Apache Blood

I absolutely do not understand why anyone would post a comment to a movie they hadn't bothered watching all the way through. Thank God for the internet, keeping these folks off the streets! I have not seen Apache Blood in years, but my recollection of it should be more useful than the "didn't watch it...fast-forwarded...made snide remarks" review that appeared previously. I saw it on the late, late movie, with commercials, several years before my area was even wired for cable! Apache Blood is a low-budget, independent effort, with only one "name" in the cast. It's a western concerning a soldier's efforts to get back to his fort while being pursued by an Apache, played by Ray Danton. I don't recall a great deal of dialog, but the movie managed to hold my attention to the end. The tone established in the first 99% of the movie abruptly changes at the end; I was never sure how I felt about that, but it was definitely a surprise! If you enjoy cheap little indies, you should like this one.

This is perhaps the most existentialist of the existentialist Westerns made in the US during the 1970s paranoia years when filmmakers re-defined the Western into a movie that wasn't supposed to be enjoyed. With that in mind this is perhaps the perfect example of the idiomatic shift since it is not enjoyable in any conventional sense of the term and is so existential in nature that one starts to project themselves sitting in front of a different television watching a different movie. Heavy. Matinée icon Ray Danton was coaxed out of semi-retirement by something along the lines of a palimony lawsuit and convinced to appear in this movie for enough chump change to pay his lawyer, and from the bravely solemn look on his face during the film's runtime (he has no dialog, period) one can presume that he lost the case. In any event he is cast as "Yellow Shirt", a fictional Native American renegade Apache who went on a murder spree to avenge the deaths of the Native tribe slaughtered at the conclusion of SOLDIER BLUE, which the writers of this movie obviously saw during it's 1975 re-release.

So moved were they by that film's carnage that they dreamed up the idea of having the Apaches avenge their mistreatment at the hands of Yankee cavalry troops. Either that or they were just ripping off any one of the myriad of other movies that were made by likewise minded young semi-independent filmmakers who were also moved by SOLDIER BLUE's concluding 20 minutes -- see CRY BLOOD APACHE, APACHE MASSACRE, and Bruno Mattei's SCALPS for more information. And better film-making, for that matter. There are times when extreme low budget and lack of talent in front of and behind the camera can excuse what turns out to be an inept project, but this isn't one of them. It was ineptly made by people lacking even the smallest degree of talent who gave their all & came up empty, and the majority of those involved were correctly never allowed to work in the industry ever again.

The movie appears to have been filmed over a period of roughly nine days by a group of people drawn together by a shared, common artistic urge to make a really crummy movie that would pack a nihilistic message into it's last 3 minutes, the more nihilistic and existentialist the better, and as such the film concludes with a sequence who's ambiguity is only outdone by the artlessness with which it was executed. The most artful thing in the film is a charcoal drawing of Ray Danton in his Injun brave makeup that is panned by a camera adjustment to a rendering of a fallen Apache by his tepee, which is perhaps an effort to compensate for the Apache Massacre which triggered this series of events only being mentioned as a voice-over narration.

This is heavy stuff, as I mentioned, and Danton is joined on his spree by a couple of other schnooks the director knew, who's Injun brave costumes consist of over-sized chamois shirts, some war paint & a headband, and their underwear. The cavalry soldiers (two of him were the film's writers) wear their own department store Levis with what appear to be identical bowling league shirts, and the weapons shown all look suspiciously like cap guns from the local K-Mart. As such none of the killings shown save one involve anyone being shot: The most imaginative is an homage to DEATH RIDES A HORSE where one of the evil cavalry hicks is buried up to his neck in the dirt whilst the Injunts play polo with his head.

The movie is unremittingly grim, mean spirited, cheap, and surprisingly uneventful even after the supporting cast has been whittled away and the movie devolves into an homage to Cornel Wilde's THE NAKED PREY as the surviving cavalry guide and Yellow Shirt engage in a mano a mano footrace to reach a stockaded compound that reminds me of a KOA Campgrounds main office. Between images of the two flaking out we are treated to hallucinations of their women waiting anxiously back at home, and the movie climaxes in a twist ending that is the very epitome of the word "underwhelming."

