There
are enough embarrassing movies to do a very long film festival, but
this film ranks—in the literal sense—pretty high. This eighty-minute film was distributed by 20th Century Fox. The actors
mostly justify their salaries so it is not their fault. Most of the arrows are aimed at the screenwriter, Maurice Geraghty. The main cast consists of Scott Brady, Neville Brand, Ted de Corsia, Allison Hayes, John Hoyt, Rita Gam, and Lori Nelson. All are destined for television notoriety. The casting net was not very wide. Unintentionally funny can bring the house ... er ... tee-pee down.
Known mostly for his gangster roles, the "Chief Mohawkster" is de Corsia (above), and visually hilarious with a mohawk and his four-day-dead, grayish-violet makeup. I should mention that his teenage son seems to have come directly from the set of Rebel Without A Cause. The set designers were going through their blue-violet period. There is a lot of it on Ted, trees and tee-pees alike. I figure Brady painted them, too. One scene, in particular, may remind one of the color palette in a Maxfield Parrish painting. Beyond the obvious outdoor sets foreshadowing television's Bonanza, are sequences from 1939’s Drums Along the Mohawk, the film’s most expensive highlights. If this had been meant to be a comedy, Mel Brooks could have skewered the stereotypes in typical fashion. Some scenes will have the viewer laugh or groan. In the end, we learn nothing authentic about early American history, except that oil paints travel well in saddlebags. The flammable solution to clean their brushes? Not so much.
Note: The film is often categorized as a Western, but it is really an "Eastern." It is directed by Kurt Neumann, later known for his science fiction projects, and produced by Edward L. Alperson, who also wrote the music. There is red-colored descriptive text at the beginning to introduce the film, "A Legend of the Iroquois..." but ends the film with an odd pseudo-credit of sorts, "...and those were the players of the legend."
No comments:
Post a Comment