The Deerslayer

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.

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.

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.

I've always shared Mark Twain's views on James Fenimore Cooper's writing & would much rather see a decent movie version of any Natty Bumpo story than having to wade through the ponderous verse, & tuned into American Movie Classics tonight to see one of the many movie versions out there about The Deerslayer. Made in 1957, this cut-rate production starring Lex Barker (who played Tarzan a few times before this), Rita Moreno (whom I have never seen this young) & Forrest Tucker (whom I like much better on "F Troop") comes across as something only marginally as good as something you might have seen produced by "The Wonderful World Of Disney." Or maybe by Sid & Marty Krofft, to be seen as the live-action segments on "The Banana Splits."

Deerslayer & his faithful Indian companion Chingachgook stumble onto an old trader (Tucker) who asks for their help in protecting a crazy old man & his two daughters from a Huron assault. Well-groomed & stoic throughout, Deerslayer agrees (for some reason) & meets the old man on his floating fort in the middle of the river. The crazy codger hates Indians, & he seems to pamper & flatter his oldest daughter while telling his youngest (played by Moreno) that she's feeble-minded. Deerslayer has suspicions about the whole set-up, but you don't have to be an avid mystery-novel reader to figure out the reasons behind the Huron charge. Barker, constantly posing with his gun & giving those humored looks at the women that George Reeves as Superman always did, plays an android Deerslayer, & the fight scenes are about as exciting as the cliched "Yi yi yi" the Huron holler out when attacking is threatening.

I guess this was made for the Saturday-morning-movie crowd, but there's a part of me that can't believe that even children of the 1950s would be taken in by what now seems obvious: the ridiculously stereotyped Indians, the bad, off-the-screen violence poorly done, even the wooden performance by Barker must've been seen as more comic than heroic. Daniel Day-Lewis frantically saying, "Don't worry, I'll find you!" never looked better.