I disertori di Fort Utah

John Ireland is Tom Horn, a famous gunfighter. Robert Strauss is Ben Stokes, a government agent for the Indians. Virginia Mayo is Linda Lee, an "Opera singer". And Scott Brady is Dajin, an army deserter who's wanted by the Indians. Oh, and then there's Jim Davis as Scarecrow, one of Dajin's men among others in the cast. I'm not a big fan of heroes attacking Indians since that usually means those Natives are being portrayed as savages but here, there's at least a reason they're not always friendly to the white men who are simply trying to survive. The fights between Horn and various of the villains attacking him are, however, quite entertaining the way they're choreographed. I also liked Ireland's dialogue with Ms. Mayo and his friendship with Strauss. Oh, and knowing about Davis' previous western roles as both bad and good guys and his later iconic role as Jock Ewing in the original "Dallas", he was the highlight of the picture for me. So on that note, I highly recommend this obscure oater, Fort Utah.

AC Lyles productions, also known as Second Chance westerns - because the casts were composed mostly of Hollywood vets - are mostly acceptable, entertaining, but where clichés are unfortunately not always absent. Here, you have a tremendous Scott Brady as the lead villain, the bad guy in chief.... Nothing exceptional but quite good, better than a lead good guy played by a wooden John Ireland. It is action packed, with a bodycount that will help you wasting time without any boredom. So that's not the worst of AC Lyles productions, and maybe among the three or four best. I have always had tenderness for those features hiring forgotten Hollywood glories, giving them a second chance.

Fort Utah is another A.C. Lyles western with Hollywood's senior citizen crowd. By senior citizen we mean players past their box office prime. In this case the leads are John Ireland and Virginia Mayo.

The fort itself is a deserted army post, made empty by the fact that some real deserters led by Scott Brady killed the inhabitants and now are an outlaw gang. No one knows this yet because a telegraph is miles away. In the meantime Brady and his bunch massacre an Indian village filled with women and children. So the surviving braves of the tribe want his scalp, his hide, and any other functioning body part they can lay their hands on.

Ireland is famous frontier scout Tom Horn years before he met the fate described in the Steve McQueen classic. Ireland and Robert Strauss meet up and then both of them meet up with a wagon train headed by John Russell which train sustains an Indian attack. The survivors and Ireland and Strauss take refuge in the fort where they hoped to find live troopers. In any event it's a good place to stand off an attack from whomever.

Fort Utah moves at a good western clip with Lyles packing a lot of action in his short running time. The script and story left a bit to be desired, but the action is all any redblooded western fan could want.

Fort Utah is directed by Lesley Selander and written by Steve Fisher and Andrew Craddock. It stars John Ireland, Virginia Mayo, Robert Strauss, Scott Brady, John Russell, Richard Arlen and James Craig. Music is by Jimmie Haskell and cinematography is by Lothrop Worth.

Drifter Tom Horn (Ireland) teams up with Indian Agent Ben Stokes (Strauss) to help a pioneer wagon train against army deserters and Indian renegades.

Filmed in Technicolor/Techniscope out at Vasquez Rocks and Santa Clarita in California, Fort Utah, in spite of being shot in 1966, feels like a 1950s Oater. Of course the big giveaway is that the headliners in the cast are more long in the tooth than back in the day. Yet collectively they have produced a a very decent Oater with old fashioned value.

There's plenty going on in the plotting. The Indians have had enough of the reservation living arrangements so a renegade band have fled, leaving Ben Stokes the not unenviable task of trying to locate and placate. There's a gang of army deserters - The Marrauders - led by nefarious Dajin (Brady) out for what they can get their hands on, illegally of course. Right in the middle of hostile territory is a wagon train of pioneers who unbeknown to themselves are going to need help to survive, enter Tom Horn and the Fort Utah of the title.

Pic never wants for action, Horn gets into a fight pretty much every ten minutes, be it fisticuffs or shoot-outs, there's barely pause for him to take breath, well except for when he's getting smitten with Linda Lee (Mayo a gorgeous mature at 46) that is. She's travelling with the wagon train and has a secret as well as a major cleavage that gets an airing during a ferocious Indian attack on the wagon train. Whilst unsurprisingly she's getting unwanted attention by a scallywag pioneer fellow...

Some of the stunt doubles are very poor, which sort of sits with Haskell's cheesy musical score, and the big finale features a WTF moment to close down the encounter. But with some very nice photography for the night time scenes, and the superb backdrop of Vasquez Rocks pleasing the eyes, one can't grumble about not having it all. It's not a classic of course, and it has some formulaic baggage to carry around, but for old fashioned Oater lovers this has much to recommend. 6.5/10

1967's "Fort Utah" was the tenth of 13 B Westerns courtesy Paramount producer A.C. Lyles, populated by a large number of familiar faces who had seen better days. John Ireland takes the top slot as infamous gunfighter Tom Horn, finding himself in the middle of an insurrection by Indians and unable to find help at the nearby fort because it's deserted. Meanwhile, John Russell's wagon master suffers a number of casualties from a redskin attack, leading what's left of his settlers to that same fort, where they learn that villainous Scott Brady's marauders butchered every soldier in a fruitless search for gold bullion that had been secretly moved elsewhere months earlier; Brady is the real target after his evil band led a massacre on a helpless Indian village, making haste for the safety of the fort before vengeance catches up with them. The cast is smaller this time around, with Richard Arlen, James Craig, Jim Davis, and Donald Barry, plus Virginia Mayo a very fetching heroine. The only true spark is provided by Robert Strauss, a very witty government agent who makes a good team with Ireland's Tom Horn.