The Great Sioux Massacre

Historically, the real Captain was Benteen but in this movie he is called Captain Benton. I was hearing that said and to verify, I put the movie into mute sound and turned on the closed captions and it was indeed spelled Benton. I suspect this was due to the difficulty of the audience hearing the correct sound as other characters, i.e. Custer, Tom and Custer, George are kept with the correct names and also Major Reno. The Rosebud River is north and east of the Little Bighorn and was actually where one of the two Generals, either Crook or Terry, was defeated prior to the engagement at Little Big Horn. The battle of Little Bighorn was June 25, 1876 and some writers have speculated that Custer expected to ride in to Philadelphia for the national convention on the heels of his victory. A good biography is "Son of the Morning Star" by Evan S. Carlson. I have to agree that the movie is so bad that it is fun and somehow worth watching but, in perspective, a great film, "They Died with their Boots on" shares the same guilt with its lack of historical accuracy and I love "Boots" so it's the movie that counts in these cases, not the facts.

This routine Western deals with an officer called Benton and his relationships with Custer who is ousted from his command in the Far West and forced into retirement . But Custer's political motivation changed him and fueled by ambition when a senator convinces him to run for US president . Along the way Captain Benton (Darren McGavin) clashes Colonel Custer and he's degraded , being court-martialed , while he escapes and attempts to prevent the bloodshed . After that , Custer decides to upstage the recommendations of Major Reno (Joseph Cotten) and Captain Benton (Darren McGavin) at Little Big Horn . Crazy Horse (Iron Heyes Cody) and Chief Sitting Bull (Michael Pate) of the Sioux tribe are forced by the Indian-hating General Custer to react with violence , resulting in the known Last Stand at Little Bighorn . Blood-Vengeance Clashed With Custer's Cavalry! "Little Big Horn"...The Blood-Red River...When Indian Arrows Met Cavalry Rifles in Custer's Famous Last Stand!Custer's Last Stand...The One Battle No Indian Warrior or Cavalry Hero Could Ever Forget!

This exciting but mediocre movie contains western action , romance , shoot-outs and spectacular battles . Resulting to be an average look at what occurred to George Amstrong Custer during the 1870s ; at the beginning he was an outspoken believer in fair treatment for the Indians , and , subsequently , he'll cruelly command his troops at the Battle of Little Big Horn . The picture gives a brief portrayal of General Custer from a defender of Native-American rights and a real fighter against Administration corruption , even denouncing to President's brother , to an ambitious figure , politically-driven and headlines-seeker . Furthermore , describing an Indian reservation where the starving natives are mistreated and suffering extreme famine ; they , then , violently rebel against government resulting in fateful consequences . This film contains stock-shots taken from Sitting Bull (1954) sharing a similar plot and director himself . The yarn was shot outside of Mexico City and in the Churubusco Azteca studios . Washed-out print , the film needs urgently a perfect remastering . It appears as a technical adviser and designer Indian costumes , a secondary actor named Iron Eyes Cody , usual player as Indian roles (Sitting Bull , Great Sioux Massacre , A man called Horse) , though with Sicilian origin . The motion picture was regularly directed by Sidney Salkow. He was a craftsman who had already filmed other Westerns . He realized all kind of genres such as routine westerns (Sitting Bull , The great Sioux massacre , Pathfinder) , Adventures (Prince of Pirates , Sword of the avenger) , war films , Sci-Fi (The last man on Earth) , Terror (Twice-told tales) and melodramas (City without men) . Salkow first worked for Republic, after joining Universal . At Columbia , he handled , among other assignments, four installments of the popular Lone Wolf series . After 1953, Salkow was primarily active as director of episodic television . Rating : 4.5/10 middling and regular Western.

The film is a fiction , but partially based on real events . The reality happened in December 1873 when the Commissioner of Indian Affairs directed all Sioux bands to enter reservations by the end of January 1876 or be declared hostile . There then shows up Sitting Bull , celebrated chief and mystic of the Hunkpapa Sioux . Many bands of Sioux did not meet this deadline and were attacked by US troops . Crazy Horse and his Oglala people moved north to join forces with Sitting Bull , by the spring of 1876 some 3000 Teton Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors had assembled at Sitting Bull's camp in the valley of the Little Big Horn in Montana. On 25 June 1876 Crazy Horse and other war chiefs led the allied warriors against General Custer and his seventh Cavalry , Custer and all the man under his direct command were killed . This victory , however , brought relentless retaliation from the army and Sioux were scattered . Sitting Bull and his followers fled to Canada and stayed there until July 1881 , when he returned to the US and surrendered at Fort Buford , Montana . After he was placed on a South Dakota reservation . For a year Sitting Bull went a tour with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show . He continued to regard himself as chief of his people and he earned the enmity of an Indian agent . On 25 December 1890 , Indian policemen went to take the chief , his followers tried to prevent this and in the struggle he was shot dead .

I write this having read two damning criticism of a film which was strong enough for me to watch the whole way through. Living in the age of televised war games where tens of thousands of warriors can be immediately created remember that just 271 members of the Seventh Cavalry died at the Battle of the Big Horn. Presumably equally divided into three bands of ninety for reasons which I have yet to fathom although the politicking glory hunting which drove Custer to get there first was perhaps the driving theme of this film which must have cost its producers a fortune as it was clearly shot mainly in uninhabitable shrub land and certainly not in the gold bearing rocks of Dakota. And was it closer to the truth than so many other attempts ? it suspect so as luck - sorry Gluck - the screenwriter - would have it ? So apart from Sitting Bull speaking perfect English and the redemption of Joseph Cotton from drunken hater of almost everything to a credit to the US Army I have little complaint with what was a slight thought provoking 90 Minutes.

About the only redeeming quality is Joseph Cotton and, in this instance, that is not saying a lot.

But what really gets me is: About 30-40 minutes of this film is footage from another western made 11 years earlier--"Sitting Bull (1954)." In this movie, the Indians ride down on Custer from what could be northern California Sierra Nevada's or even somewhere in South Dakota while the 7th cavalry is riding through the arroyo's of southern New Mexico or western Arizona and they combine the footage from both films to make it look like they are fighting one another. The footage from Sitting Bull is also used in many things such as the escape from the stockade by the Indians and also various scenes when the Indians are shot and fall off their horses. One Indian, for instance, falls off his horse and practically rolls right into the camera on Sitting Bull and that same Indian, on the same horse, falls off again in this movie and practically rolls right into the camera. I have them on video back to back and am able to view them so it makes it really easy to detect the same scenes from the earlier movie being used.

It's cheap and shoddy!

They say a leopard doesn't change it's spots, and people don't change overnight, however in this trite little '60s western they do just that. The story is flawed, the acting is bad, and history is played with fast and loose, and what remains is not worthy of viewing.