The Great Sioux Uprising

No one of earth could guess that this western could be made by the great Warner studios director Llyod Bacon, who gave us so many gems such as SAN QUENTIN, RACKET BUSTERS, MARKED WOMAN during the thirties and forties. Universal studios also hired a Hollywood veteran in the early fifties, for one western, Alfred Green, for SIERRA, starring Audie Murphy. But later Universal will get Nathan Juran and Jack Arnold for westerns, science fiction, and some crime dramas. I don't mean that this Universal Pictures western is lousy, bad or whatever else of this kind, but I just would have never believed any one about the fact that Bacon made it. I guess he needed money when he accepted the contract. Anyway, it was nearly his end of career and life too. Any Universal western is very entertaining, colourful, and that makes this company the best specialist during the fifties of great B westerns, starring the likes of Audie Murphy, Jeff Chandler or Rock Hudson in the leads. So, yes, this movie deserves to be watched, if you are a western buff, but if you are a big Lloyd Bacon's fan, with the memory of his Warner years, well, you should be warned or get away from it. That depends of you taste and state of mind....

The Great Sioux Uprising in the tradition of B westerns is a misnomer of a title. No great uprising takes place though not for Lyle Bettger's efforts to get one started.

During the Civil War Bettger is a horse dealer and the biggest one around. He'd like to merge with another dealer, Faith Domergue and crush his other competitors. The reason he's the biggest horse dealer around is that Bettger steals his horses from the Indians and gets top dollar for them from the army. Kind of an unfair advantage don't you think?

Enter Jeff Chandler former Union Army surgeon now a veterinarian who has given people doctoring because of a war wound and now tends to animals. He sees what Bettger is doing and tries to organize the opposition, but Bettger is a very clever villain if a little less psychotic than he usually is in films.

There's also a Confederate general in the area looking to make his own deal with the Sioux. It all adds up to an interesting western of the Civil War era.

There are some interesting supporting performances by friendly blacksmith Peter Whitney and from Stacy Harris a really mean psychotic sort who is Bettger's right hand man.

For Jeff Chandler's loyal legion of fans.

Directed by Lloyd Bacon and collectively written by Melvin Levy, J. Robert Bren and Gladys Atwater. Starring Jeff Chandler, Faith Domergue, Lyle Bettger, Peter Whitney and Stacy Harris.

The grand title sadly doesn't match what is actually put on screen, since Bacon's film is more a thinker than a thugger. Plot has Chandler as an ex-Union surgeon who takes up with ranchers and Indians in fighting the good cause against Bettger's horse baron and nefarious rebel rousers.

Undeniably the intentions and thought as per the screenplay are honourable, the anti-racist currents coupled with thematics involving the false deals laid at the Native American's doors, these are interestingly played and keep the pic from sinking below an average level. Action is in short supply, but there are moments of muscular brawn and bravado, while the Oregon locations and Technicolor photography (Maury Gertsman) provide pleasing surroundings.

Chandler and Bettger get roles for which they were known and suited, but Domergue - radiant in that "just made love" look she had - just ends up as more token interest than the feisty intelligent business woman that the story threatens to unleash. Whitney and Harris deliver good foil as stoic friend and unscrupulous fiend respectively. While John War Eagle and Glenn Strange offer up a firm backbone in the secondary support slots.

The story and ideas have been done far better in far more well known Westerns, thus rendering this as hardly essential. But some merit exists and for Chandler and Bettger fans it's a decent time waster. 6/10

A crooked horse dealer threatens to spark an Indian uprising during the Civil War when he steals horses belonging to the Sioux. It's only 80 minutes long, but The Great Sioux Uprising seems to go on forever thanks to a pedestrian screenplay from no less than four writers. Jeff Chandler, one of Hollywood's blandest leading men, plays a Union doctor suffering from battle fatigue who gets wind of bad guy Lyle Bettger's plot to steal hundreds of horses belonging to the Sioux, who, a little unusually for an early '50s Western, are portrayed as victims pushed to violence by the treacherous white man. Don't hold your breath waiting for that uprising - this is a title that fails to deliver on its promise.

Not a great or even a very good Western, but notable, for 1953 (more than ten years before Cheyenne Autumn), for its relatively strong anti-racist message with reference both to the Abolitionist issue in the Civil War and to the long history of failed promises to Native Americans. Given the standard tendency of Westerns (at best) to skirt over race entirely or to present a favorable interpretation of the Confederate cause, this is no small issue.

Apart from Dr Westgate's (Chandler) obvious sympathy for the Indian position, he presents his case for Indian neutrality in the Civil War to the Sioux Council, citing the clear racism of the Confederate general (which he implied would be transferred to the Sioux if they made common cause with the Confederates) and the sacrifice being made by Northern troops in the cause of racial equality. Elmer Daves' Broken Arrow of 1950 with James Stewart and Chandler had already raised the issue of Indian grievances against US Indian policy, but this was emphasizing the message in a 'B' Western context.