Cavalcata ad ovest

Notable B-Movie Director Phil Karlson Helmed this Above Average Early Fifties, Low-Budget Western with Little Style but its Social Concerns Rode the "New" Esthetic that Shined a much needed Light on Bigotry. There are some Corny Side-Elements to be sure, but the Aforementioned Elevate this one to Respectability.

The Plot is all about a Military Doctor (Robert Francis) and His Treatment of Indians and viewed Them as, God Forbid, Equal People as seen from the Eyes of a "Medicine Man".

Donna Reed is Awkward as a Centerpiece of the Soldiers Attention (one proposes to Her on sight), but the rest of the Cast do Yeoman's Work and it is left to Francis to Carry the Movie. He is Adequate, but the Strength is the Story and its Ramifications about the Mistreatment of a Defeated People thrown in the Trash Bin of History, until Recently.

There are some Wild and Wooly Battles that Punctuate now and then for the Action Oriented Crowd that could give a Hoot about Empathy and Inclusion of a whole Race of People that Desired Respect that was Initially Withheld.

THEY RODE WEST is an idealistic Western in which an arny doctor manages to get US troops to come to peace with joint Kiow and Comanche forces.

In the process, poor Robert Francis (playing Dr. Sewer) has to suffer the vexation of being called an Indian lover, a woodhawk, and a renegade - but still he remains faithful to the Hippocratic oath and he continues to treat whites and Indians as plain human beings and nothing but.

Francis performs credibily and is clearly the good man here, surrounded by others who appear to have sinister and racist motivations, like Captain Blake (played by Phillip Carey), who actually shoots an Indian in the back and never gets punished for it, even though he nearly started a war by doing so.

The two women in this film, Donna Reed and May Wynn, are important to the story in that they can see the good in the doctor and help him advance the cause of peace. Donna Reed gets a strangely small part after winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar the previous year.

All told, it is an enjoyable and highly moralistic Western.

Plenty of credibility holes.

Had he lived to make more than the four films he did Robert Francis might have done a lot of the roles Tab Hunter did. In his memoirs Hunter said that he did so many military based film that he could have qualified for veteran's benefits. The two looked like they could have been brothers and all four of Francis's films had a military background.

They Rode West is a cavalry western and Francis is a young doctor assigned to an army post out west where both the Kiowas and Comanches are pretty hostile. The Kiowas are coming down with malaria living near a swamp as are the military, but the Kiowas have been put there by the government.

Like William Holden in The Horse Soldiers, Francis sees himself as a doctor first and a soldier second. He helps the Indian sick and then commits the unpardonable sin in the military by disobeying orders and telling the tribe they have to move to higher ground.

Nevertheless his sincere concern for the health of the Indians later stands the cavalry in good stead.

Along with Francis are Donna Reed as the niece of the commanding officer, May Wynn as a white Indian maid captive and Philip Carey as his rival who has a more traditional frontier view of the Indians.

Francis acquitted himself well in his first film, sad indeed his career was so short.

What a shame that this young actor died so tragically after making his film breakthrough,I guess its a cruel irony we will never know how good he would have really been.In this western he is a dedicated doctor who helps friend and foe alike,this is a basic western but worth watching once.The action scenes are good,and it shows that the US army was split into two as to the treatment of indians.5/10

Better than expected, with a complex script, lots of action (not all well-staged), and even some character development. Francis is fine as the idealistic young doctor whose dedication to his Hippocratic oath is greater than his oath to the army. As a result, he treats hostile Indians as equals, causing trouble for the cavalry when the tribe jumps the reservation. It's hard to tell if Francis's apparent unease is good acting or still a bit of stage fright for a newcomer. But whichever, it fits in perfectly with a tenderfoot trying to get his bearings in unfriendly surroundings.

At first I thought Donna Reed's super-coy little flirt was nothing more than star-casting that would ruin the movie. But the script deals intelligently with her development as the plot darkens. Carey's excellent as the no-nonsense Captain, who's the realist counterpoint to the doctor's idealism. Note how he's never treated with disrespect even though some of his decisions seem ethically callous. Too bad, however, the writers included the tiresome cliché of a whiskey- loving sergeant as comedy relief. Nonetheless, director Karlson, who would later excel at crime dramas, keeps things moving, and wonder of wonders, even has the Indians shrewdly shooting horses out from under the cavalry.

The movie's theme reflects the growing racial consciousness of the 1950's. I like the way a bond is established between the doctor and the medicine man in their common human concern with healing. But just as importantly, the screenplay manages to make its point without getting preachy. Sure, the production is low-budget, never getting out of greater LA, with an Indian encampment that looks about as real as a Disneyland tableau. Still, it's a thoughtful and generally well-executed little horse opera that's better than it ought to be.