And yet, while being awful in the truest sense of the word, this utterly forgettable little movie actually manages to be more sincere than it's source material, SOLDIER BLUE, in that it never bothers to be anything more than an ultra cheap, grimy, thick-skulled exploitation film masquerading as an existentialist paranoid years Western. There is no star power at work, no politics, no dogma and no lessons on survival from Candice Bergen. Just a cheap, pathetic, filthy little movie that has very rightfully been relegated to obscurity on appropriately dingy, tattered fullframe home video prints that have very correctly been allowed to fall out of print. But you can find it on a 50 movie box set called -- apparently just for the hell of it -- "Gunslinger Classics" with 49 other haggard, unkempt and uncared for home video prints of movies that will all undoubtedly be better. It may not be much compensation but in this case it will have to do.

3/10

Ultra low budget, and not particularly good, western from the 70s. The vastly underrated Ray Danton shows what ruined his acting career... although he had been on the slide for some time. This was his third last film - he went on to direct, mainly in TV.

Still for those who enjoy watching films (as I do) made on Hollywood's fringe with former stars this is for you.

The reality is these types of films kept former leading actors (albeit some of them were second string leading men) working when they grew older and had been forgotten by the major studios. ( great actor stars like Rory Calhoun, Guy Madison, Cameron Mitchell, John Carradine and many more). It's would be quite a experience to go ( like Ray here) from "under contract to ...." to small B pictures and drive-in fair, but an actor has to pay the bills. And this fringe Hollywood can produce minor classics ( although this is not one of them) and must be an interesting place to work in. The only film to capture a bit of this fringe low budget Hollywood cinema successfully is Frank Oz and Steve Martin's comedy "Bowfinger".

As for the film itself, the direction is basic, the editing is rotten, and the acting is passable... just.( better direction could have helped). But still through it all Ray Danton shines, you can tell he is a breed apart from everyone else involved in the film.

I came into possession of this film with the purchase of a 5 disk/20 movie set called "Spaghetti Westerns" Apache Blood does not belong in this collection but that is not my greatest disappointment with the film.

The story and its ending is the only value this film has and we will give 4 stars for that alone. No other effort in the making of this film deserves any stars at all. The directing is awful and the only thing worse is the editing which was probably done by the director. At first I thought that the film was a student project done by a student that flunked out of film school. It is a sin what was done to a provocative story about the treatment of the so called "Indians" (native Americans) because of the prejudice, bigotry and hate of the invaders of their land.

We make no comment on the acting. It is difficult to critique the actors performances with the obvious sub-amateurish directing. The director just did not know when to say "cut"; did not understand screen direction; did not know that one does not have to play the whole journey or day to communicate distance or time.

Extremely protracted scenes of being on the run or on the chase made this movie too long by 30-40 minutes. We can not blame the editor too much since the director probably provided minimal options. Then, to add even more, the end has a recap that is totally unnecessary and presumes the viewer won't understand the ending without it. Instead, if you do watch this movie, stop it when the recap begins as it only confuses what is the best part of the movie.

One reviewer here states that if you make it half way through then stick around for the end, its worth it.

This is basically the story of mountain man Hugh Glass worked over and placed later in the later Old West with him becoming a Cavalry scout and the other mountain men becoming cavalry troopers. Watch "Man In The Wilderness" and see the resemblance. Mr. Danton was the only actor in the whole movie while the rest were more than likely hired off the streets. Pass this one by! Low Budget? Yeah. This one must of been made with $1.98! I feel sorry for Mr. Danton as he was a terrific actor and this film was below his standards. The two scriptwriters were actors in this film. One played the scout and the other was the Agarn-looking trooper in the fort at the end of the flick who shot at the scout and Mr. Danton.