War Drums

War Drums is directed by Reginald Le Borg and written by Gerald Drayson Adams. Its stars Lex Barker, Joan Taylor, Ben Johnson, Larry Chance and Richard H. Cutting. Music is by Les Baxter and cinematography by William Margulies.

Story pitches Barker as Apache chief Mangas Coloradas, who in spite of his strong friendship with white man Luke Fargo (Johnson), finds himself having to take arms up against his friend and his kind.

Familiar territory on the surface here, it's a story that has featured numerous times in Westerns across the decades. Yet even though the execution is sadly drab, and the ridiculous casting for some of the principal characters is irksome, the honourable intentions withing the story keep it from the dustbin.

The pro Native American angle is played with some feeling, though it required more depth and dramatic verve. Also of note is the deft handling of Taylor's character arc, who goes from being abused by all the men around her, into a warrior woman of substance, giving the pic a strong feminist bent.

Musical score is of the traditional Cowboys and Indians fare so beloved of "B" Western movie makers of the era, sitting somewhat uncomfortably with the more serious strands of the narrative. The Kanab locations in De Luxe Color are most pleasing, as is the stunt work on offer.

Though there's a few servings of action, such as ambush, Apache's fighting each other to the death, even a girl scrap! Pic never really gets out of a low gear for excitement purpose, while the ending just sort of fizzles out without fanfare. But for undemanding Western lovers there's enough here to not class it as a waste of time. 6/10

...Just as long as you treat it as a comedy. Makes much better viewing then. You can even play 'spot the cliche' while you're watching it though you'll need pencil and paper to keep score.

Mangas Coloradas (Lex Barker), an Apache chief and white trader Luke Fargo (Ben Johnson) are bound by friendship and their mutual love for Riva (Joan Taylor), a Mexican-Native American girl rescued from horse thieves. Riva marries Mangas, who teaches her the warrior's ways and she later warns the Apaches of an ambush by white soldiers. When Fargo, who did not intend an attack, is injured, Riva helps him - a kindness he must choose whether or not to return when war with the Apaches erupts.

Judging by some of the reviews I read about this 1957 western you would think this is a below par western, but in my opinion it's a really good film with a sympathetic portrait of the Apaches. Here they are the ones clearly wronged, and it also depicts the clashes between Mexicans and Apaches in the beginning, which isn't always covered. It balances action, drama and conflict and even a bit of romance really well. Of course, it's not historically accurate, but I didn't expect it to be. If anything, with its colours and costumes, it looks like a comic strip, but the acting is far from juvenile- Lex Barker is really good as Mangas Colorado, giving him a human element as well as a warrior one, Joan Taylor as the Mexican who becomes his wife is given a refreshing role as a female warrior, but it's Ben Johnson who really adds some depth here as Mangas Colorado's friend. What I think was needed was a longer running time and more character developing, but I'm nitpicking. It's a really good western.

The low-budget color western, WAR DRUMS (1957), is quite a discovery. A quirky variation on BROKEN ARROW (1950), it focuses on Apache-white tensions in Arizona in the early 1860s, but offers Apache chief Mangas Coloradas as the hero. A love triangle is created involving Riva, a Mexican woman captive who becomes Mangas's wife, and Fargo, the white trader and friend of Mangas who also loves Riva. The film doesn't downplay Apache-white hostilities or end on a false note of hope. It's an honest, deeply felt western drama with good performances by a pair of stars, Lex Barker and Joan Taylor, who didn't often get the chance to create such rounded characters, and a second male lead, Ben Johnson, who did.

Interestingly, the film begins by focusing on the bitter ongoing conflict between Mexicans and Apaches, a historical reality rarely dealt with on film. The opening sequence features a lot of untranslated spoken Spanish. Mangas and his braves raid a ranch of Mexican horse thieves and kill the men, take back their horses, and abduct Riva. On his way back with her to his own encampment, Mangas stops to eat and trade with Fargo and his party. It is here that Fargo falls for Riva and offers to trade his new repeating rifle for her. Mangas refuses and declares he'll make her his wife.

