The Wild Dakotas

I never miss the opportunity to watch a Sam Newfield's film, the most prolific director, at least one of the most, in terms of grade Z movies. It is lousy, bland, everything you wish to describe his work, but I don't know why, I always take pleasure to enjoy or endure his cute, enchanted craps. Maybe a masochistic and guilty pleasure. This topic of settlers, Indian uprising is so used, over used, that if you wanted to make a list, the phone book of New York City would be necessary. Before he became really famous in DALLAS series as the patriarch of Ewing family, Davis made plenty of this kind of stuff, plenty. I once confounded him with Lloyd Bridges, maybe the face or kind of characters too. A rare and good little western, rapidly forgotten because forgettable too.

Since I've been devoting the past several weeks to reviewing movies of the original "Dallas" cast in chronological order, I've encountered many of Jim Davis' old movies on Netflix streaming. Here he plays Aaron Baring, a mean captain of a wagon train who doesn't care a lick about making a fair deal with the Indians whose land he plans to claim. Good thing the hero Jim Henry (Bill Williams) knows the tribe and will do anything to keep the peace. Oh, and there's also a lady named Lucky (Coleen Gray) involved...I'll stop there and just say that this was quite a nice surprise seeing how this Western was very much pro-Native American and how much screen time Mr. Davis got here considering his previous roles mainly very much supporting for other leads. And previously seeing him being really bad before, I'd say this role fits him like a fine glove. No wonder he became the father of J.R. Ewing! So on that note, I highly recommend The Wild Dakotas. P.S. The Indian chief, Red Rock, is played by one Iron Eyes Cody, who would become later known as the one who shed a tear for a pro-environment PSA on TV during the early seventies after seeing a car pour litter on one of his roads.