Journey to Shiloh

"Journey to Shiloh" (1968) details the story of seven youths from Concho County in near-West Texas who travel across the Mississippi to join the Confederate Army and kick some Yankee arse. While they intend to ride to Richmond, Virginia, they end up hooking up with Braxton Bragg's Gulf Coast outfit and fighting in Shiloh, Tennessee. The male ingénues learn a lot on their long journey and their introduction to soldiering and war. Who lives and who dies?

James Caan plays the main protagonist, "Captain" Buck Burnett, while the other six "teens" (all well into their 20s) are Michael Sarrazin, Don Stroud, Jan-Michael Vincent, Michael Burns, Paul Petersen and, believe it or not Harrison Ford, a full nine years before his breakthrough with Star Wars, but don't get too excited as he gets the least screen time of the bunch.

On the downside, Universal was huge on TV movies at the time and so "Journey to Shiloh" looks like a TV movie; in fact, it was directed by one of their TV movie directors. So don't expect the cinematic scope of contemporaneous Westerns, like "Duel at Diablo," "Bandolero!," "Hang 'Em High" and "Shalako." It looks serviceable, but also phony and stale. A big part of the phoniness is due to the fake Southern countryside, as the movie was shot in Agoura and Thousand Oaks, California, but takes place in East Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and adjoining regions. No matter how you slice it, California doesn't look like the deep South, not to mention the studio sets. Another issue is the movie's cartoony vibe. Things that would ordinarily take much longer occur with the quickness of a comic book.

Despite these glaring flaws, I found myself ignoring them in favor of the story, particularly as it moved along. You feel like you get to know most of the gang by the end of the movie, Harrison's character being the biggest exception. The "boys" grow from wide eyed youngsters to hardened men over the course of the movie, the biggest rude awakening of course being their baptism into soldiering and war.

Speaking of which, I really enjoyed the last third of the film that involves the youths joining up with Bragg's brigade, the ensuing warfare, deaths, injuries, possible desertion and aftermath. Although decidedly comic booky the movie offers a unique glimpse of being a Confederate soldier.

The film features no less than four beauties, albeit all relatively short roles: Tisha Sterling as Airybelle Sumner; the un-credited Susanne Benton as the blond saloon girl, Lucy; Brenda Scott as the brunette saloon girl who falls for Buck; and a nurse (Eileen Wesson).

FINAL WORD: Someone criticized "Journey to Shiloh" for its obvious low-budgeted faults by pointing out that it's no "Magnificent Seven" or "The Wild Bunch." While this may be technically true I found myself enjoying "Journey to Shiloh" more than these heralded Westerns. Yes, the movie has the unmistakable gloss of one of Universal's factory-made television movies, but it's strong in characters and story, cartoony or not. This is likely because the movie's based on Henry Wilson Allen's excellent novel (aka Will Henry). Some call it an "anti-war movie," but this isn't really true; it's simply a "showing-soldiering-and-war-the-way-it-really-was" movie.

The film runs 101 minutes.

GRADE: B

James Caan is the star of this interesting but far from great movie. Off his role in El Dorado with the Duke & Mitchum I suppose he earned the role as chief Buck. It's a film about the loss of youth and growth into manhood. It's unclear just how experienced Caan is, particularly with the ladies, but clearly he is capable of Caaning his way into the best bed in Shreveport. The love scenes are handled with more romanticism and yes love, than you'd expect in a near B film.

The film does seem to reflect the unhappiness and questioning of the then ongoing Viet Nam war, yet our band of 7 from Texas for the main, soldier on until death accomplishing nothing but filling their duty and being honorable men. They come to question slavery and therefore the basis of the war but aren't able to do anything about it. In that sense the film is believable. I like Caan's performance although not his haircut. He is the strong, silent type but with plenty of charm.

It's his movie and he does alright. A great cast of actors not yet at their peak.

This is one of those films that works because of the cast. It's fun to watch actors not well-suited to western films give it their best shot, and do well, despite that fact.

Old timers like Noah Beery, Jr and John Doucette were used to the genre, and add to the film greatly.

Newcomers (at the time), like James Caan, Michael Sarrazin, Jan-Michael Vincent, Harrison Ford, and Robert Pine would all go on to better things, but they do well here, too. Added to the mix is a TV leftover, Paul Peterson, who's part is small, but well-done.

It was obvious that the film was cast and made like it was because of the growing youth market (Wild In The Streets, Psych-Out, Savage Seven, and Chubasco, among others).

I love this film very much, and wait patiently for a widescreen DVD to be released. I can only hope I live long enough to see it happen.

Journey To Shiloh is a good TV movie for when you're home sick from work; or, can't sleep in the middle of the night. It's a good story and moves quickly (too quickly, really, for it loses a lot of possibilities in character development). Still, the dialogue isn't that cheesy - and you don't feel worse for having watched it.

I had the impression that Universal pushed this out in Australia before anywhere else. They had no printing on it and I hadn't heard of the film when it hit the city grind house. The people I saw it with were gobsmacked.

As JOURNEY TO SHILOH rolled on, we kept on seeing things that we hadn't encountered in the thousands of westerns we'd seen run through this system - the gamblers with identical pistols under the table, pointed at the kid, the Southern blacks urging the Confederate troops on and the way the plot gets stuck into fatuity of gung ho youngsters rushing into the military. It took a long while to get from here to BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY.

It also ran to some nice pieces of dialogue - the saloon hoons telling the kids they should have scraped the meat off their leather jackets.

I thought William Hale was going to be a major player, saw his shorts GRAND CENTRAL MARKET and THE TOWERS and contacted him, learning that the dodgy stock footage was forced on the production by the producer, who Hale thought wanted to impose bogus scale on it.

The bonus is that all those faceless juveniles turned into movie stars and one of them stayed one.

This one surfaced the same time as Wadja's POPIOLI/ ASHES, which also deals with young men going to war. Hale's film was not outclassed.