Fort Courageous

Some scathing comments were appended to one version provided on Youtube and I feared the worst. But the wasn't too bad, apart from the last few anticlimactic minutes which others have commented on. The scenery was good and the fort looked authentic enough.

Quite why two attractive women were travelling on their own across such hazardous country I don't know, and the scout fired his revolver at fleeing Indians at the most optimistic range I've ever seen, even by Western standards; his eventual death was quite gruesome for the time when the film was made.

For once, none of the actors was known to me but they all did well enough.

Tempted almost to give it a six, but five will do.

Probably among the best of Lesley Selander, who also gave us good films such as RIDING SHOTGUN and other "Fort" films, mostly in the late fifties and early sixties. So this western is a good surprise from a B film maker; Lesley Selander was not John Ford nor Henry Hathaway, and for this reason I was so amazed by the character study and also some directing good ideas. Some torture sequences which were not so far from great director Bob Aldrich for ULZANA'S RAID or a John Sturges's film. Don Red Barry is also excellent in this role of an old timer, a vet soldier about to get retired. Yes a damn pretty good B western. In the early sixties, there were many of this kind, most made by the likes of Lesley Selander, RG Springsteen, Harry Keller, William Witney, Bill Claxton, George Sherman.... You can also have here some kind of Gordon Douglas' CHUKA perfume, atmosphere....

Was a wet afternoon and thought I would watch one of those free movies on the internet. Since I like westerns, this was the first movie that displayed that I had not seen. So sat down and prepared myself for a movie that I was sure would be a low budget affair.

The movie started well as Fort Courageous came under attack from a large group of Indians. The Indians over-ran the Fort and then the scene changed to a patrol of Cavalry officers that was leading a court-martial Sergeant Lucas to the fort on their way to prison. It seems that Lucas was accused of a crime that he claims that he did not commit.

On the way they come across a group of Indians attacking a wagon that was occupied by a woman and her teen-aged daughter. Ms Tate and her daughter, Elizabeth, was on their way to settle down in a place that was free of trouble but instead found themselves surrounded and the young daughter raped by the Indians. The Cavalry came to the aid of the women but at the cost of the Captain that was on his way to become leader of the fort. They all began the long journey to the fort.

When arriving at the fort they find all the people, except for one Major, dead. Now they will become the hunted for the Indians that are stationed outside the fort and will have to deal with many situations.

This was not the best performed acting for a movie but the western genre did provided for some things to be overlooked. And as other have already said, the ending to this story was terrible. There is no closure to the main plot plus the lot of characters well-being in never finally determined. It was if the money for the production ran-out and they just needed an ending for the cheapest price possible. And I can say that they succeeded making a cheap ending.

Even with the poor acting, the story was not really that bad. If the movie had closure then this would have been a surprising view. Instead, it comes across as a class B movie.

An ex-cavalry sergeant, being escorted to prison after being convicted of a crime he didn't commit, finds himself leading the remnants of a unit that has been under Indian attack at a fort. The commanding officer has been killed, the Indians vastly outnumber them, and the only bargaining chip they have is the fact that they have captured the Indian chief's son.

The Utah setting helps bring a sense of authenticity to the proceedings and some interesting character arcs injects some good aspects into the routine story of "besieged troopers holding out against overwhelming odds scenario". The hero - Beir's Sgt. Lucas - is a complex character. He's a prisoner accused of rape, but the fact that he's willing to lead the survivors through treacherous country speaks volumes of his innocence. It's downbeat at times, talky, ponderously paced, punctuated by some good action, but it's mainly character driven, though a little grim. Though Fred Beir acts very well, a more charismatic and spirited lead would have injected more energy into his character. The ending is abrupt, and the reason why the Apaches called a truce was weak, especially when they were winning. But hey it's 70 minute film so...

On his way to the military prison on Alcatraz, wrongly convicted soldier Fred Beir and his transport are attacked by marauding Indians. Barely making it to the fort, Beir and the rest of his men find it the site of a massacre and themselves surrounded.

One of the last of the old-fashioned studio B-westerns, this is a stark, grim affair, with some nasty bits of violence and torture, a weird preoccupation with sexual assault(!) and a mean performance by Donald "Red" Barry as the fort's commanding officer and lone survivor.

However, it drops the ball in the end, with a hastily tacked-on romance and a conclusion that's abrupt, painfully unrealistic and patently bizarre. Clocking in at a slim seventy-two minutes, there's really no excuse in the world for it to end so abruptly and so unsatisfactory!

Still, it's worth watching for the most part. There's some nice black-and-white photography and a grittiness that anticipates the wave of spaghetti westerns and their American counterparts that flooded US theaters the following year and pretty much ended the need for these kind of cheaply made westerns.