Red Tomahawk

Oscar-winner Broderick Crawford is amongst the cast here in this B-Western from Paramount. Howard Keel is Captain York, a government agent in 1876 South Dakota. He is the first to come across the massacre of General Custer and his men at Little Big Horn, and he makes his way to the local town of Deadwood to warn the locals about the impending Sioux attack. The locals are typically backward and hostile and ignore his requests to hand over the town's two Gatling guns so that he may take them to a the nearest army base for the soldiers to use against the Indians. Instead they set to barricade the town and point a gun at either end of it, which of course will be a futile manoeuvre. With a few allies, York sets out to take them by force...

There is nothing exceptional here, but "Red Tomahawk" (named after the Indian who killed Sitting Bull) is an entertaining production and it was not meant to be anything more than that. The performances are good, Keel, Crawford and Caulfield lead the way, and there is a decent amount of action.