The Deerslayer

In the wilderness of early Colonial days, trapper Tom Hutter (Jay. C Flippen) lives with his two daughters (Rita Moreno and Cathy O' Donnell) in an isolated floating fort. Tom's one-man vendetta against Indians has brought the wrath of the Hurons down on him, thereby garnering the reluctant aid of wilderness wanderer Deerslayer and his Mohican blood-brother, Chingachgook. Among adventures, violence and escapes, a batch of dirty secrets emerges...

Lex Barker is suitably cast as the Deerslayer, the buckskin hero, in this solid and interesting picture set in the brutal wilderness where political correctness didn't exist - aside from some good action, the attack on the fort and the finale comes to mind, there's some fine intrigue and interesting characters, most interesting being Flippen's character. He's a racist who hides a secret and another one regarding one of his daughters. Forrest Tucker plays a shady character who is Cathy O' Donnell's lover. She loves him, but he doesn't seem as sincere. He seems to be after something. It's well-paced, has enough things happening, and the scenery is well-captured.

For all those who critisize possible racism and sexism in this film. Well so, whatever You like, but you need to know that the people who lived there in Northern America where different than you today. They made some mistakes you today do not make, whereas you make some mistakes they did not make then. You have to accept that history went its way without you 200 years ago. It is your right to hate racism. But life in the wilderness over there was brutal and had a darwinian attitude and I am sure that you find also some reasons to hate sbd or sth. I am no friend of hate or darwin, but it is human.

Natty Bumppo (Lex Barker) and Chingachgook (Carlos Rivas) encounter trader Forrest Tucker in the wilderness. He takes them to a fort in the middle of a lake, where Jay C. Flippen holds off the entire Huron nation with a cannon and two daughters. Tucker is in love with Cathy O'Donnell in his rough way. Rita Moreno plays the ugly daughter, if you can believe it.

I never cared much for James Fennimore Cooper's novels, and reading Mark Twain's essay on the writer made it clear why. Cooper was not careful about choosing the right word, and his description of scenes was shoddy. Even so, I concede his situations were exciting, and his writings were ancestral to the westerns. With the help of some competent screenwriters -- including an uncredited Dalton Trumbo -- director Kurt Neumann crafted an exciting story that played into current liberal thoughts about interracial relations, and DP Karl Struss shot Bass Lake and the surrounding pine lands in the Sierra Nevada in a most becoming fashion.

I always assoociate Kurt Neuman the director as a science fiction film maker, but no he also made something else besides KRONOS, ROCKETSHIP XM, THE FLY...He also offered us MOHAWK - close to this one - and some adventure movies such as WATUSI, some TARZAN films for RKO with Johnny Weissmuller, and westerns: KID FROM TEXAS, DESPERADOES ARE IN TOWN.... Only films noirs miss in his career, or very small ones which I have never seen. So, this one is a very agreeable adventure western flick with a Lex Barker very comfortable in this role which seemd to have been made for him. The only regret I have is to watch it in Pan and f...scan frame. Instead its genuine LBX. Painful.

Lex Barker hanging around with a Mohican, guys in Davy Crockett hats and two ridiculously beautiful women. Native Indians in canoes, all we needed was Hawaii 5-0 music.

The scenery with the cabin on the lake was stunning and to be honest, this is the best part of the movie.

It's not short on action, lots of gun fights, hand to hand combat and even a small cannon thrown in, some of it is not overly convincing but the movie is watchable and the decision to keep it short was sensible.

The acting such as when a guy got caught in a bear-trap is fairly basic and the whole thing, watching it now, is a little non-PC.