Journey to Shiloh

This movie leaves a lot to be desired by history buffs. As it does not exactly follow the true story of the Battle of Shiloh, Pittsburgh Landing to you real Yankees. But, inspite of that it is an interesting film. It is well worth watching if you enjoy any of the other westerns from this era. It is also worth it to see the actors that are in it before they became big stars. The first time I saw it, I missed the beginning and didn't know who anyone was until the end!

I remember seeing this as a 16 year old back in 1968 and really enjoyed it.

As I'm typing this, I'm watching it again on the history network and it's interesting to see the people in it and think about their careers over the last 36 year.

A young James Caan wearing a silly looking "wig" - a very fresh faced Jan Michael Vincent before he descended into the bottle and is now just a shadow of himself - Don Stroud, a great bad guy in a couple of Clint Eastwood and a fellow named Michael Burns who was a big star back then but just seemed to drop off the face of the earth shortly after

It was a good story about 7 young guys heading off to fight in the Civil War. A great song and good story - maybe not a classic but very watchable..!!

James Caan is the star of this interesting but far from great movie. Off his role in El Dorado with the Duke & Mitchum I suppose he earned the role as chief Buck. It's a film about the loss of youth and growth into manhood. It's unclear just how experienced Caan is, particularly with the ladies, but clearly he is capable of Caaning his way into the best bed in Shreveport. The love scenes are handled with more romanticism and yes love, than you'd expect in a near B film.

The film does seem to reflect the unhappiness and questioning of the then ongoing Viet Nam war, yet our band of 7 from Texas for the main, soldier on until death accomplishing nothing but filling their duty and being honorable men. They come to question slavery and therefore the basis of the war but aren't able to do anything about it. In that sense the film is believable. I like Caan's performance although not his haircut. He is the strong, silent type but with plenty of charm.

It's his movie and he does alright. A great cast of actors not yet at their peak.

Journey To Shiloh is a good TV movie for when you're home sick from work; or, can't sleep in the middle of the night. It's a good story and moves quickly (too quickly, really, for it loses a lot of possibilities in character development). Still, the dialogue isn't that cheesy - and you don't feel worse for having watched it.

I had the impression that Universal pushed this out in Australia before anywhere else. They had no printing on it and I hadn't heard of the film when it hit the city grind house. The people I saw it with were gobsmacked.

As JOURNEY TO SHILOH rolled on, we kept on seeing things that we hadn't encountered in the thousands of westerns we'd seen run through this system - the gamblers with identical pistols under the table, pointed at the kid, the Southern blacks urging the Confederate troops on and the way the plot gets stuck into fatuity of gung ho youngsters rushing into the military. It took a long while to get from here to BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY.

It also ran to some nice pieces of dialogue - the saloon hoons telling the kids they should have scraped the meat off their leather jackets.

I thought William Hale was going to be a major player, saw his shorts GRAND CENTRAL MARKET and THE TOWERS and contacted him, learning that the dodgy stock footage was forced on the production by the producer, who Hale thought wanted to impose bogus scale on it.

The bonus is that all those faceless juveniles turned into movie stars and one of them stayed one.

This one surfaced the same time as Wadja's POPIOLI/ ASHES, which also deals with young men going to war. Hale's film was not outclassed.