Back at his village, Mangas turns Riva over to his sister and cousin (Jil Jarmyn, Jeanne Carmen) to give her an Apache makeover. Riva insists on riding and hunting with her husband and not doing women's work. Mangas agrees and takes her out on hunting parties with him. Soon Riva is decked out in a series of attractive, if unlikely, buckskin outfits befitting her new role. The medicine man (John Colicos) and two other warriors protest their chief's marriage to a "Mexicana." Mangas fights and kills the two warriors and the Medicine Man wisely relents and agrees to perform the marriage. Fargo shows up on the day of the wedding and makes another offer for Riva, but it's too late. He watches with a broken heart as she comes out in a stunning blue-and-white buckskin dress-and-boots ensemble that rival any of the Indian women's fashions paraded by Debra Paget in her Indian westerns, BROKEN ARROW and WHITE FEATHER.

Eventually, the harmony is broken by white miners panning for gold whose intrusion on Apache land and brutalization of Apaches lead to the war drums of the title. Fargo finds himself caught in the middle and his attempts to act as go-between are doomed to failure, leading to the breakout of full-scale war. Mangas takes the name of Mangas Coloradas, after the long red-sleeved shirt he must wear to cover up the scars inflicted by the white miners. Eventually, Mangas is wounded and seeks the help of a white doctor, leading to the takeover of a white town by Apaches until such help can be found. As the doctor tends Mangas' chest wound, a white woman undergoes labor pains in the same room, making for quite a powerful scene. Eventually, Fargo, now a major in the U.S. Army, arrives to intervene.

Although none of the lead actors are actually Indian or Mexican, they all seem to be powerfully motivated by the spirits of their characters. (Taylor's character at least speaks a lot of Spanish, which adds a touch of authenticity to her portrayal.) Lex Barker, a former Tarzan, makes a stubborn, determined and charismatic Apache chief. Not long after this film, he moved to Germany and made a series of highly successful westerns there, making him that country's most popular movie star for much of the 1960s. Joan Taylor was a sharp-featured, dark-haired actress who made a strong impression in such 1950s genre outings as APACHE WOMAN, GIRLS IN PRISON, EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS and TWENTY MILLION MILES TO EARTH. She cuts quite a striking figure here as she rides alongside Mangas, dressed in buckskin, painted for war and wielding a mean bow and arrow. Ben Johnson, better known for his work in John Ford and Sam Peckinpah films (plus his Oscar-winning turn in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW), plays a decent, tender, fair-minded white man who represents quite a contrast to the gold-hungry whites who instigate the open warfare with Apaches. Canadian actor John Colicos, later to be seen in TV's "Battlestar Galactica," appears in an early Hollywood role as the Apaches' flamboyant, overly expressive medicine man.

The film is shot almost entirely outdoors on picturesque locations. The murky color print seen for this review, as broadcast on superstation TBS, doesn't do justice to the expert cinematography by William Margulies. This is one of many unsung westerns from the 1950s that would benefit greatly from a remastered DVD edition enabling it to be re-discovered by western fans.

I'll watch Ben Johnson in just about anything, and I just did. Though I've been a fan of Lex Barker's since his Tarzan days, in this he makes Ben Johnson look like Sir John Gielgud. This is possibly the worst Western I've ever seen, and I've spent my life studying them. This movie takes place in some weird Bizarro-Apache world, where the pseudo-word "Ayee!" is apparently the only word in the Apache language, because it's used for every possible meaning; where the tribe has a central camp, but the people blithely live in isolated single wikiup lodges apparently miles from each other, where the majority of the tribal folk have blue eyes, where Apache wedding gowns are apparently made by Laura Ashley, where a Mexican captive woman suddenly falls in love with her hated captor in the space of a two-minute fight scene, and where in about the same length of time she is transformed into a fierce warlike female co-chief in a beaded tank-top. There's not a moment of believable human behavior in the film. A handful of gold miners deep in Apache territory shoot a little Indian boy and let an Indian girl take him back to the tribe while they unconcernedly go back to panning for gold, despite the fact that even an idiot would know the entire tribe is going to show up in a few minutes looking for scalps...which is just what happens. A good drinking game would be to take a slug every time someone says, "Ayee!" or whenever someone does something stupidly and obviously against his own interests. It's also pretty convenient how often the heroes get devastating wounds yet ride off fairly comfortably after a little rest. Fortunately the photography is so drab and dim that it's hard always to be sure what's happening on screen--except in the day-for-night shots, which are sometimes brighter than the day-for-day shots! The only positive element of the entire film is some good stunt work and watching Ben Johnson gallop on horseback. That's always good to see. I hope he got a big paycheck for this one, though. At least it didn't have a title song.