El camino de Oregón

I was enjoyed to see this pretty little western again. Colourful, action packed, with interesting and deep searched characters. Real good picture indeed.

But there is one thing that petrified me literally.I was torn to pieces when the Indian girl, who was in love with Mac Murray and saved him from the Indian warrior, says that she disowns her own people - because of his ferocity, after the ending slaughter. SHAME ON HER !!!

I have never heard such a crap, sorry nonsense, in a western before; and I have already seen thousands of them since I was a kid !!!

I am an Indian lover, and proud of that. I am also sad and angry when I think about all that white people did to the Indian nation. They wiped them out. For their land only. They nearly killed them all with bullets, hunger, plagues, alcohol, misery in reservation - even now...

So, in short, when I hear that kind of nonsense from a character in a movie, particularly an Indian one, i prefer think about something else or switch my TV set off.

But, let's be fair, except for that, "Oregon trail" is nevertheless a good western.

The best thing about "The Oregon Trail" was that it prompted me to research the tensions between Britain and the States over Oregon in the early 1840s. Apart from that, the film was mediocre. Some of its deficiencies have already been mentioned in other reviews, not least the terrible backdrops early on and the anachronistic rifles (to which might be added the anachronistic army uniforms, notably hats).

Its initial premise was suspect: sending a reporter on a five-month journey to check out rumours that soldiers in civilian clothing were accompanying wagon-trains. Neal Harris had no reliable means of getting his dispatches back to his editor, and if they had been printed they would have been dated; as it happened, his objectives were overtaken by events.

I can't see McMurray as a great ladies' man, even when he displays a sweaty chest. His flirting with President Polk's secretary (did he have a female secretary, I wonder), didn't convince, nor did his instant rapport with Shona.

After days of water shortage and dust, Prudence Cooper's hair looked remarkably well-groomed and there was a terrible lack of continuity when a settler took an arrow in his chest, only for it to appear in his back a couple of seconds later.

Plus points for John Carradine as the eccentric settler with his apple trees and for John Dierkes as mountain man Gabe Hastings.

Decent story, decent cast, but really can't stand movies that go back and forth between on location scenes and fake background studio scenes. Maybe they didn't look so fake back in the day but with 4K UHD, they look pretty ridiculous.

It's fun to watch all the old westerns now. Looking back at my childhood viewing of this movie, I never noticed all the painted studio backdrops used in the movie. What seemed so real as a child, now seems so fake as an old man.

Any of you out there think Fred MacMurray wouldn't be convincing in a covered wagon pioneering the Oregon Trail? You're not the only one, which is why he doesn't play a cowboy in the movie. He plays a city reporter, on an assignment to write about the Oregon Trail, so he tags along with a wagon trail, led by the gruff and grizzly, racoon-cap wearing, gravely-voiced Henry Hull. The versatile character actor is real tough in this one, not at all like the softie he played in Boys Town. He stands up to Indians, mounts a horse with no difficulty, and knows how to tackle anything from a water shortage to rattlesnakes.

Fred is the lead, though, working undercover to find secret bad guys, wooing women, and learning how to cope with dust in his trousers and sleeping on the dirt. If you're a fan, you'll like seeing him in this City Slickers-esque movie. Keep in mind it's not a comedy, though. There are some tense situations, trigger-happy grumps, and violin strings playing whenever Granny Elizabeth Patterson says she knows she'll make it through the entire ride. John Carradine portrays Johnny Appleseed, and there's a particularly sad scene when his trees get attacked. Personally, I found this movie too sad to be enjoyable. You might want to try the Lewis and Clark biopic The Far Horizons instead.