The Great Sioux Uprising

Have you ever watched a film and thought to yourself "This isn't bad....but it also isn't good, either". Well, that's the impression I had in watching "The Great Sioux Uprising".

The story is set in the west during the Civil War. Apparently, the Union army needs horses and they've contracted with an unscrupulous dirt-bag to get them. But Stephen Cook (Lyle Bettger) doesn't seem to care where he gets them or if he starts a war with the various Indian tribes...all he wants is the money. So, it's up to a traveling doctor (Jeff Chandler) to save the day.

The action is fair. The villain is fair. The story is fair. The treatment of the natives in the film...fair. Nothing really stands out as good nor bad. It's purely a time-passer and nothing else.

The Great Sioux Uprising in the tradition of B westerns is a misnomer of a title. No great uprising takes place though not for Lyle Bettger's efforts to get one started.

During the Civil War Bettger is a horse dealer and the biggest one around. He'd like to merge with another dealer, Faith Domergue and crush his other competitors. The reason he's the biggest horse dealer around is that Bettger steals his horses from the Indians and gets top dollar for them from the army. Kind of an unfair advantage don't you think?

Enter Jeff Chandler former Union Army surgeon now a veterinarian who has given people doctoring because of a war wound and now tends to animals. He sees what Bettger is doing and tries to organize the opposition, but Bettger is a very clever villain if a little less psychotic than he usually is in films.

There's also a Confederate general in the area looking to make his own deal with the Sioux. It all adds up to an interesting western of the Civil War era.

There are some interesting supporting performances by friendly blacksmith Peter Whitney and from Stacy Harris a really mean psychotic sort who is Bettger's right hand man.

For Jeff Chandler's loyal legion of fans.

Jeff Chandler is a veterinarian who sets up in a new town after he earns a measure of the Sioux War Chief, John War Eagle. He's not happy with the white man, because Lyle Bettger has just stolen a herd of their sacred horses to sell to the army. The Civil War is raging.

Lloyd Bacon directs this 'shaky A' western with a strong enough hand, and the script includes some real historical oddities, like an Indian who's a Confederate general, but mostly the movie is too busy with its standard western tropes, fight scenes, and Chandler running the gantlet to make much of them beyond some handsome Technicolor photography by Maury Gertsman. Faith Domergue offers some nice scenery as the love interest, and some long-time western stars can be spotted in the crowds, like Edmund Cobb and Kermit Maynard. However, while always watchable for its competence, it breaks no new ground.

This low-budget, low-ambition western actually contains the line, "white man speak with forked tongue." Well, nearly. A doctor poses as a vet to track down two horse thieves and prevent the great Sioux uprising. Rather slow-moving and the liberal speeches at the end are the last straw.

A crooked horse dealer threatens to spark an Indian uprising during the Civil War when he steals horses belonging to the Sioux. It's only 80 minutes long, but The Great Sioux Uprising seems to go on forever thanks to a pedestrian screenplay from no less than four writers. Jeff Chandler, one of Hollywood's blandest leading men, plays a Union doctor suffering from battle fatigue who gets wind of bad guy Lyle Bettger's plot to steal hundreds of horses belonging to the Sioux, who, a little unusually for an early '50s Western, are portrayed as victims pushed to violence by the treacherous white man. Don't hold your breath waiting for that uprising - this is a title that fails to deliver on its promise.