Red Tomahawk

1966's "Red Tomahawk" was the ninth entry in a series of 13 Paramount 'B' Westerns courtesy producer A.C. Lyles from 1963 to 1967, designed to meet huge demand in Europe but quick playoff in the US, featuring a multitude of familiar players in need of a decent paycheck. Several were shot back to back, usually two weeks apiece, which is why this attempted reunion between top billed Howard Keel and Betty Hutton from "Annie Get Your Gun" did not come to fruition, Betty's inability to keep up the swift pace resulting in the casting of Joan Caulfield instead. Keel's Captain Tom York is a government agent in 1876 South Dakota, the first to discover the massacre of Custer's cavalry at Little Big Horn by Sitting Bull's Sioux warriors, making his way to nearby Deadwood to message authorities about his findings. With the telegraph lines down and the townspeople unusually hostile, York only has two allies to help him recover a pair of Gatling guns to help the army defeat the insurrection. It's nice to see Scott Brady as a good guy for a change, joined by one time only Lyles veteran Broderick Crawford and saloon girl Joan Caulfield, still an eyeful in one of her few movie roles (only six after 1951) amid much television work. Among the townsmen there are really no standouts, Wendell Corey appears to be the main villain before getting killed off in ten minutes, Richard Arlen's telegrapher has little to do, Donald Barry's deserter and Roy Jenson's prospector in and out rather quickly. Tom Drake's character acts like a preacher and aids Captain York, and Ben Cooper ("Johnny Guitar") shows up at the end for the action packed climax. The rampaging Indians are granted no personality so real tension is sadly lacking, but it does seem to contain more battles than other Lyles oaters. Joan Caulfield would return for the producer's last Paramount Western "Buckskin," her natural beauty and believability making more of the too small part of a widow weary of the violence that claimed the lives of her husband and child. This was the one entry that seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth after its theatrical run, few TV screenings and no video release, but all 13 are easily available for dedicated film buffs.

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.

Army Captain Tom York is sent to contact General Custer at Little Big Horn, however by the time he arrives, all he finds is the massacred 7th Cavalry and the Sioux walking around. Tom York rides into the town of Deadwood in order to find a telegraph that he can use to warn the other regiments heading towards Custer's former location. The locals mistake York for a deserter until his friend Ep Wyatt vouches for him.

Somewhere in the area is hidden a pair of Gatling guns, which would be vital to fending off such an assault. The only person who knows the hiding place is Dakota Lil, a saloonkeeper who already has lost her husband and son in battle and wants no more part of it.

Ultimately persuaded by York to reveal where the guns are, they are betrayed by a gambler, Elkins, who intends to sell them to the enemy for a profit.

Red Tomahawk is not a bad A. C Lyle western as it has a simple plot, dialogue and action, which keeps you watching. It's not world shatteringly great, but it's a fair western. You got the usual old stars and some tongue in cheek moments.

A C Lyles was a producer of budget westerns and Red Tomahawk was one of three starring singing baritone Howard Keel in a straight role. Keel was actually a fairly good dramatic actor and ended his career strepping in to Dallas after Jim Davis died. Here he plays a Union army captain who discovers the massacre of Custer after the battle of the Little Big Horn. He manages to acquire two gatling guns, early examples of machine guns, which then help to beat off Sitting Bull's army of Sioux warriors that would otherwise have overwhelmed the smaller contingent of soldiers. Joan Coulfield is slotted into this otherwise all male action drama as a love interest for Keel. Two other former leading men, Broderick Crawford and Scott Brady assist Keel on his journey to defend Deadwood against Sioux attacks. Wendell Corey looking the worse for wear, which I believe was brought about by heavy drinking, is a town villain. These former stars in their own right had all reached the end of their former glory on the screen and I guess were taking whatever work was offered. It would have been a better picture I think if it had not constantly chopped between location shots and studio shots which I found jarring. I don't think the Sioux would have all been in buckskin uniforms either. People get shot all the time but no blood shows. If a movie is shot on the cheap then it shows and these A C Lyles' pictures are notorious for that. The movie is mildly entertaining but that's all. It does benefit however by the casting of likeable actors.

You know AC Lyles, the specialist in recycling old movie stars, not the biggest as he Duke or Dick Widmark, but stars enough anyway. Those films were all westerns, all made in the late sixties, but not on the Sam Peckinpah's nor Monty Hellman's way, no specially gloomy films, but on the old fashioned way - with old actors, as we had in the fifties, with the hero, the villain and so on. The usual stuff. Nothing terrific. Only THE BOUNTY KILLER, starring Dan Duryea, during that same period, was worth watching, but though it seemed AC LYles productions, it was not. So, back to this one, that may be the thousandth western taking place just after Little Big Horn massacre, some kind of Nam disaster and national scar before its time, a nightmare, a tragedy, which the American film industry must, ot at least try to exorcise, this at any cost. This story was already used, over used, far too much to prevent the audiences to feel asleep. Gun smugglers and machine gun traffic, with Indians in the middle. Nothing special.