L'attaque du Fort Douglas

Let me just say that I did not expect much from this film when I popped it into the DVD player. It is on a 4 movie set from Platinum Great Westerns Vol 8. that I paid only $4.00. Well, they must of remastered this one, quality is excellent. Almost looks like a 3D color movie at times. The flick itself...pretty good not a western at all though. Set out east in 1790 with the blue coats and settlers invading upon the Indian's habitat. Commissioned Boston artist Scott Brady frolicking with 3 beautiful women, fiancee Lori Nelson, bar maid Alison Hayes, and Indian princess Rita Gamm. Sinister demented land owner John Hoyt plays the white skins against the red skins so both wipe each other out and the valley will be all his. Crazed Mohawk Neville Brand doing frenzied war dances, only makes matters worse. Ends with exciting attack on the fort, bad guy gets his in spades, and Brady picking the right gal for marriage. The movie is no deep drama by any means, but it moves very quickly, nice to look at in a 1950's avante garde way, some (not all) of the outdoor sets are really on a studio sound stage so there are paintings as backdrops that are VERY obvious. Fun movie though to enjoy for what it is.

The results he achieved recycling scenes from 'Drums Along the Mohawk' obviously satisfied director Kurt Neumann since he repeated the exercise four years later with footage from 'King Solomon's Mines' in a film called 'Watusi!'. The result is enjoyable rough & tumble hokum with Scott Brady painting incredibly advanced work for the late 1780s (I wonder what become of them after filming?) and obvious native American types Ted De Corsia and Neville Brand (the former wearing what looks like a flower pot on his head) on the warpath. Heading a strong female contingent are brittle blonde Lori Nelson, sultry redhead Allison Hayes, acidulous maiden aunt Vera Vague and mother & daughter squaws Mae Clarke and Rita Gam; the latter tall and athletic in pigtails and a trouser suit.

Yes, when I saw that western, I thought I was in a drive in, in my Corvette Stingray with my girl. I was focused on the 3 delicious pin ups, Lori Nelson, Allison Hayes and Rita Gam (as the Indian chief's mohawh daughter, a must see), all three in love with the Casanova painter, fond of nature... shot in studio !!! I forgot all the ridiculous Indian scenes wearing unrealistic costumes, even Neville Brand is badly directed, Neumann was more concentrated on directing his delicious starlettes. And what about the chief's son, definitively not acting like an Indian but rather like a 1956 teenager from Blackboard Jungle. That parody of western would have exasperated late Mr Tavernier. On the French DVD, there is in the bonus a specialist of western and Indians who comments brilliantly this film and the true story of Mohawks, don't miss him.

This hokum film set during pre-Revolutionary War deals with a painter named Jonathan Adams (Scott Brady), tangling with diverse dames as he paints wonderful outdoor scenes and beautiful women . He is away from Boston so long that his fiancée , Cynthia Stanhope (Lori Nelson), along with her Aunt Agatha (Barbara Allen), newly arrive from the east to Fort Alden ( 1778, Otsego County, Cherry Valley, the Fort existed and was destroyed in French and Indian War) seeking him . Cynthia finds him juggling the gorgeous Greta Jones (Allison Hayes), a shopkeeper's (Rhys Williams) daughter, as a model. Mohawk Chief Kowanen (Ted De Corsia) holds his tribe in check but rebel warrior Rokhawah (Neville Brand) wishes into raiding the fort for guns . Onida, Kowanen's daughter (Rita Gam), agrees to let the raiders into the fort after sundown and finds herself caught in Adams' hut after the attackers getaway . Later on , the artist Adams and Onida fall in love but he is taken prisoner . Meanwhile , Butler (John Hoyt), an Indian hater , is seeking to provoke a war so that he might get rule of the whole Mohawk valley . Then he murders Kowanen's son, Keoga, and this causes the chief into declaring war against white men . After that, the courageous Adams trying to thwart Iroquois uprising .

This peculiar B frontier western in 1950-style contains adventure , intrigue , fights and an inter-racial love story . It's a quickie with lack luster and low budget but it manages to be at least an enjoyable adventures movie because contains action, sensational outdoors and outlandish thrills situations abound . The story is neither realistic nor ambitious, but sympathetic with good scenarios, costumes and landscapes . It's made on the ideas and leftover from previous movie the very superior ¨Drums along the Mohawk¨ by John Ford with Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert . The film displays a haunting and rich cinematography capturing flavor of colonial life by Karl Struss, Neumann's usual . The motion picture produced by Edward Alperson is finely directed by Kurt Neumann (The fly, Cronos, She-Devil, Tarzan and the leopard woman). This vigorous picture with some humor unintentionally interwoven obtained limited successful but results to be enough agreeable. It's a good stuff for young people and exotic adventures lovers who enjoy enormously with the extraordinary dangers on the luxurious landscapes and marvelous Technicolor photography.

That's so you can tell the two tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy apart in this colonial travesty. And that line of explanation is actually in the film Mohawk.

The Tuscaroras are currently house guests of the Mohawks having moved up from the south do to white settlement on their hunting grounds. They've got an understandable attitude as expressed by their chief Neville Brand who wants war with the whites and the Mohawks as allies. But the Mohawk Chief Ted DeCorsia hasn't had any problems with them and he's reluctant to join.

But DeCorsia might not have a choice because a man named Butler played by John Hoyt wants to start a nice little war. It seems as though his family once was the only white folks in the whole Mohawk Valley and he wants it that way again. He stirs up the Indians by first giving them weapons and then shooting Tommy Cook who is DeCorsia's son. That way when everybody kills everybody off, this dill-weed will have the whole valley to himself once again.

Our hero in this piece is a painter, Scott Brady who is romancing three different women of differing hair color, probably deliberate cast that way by the producer. There's his blond fiancé from Boston Lori Nelson, the blacksmith Rhys Williams's daughter Allison Hayes, and a fiery brunette Indian princess Rita Gam. If you care to see the film, you'll find out who he winds up with.

By the way John Hoyt's character is not in any way the same as Walter Butler who was a Tory in the American Revolution and responsible for leading the Indians in the famous Cherry Valley Massacre. He was one of the jury in The Devil and Daniel Webster and he's also portrayed in D.W. Griffith's film, Revolution by Lionel Barrymore. I thought when I heard Hoyt's name in the film that I would see some of that story in this film, but it was a tease.

The only thing really to recommend Mohawk is a nicely staged battle scene when the Indians attack the stockade. The same one used by John Ford for Drums Along the Mohawk, an infinitely better film.

The cast can barely keep straight faces throughout this film. When Mohawk wrapped they should have burned the film and roasted a turkey over it in the true spirit of Thanksgiving.