good, too, at least when it's outside in the big old West, rather than the stuffy studio sets. I saw it on a UK commercial TV channel.

This is a reasonable Western with plenty of interesting points for students of the genre. For a start it has a Native American in a starring role. (There may be other instances of this in films made in the mid-20th century but none come to mind.) Jay Silverheels is Tecumseh, the Brave Warrior of the title, though his physical heroism is confined to a knife fight with his brother; his bravery relates more to his wisdom in coming to terms with white Americans, even building a town like one of theirs in which to house his people. He may be ahead of his time in social planning, but he is surely unwise in showing interest in the white heroine. Silverheels does well in this role, certainly when compared with his poker face and wooden lines as Tonto in the Lone Ranger series.

Very few of Jon Hall's films have made it to British TV, so it was good to see him. The rest of the cast do well enough, though their faces are unfamiliar to me and their names do not appear in Quinlan's directories of film actors. Katherine Larson looks and performs better than many heroines in Westerns of this era.

Best of all, it is an "early" Western, set in the early 1810s as tensions mount between Britain and the United States. The Brits are the baddies, but not too much so, thus there is novelty in the plot. The civilian clothes and army uniforms are of the period, as are the single-shot weapons, even if these seem to be reloaded incredibly quickly, especially in the river skirmish that opens the film.

The plot seemed to have an historical basis, so I checked, to discover, not surprisingly, that the film had tampered with the facts.Tecumseh and his brother appear to have been on better terms in real life, and they did found a "town" for their people, but whether this was on white men's lines is not stated.And though the film portrays Tecumseh as being on the side of the United States, after the events it depicts he did join the British side. (One does wonder what damage all these inaccurate Westerns did to people's understanding of American history.)

Jay Silverheels is Tecumseh, persuasively arguing that this is Indiana, after all, as Jon Hall tries to keep the peace, even as one-eyed Michael Ansara tries to make trouble. This causes the Blackhawk War. No, Abraham Lincoln doesn't show up, but you do have James Seay as William Harry Harrison.

William Skall shoots the Battle of Tippicanoe in Technicolor very nicely if all too briefly, but this wouldn't be a Sam Katzman production with the incompetent Spencer Gordon Bennett directing if there wasn't something odious about the production, and here's it's performances, with most of the performers speaking like they've never used words before.