MOHAWK (1956)

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 my 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.

Brady plays an 18th-century Casanova artist from Boston looking for subjects and action in early America. The Iroquois, mostly from Wall Street, are favorite subjects for both. The local tavern waitress at the military fort is Hayes, his favorite model to add "flavor" to his landscapes. Never mind that Nelson plays his fiance. Captain Kirk should be so lucky. Gam had a beautiful European facial structure (being born in Pittsburgh), so naturally, she was cast as a beautiful Native American. She becomes Brady's main squeeze. Neville Brand is cast in the little-known sub-tribe, the "Irritated Iroquois," and is suspicious of the “white paint man.” Hateful Hoyt deceptively seeks to generate war between the Continental Army and the Indians, ridding the Mohawk Valley of all selective settlers he despises, leaving the land all to himself.

If one is familiar with all his gangster roles, de Corsia—the "Chief Mohawkster" above—is visually hilarious with a mohawk and his four-day-dead, gray-brown makeup. I should mention that the actor playing 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. I figure Brady painted them, too. One scene, in particular, may remind one of the color palette in a Maxfield Parrish painting (above, lower). 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 the brushes is not as well defined.

Note: The film is often categorized as a Western, but it is really an "Eastern." It was 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."