Hey, the last time I did one of these was back in
June of 2012…I don’t know how long the second feature oaters will last, but
let’s give one a try for old time’s sake.
There are two reasons why I decided to sit down and watch
Revolt at Fort Laramie (1957).
First, the one and only MISTER John Dehner
receives top billing—something mighty unusual for a thespian who was mostly practiced
in the art of character acting.
The
second reason was the title; future
Perry Mason star Raymond Burr
starred in a short-lived radio western entitled
Fort
Laramie, but the actor who played Burr’s role as Cavalry Captain
Lee Quince in the show’s audition was…you guessed it, John Dehner.
So a Western entitled
Revolt at Fort Laramie is bound to make me smile; I had a mental
picture of Dehner and Burr duking it out in front of a microphone as Harry
Bartell, Vic Perrin, and Jack Moyles looked on.
As I have said so often ‘round these parts—I’m simply not
that lucky.
In
Revolt, Dehner plays Major Seth Bradner—the commander of the titular
fort, and a native son of The Old Dominion.
Bradner has pressing issues to deal with: one, he’s trying to negotiate
a peace treaty with Sioux chief Red Cloud (Eddie Little Sky).
There is mutual distrust between the two men,
and matters aren’t helped when a few of Red Cloud’s warriors attack a supply
wagon en route to the fort; Bradner’s second-in-command, Captain James Tenslip
(Gregg Palmer), is convinced that Red Cloud wants to steal a gold shipment on
the wagon so that Red Cloud can fortify his tribe without having to deal with
all that bothersome red tape that accompanies treaties.
But the largest item in Bradner’s inbox is that talk of a
war between the North and South is brewing; in fact, during a dance at the fort
where the Major is set to announce that his niece Melissa (Frances Helm) will
be pledging her troth to Tenslip, he is sidetracked with a bulletin that Fort
Sumter has been fired upon.
A number of
Johnny Rebs plan to resign their Cavalry commissions to join up with the
Confederate cause…and they announce these plans to Major Bradner.
They’d also like to take along that gold
shipment and deliver it to a Confederate fort in Texas to ensure the South has
adequate capital to fight “the war of Northern aggression.”
The Civil War subplot of
Revolt at Fort Laramie is an intriguing one, and I kind of wish
writer Robert C. Dennis (who later enjoyed a prolific career scripting small
screen fare like
Alfred Hitchcock Presents,
77 Sunset Strip, and
Perry
Mason) had explored it in a bit more detail.
But there’s no room for any of that boring
character development; this is a Western, damn it, and it’s far more important
to concentrate on the skirmishes between the Cavalry soldiers and the Sioux…and
later on in
Revolt, a tense
situation in which Bradner (who announces to any soldier hailing from the South
that they will receive honorable discharges so that they can fight for the
Confederacy) and some of the soldiers have to hold off Sioux warriors with a
dwindling ammunition supply. All in all,
Revolt boils down to 73 minutes of typical "cowboys-vs.-injuns" shoot-'em-up.
My admiration for Dehner knows no bounds…but unfortunately
in this oater, he’s got precious little to work with.
There are a few familiar faces here and
there: Don Gordon is a half-breed Indian scout named Jean Salignac, and either
his ma or pa was French because he uses a Gallic accent throughout the
movie.
Kenne Duncan is also on hand, and
(Harry) Dean Stanton has one of his earliest motion picture roles as a Southern
recruit named “Rinty.”
The majority of
the cast manages to say their lines and refrain from bumping into the
furniture—there aren’t too many standout performances here.
There is, however, an interesting continuity
boo-boo: another Southerner (Bill Barker) answering to “Hendrey” lets Tenslip
in on the soldier’s plans…and when he returns to his bunk, he finds the others
lying in wait for him.
They quickly
dispatch him to the Happy Hunting Ground to a chorus of “Dixie” (a bloody knife
is wiped clean on the blanket of one of the bunks); later in the movie, it’s
reported that Hendrey’s dead body has been found outside the fort…he’s been
scalped to make it appear he was killed by the Sioux.
Tenslip tells Bradner that he suspects
Hendrey was killed because he knew too much, and Major Seth says he’ll look
into it.
The investigation goes no
further.
Directed by journeyman Lesley Selander (who helmed many of
the Hopalong Cassidy programmers in the 30s/40s),
Revolt at Fort Laramie was an independent effort of Bel-Air
Productions (the company produced one of my favorite B-pictures,
Big House U.S.A.) and distributed
through United Artists.
Bel-Air later
teamed Dehner with a cast that includes Anne Bancroft, Mamie Van Doren, and
Marie Windsor in a classic piece of WTF cinema,
The Girl in Black Stockings (1957) …which is available on MOD
DVD.
(Sadly,
Revolt at Fort Laramie is not—I caught this one on MGM HD.)
