War Drums

I enjoyed this one despite the typical mistakes in actual history. It is set around 1860 and everyone on both sides has repeating rifles. The actual Mangus Colorado died a horrible death in 1863 at the hand of soldiers. However he was well over 60 when he died, not the strapping character portrayed in the movie.

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.

The friendship between a cowboy and his Indian Chief friend is threatened by a fiery Mexican woman. This minor B-Western is the kind of movie that would have feminists up in arms today, with Joan Taylor being treated like a possession to squabble over by white man, Mexican and Indian alike. The plot is largely implausible, the final act is a big anti-climax, and only about 37 of the 1000s of Apaches Lex Barker claims he can summon with a click of his fingers (or mountain-top smoke signal) actually answer his call. Watchable, though, and the forgotten Taylor looks luscious.

Smouldering senorita Joyce Taylor opts for a life in war paint & trousers kicking ass by the side of long-haired, blue-eyed Apache warrior Lex Barker (midway between Edgar Rice Burroughs & Karl May) in this pro-Indian De Luxe Color western set just before the Civil War which provides a bonus in the form of the presence of a still relatively young & fresh-faced Ben Johnson midway between John Ford & Sam Peckinpah.

...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.