Tonnerre apache

This is a very good and mostly forgotten western that made the rounds in 1961. In 1960 MGM paired Luana Patten and a young George Hamilton in the feature film with Robert Mitchum, "Home from the Hill"....figuring on cashing in on the teenage and young adult crowd director Joseph Newman paired them again in this top notch western. Story concerns a desolate, poorly supplied western fort somewhere in the southwest trying to fend off Indian attacks on unsuspecting settlers...The post is ran by Captain Maddocks (Richard Boone), a crusty, worn out, cantankerous old bird whose military career has passed him by and put him in charge of this desolate hole....by coincidence, a fresh young officer (Lt. McQuade) played by George Hamilton arrives at the fort attempting to make a name for himself...problem is he does not have any practical experience like serving at a fort fighting Indians....he has been put in Provost and office jobs by his father, a General.....oddly enough, the very General who basically ended Maddock's career for an oversight. Maddocks immediately runs roughshod over McQuade and makes his life generally miserable since he is considered a greenhorn officer on a fort that needs reliable veterans who know how to fight and outfox Indians. To complicate matters more, McQuade's former girlfriend is ensconced on the fort and engaged to another officer while still loving McQuade (Hamilton)......she is played by the lovely Luana Patten. Tensions get worse between Patten, McQuade's fellow officers at the fort and Captain Maddocks. McQuade is torn between his duty, his hatred of Captain Maddocks, and his hidden passion for Patten. Fireworks explode when Hamilton is seen embracing Patten by her fiancé. Oddly enough things start to work out for Hamilton as Maddocks is forced to send him out on patrol.....McQuade shows his mettle and leadership and impresses most of the soldiers. Charles Bronson plays a meddling, snaky private who tries to show up Hamilton's affair with the lovely Tracy. A big fight erupts and Hamilton holds his own.... In the end Hamilton becomes Maddock's favorite officer and a strange friendship starts to bloom. Patten, realizing that her love for Hamilton will never work out soon departs the fort and leaves for good. A top notch cast, including Arthur O'Connell, Charles Bronson, Richard Chamberlin, Boone and Hamilton.....a mute girl in the film is played by Tammi Marihugh. It is hard to figure out why this film has never been released on DVD or rarely seen on television.....it is one of the top westerns of the 60s, but not given much recognition. Richard Boone was perfectly cast as the cantankerous Captain Maddocks....this is a western you would want to see.

This puppy's been savaged on Rotten Tomatoes (25%) and has not fared especially well with my IMDB colleagues (5.9 rating) but I wish to somewhat rise to its semi defense here. The conflicts between officers and enlisted men and the even greater struggles between officers and officers on an isolated, lonely cavalry outpost (were there any other kind in westerns?) are well delineated by scenarist James Warner Bellah. This is not surprising since Bellah wrote the stories upon which John Ford based the two best of his cavalry trilogy. Alas, when Bellah is called upon to depict a love story or a credible female character his dialogue becomes stiff and awkward. And actors like Luana Patten and George Hamilton are not exactly the ideal candidates to unstiffen or de awkwardize them. Nor is director Joseph Newman able, like Ford did with Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne, to infuse their scenes with the realism he gives the action or male conflict scenes. B minus.

PS...Best performances are given by Charles Bronson as a libidinous corporal (you forget how good this guy was before he became a star) and Arthur O'Connell as a hard bitten, veteran sergeant.

Indians attack settlers. Undermanned cavalry tracks Indians. Indians massacre cavalry. Cavalry massacres Indians.

This lurid, routine programmer, would be entirely forgettable, except for two extraordinary performances. Richard Boone portrays the Cavalry Commander, with the kind dignity, sensitivity and intensity which only Richard Boone could give. Charles Bronson plays a dirty minded, foul mouthed, but surprisingly noble corporal. For these two performances alone, see the movie.

..Bachelors make the best soldiers, all they have to lose is their loneliness.

A Thunder of Drums is directed by Joseph Newman and written by James Warner Bellah. It stars Richard Boone, George Hamilton, Luana Pattern, Arthur O'Connell, Charles Bronson, Richard Chamberlain, Duane Eddy and Slim Pickens. Out of MGM it's filmed on location at Old Tuscon & Sabino Canyon in Arizona, and also at Vasquez Rocks, California. It's filmed in CinemaScope and Metrocolor, with cinematography by William W. Spencer and music scored by Harry Sukman.

"There are three things a man can do to relieve the boredom of these lonely one troop posts: He can drink himself into a straight-jacket: He can get his throat cut chasing squaws: Or he can dedicate himself to the bleak monastic life of a soldier and become a great officer."

It's proved to be a divisive film amongst Western aficionados, and it's not hard to understand why. The film begins with a pre credit sequence of suggested savagery, a real attention grabber, then the credits role and the colour and vistas open up the story. From here we are placed into the lonely and fretful life at a cavalry fort in the Southwest. The company consists of tough grizzled Captain Maddocks (Boone) who carries around a burden from his past, his ire further inflamed by the arrival of greenhorn Lt. Curtis McQuade (Hamilton). He needs experienced men, not fresh faced kids, and McQuade isn't helping himself by being involved in a love triangle with Lt. Thomas Gresham's (James Douglas) lady, Tracey Hamilton (Patten). This coupled with the threat imposed by the Indians puts strain on all involved at Fort Canby. And there's the crux of the matter, the film is more interested with character dynamics than breaking out into an action packed B ranked Western.

Newcomers to the film should prepare for a talky picture, but it is a very good talky picture. Sure there's action, including a well staged battle in the final quarter (check out those Apache suddenly appearing from the rocks like ghosts!), but this is a film that is being propelled by dialogue, well written dialogue. There is no point in saying that it's well cast because it isn't, Boone is immense and intense and gets the best dialogue of all, but Hamilton is miscast and Patten totally unconvincing. Pickens is hardly in it and Bronson has a character that could be any number of things; someone who it's hard to know if we should dislike or cheer on. While Chamberlain and Eddy are in it to look nice and play the banjo respectively. Yet with the photography suitably keeping the landscape arid and harsh, and the mood around the base one of impending death or boredom (even the levity of a drunken sequence only enforces what little joy is around), the film has much going for it by way of psychology.

It's no "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon" of course, and its problems are evident, but it does have merits, and if for nothing else it deserves a look for Boone's excellent performance. 7/10

Not long after a cavalry lieutenant named "Curtis McQuade" (George Hamilton) arrives at his new post in the desert, he learns that a band of renegade Indians has just begun terrorizing the local inhabitants. However, because no one knows for sure if these Indians are Comanche or Apache, no solution to the problem can be attempted. But that's not the only issue at this fort as Lt. McQuade also encounters his former girlfriend, "Tracey Hamilton" (Luana Patten), who happens to be engaged to a fellow officer named "Lt. Thomas Gresham" (James Douglas). To make things more complicated, the commanding officer, "Captain Stephen Maddocks" (Richard Boone), doesn't particularly care for Lt. McQuade and makes that clear right away. Instead of revealing the entire story and risking spoilers for those who haven't seen the film, I'll just say that this was a pretty good western that portrays life at a frontier post in a somewhat unfavorable light. Although a couple of actors could have had more screen time, I liked the addition of Charles Bronson (as "Trooper Hanna"), Richard Chamberlain ("Lt. Porter"), and Arthur O'Connell ("1Sgt Karl Rodermill"), in addition to George Hamilton and Richard Boone. In any case, I enjoyed this movie and rate it slightly above average.