Fri 4 Sep 2015
A Western Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: APACHE DRUMS (1951).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[8] Comments
APACHE DRUMS. Universal International, 1951. Stephen McNally, Coleen Gray, Willard Parker, Arthur Shields, James Griffith, Armando Silvestre, James Best and Clarence Muse. Written by David Chandler, from “Stand at Spanish Boot†by Harry Brown (as stated in the credits; no record of publication known). Produced by Val Lewton. Directed by Hugo Fregonese.
The last film and only Western of a legendary producer, this is more Val Lewton’s film than director Fregonese’s or writer Chandler’s. The whole approach — a mostly-unseen menace and gradually growing tension, punctuated by moments of shock and horror — harks back to classics like The Seventh Victim and I Walked with a Zombie.
Which is a good thing, because as a Western, it ain’t much. Director Hugo Fregonese (Man in the Attic, Savage Pampas, etc.) was always a reliable craftsman, but not much more. In his hands, the fights, chases etc. are capably done but strangely unexciting. What makes Apache Drums memorable is Lewton’s feel for the characters and their growing sense of entrapment.
And the characters are a well-realized lot. Stephen McNally headlines as a raffish gambler run out of town, who returns to warn the disbelieving townsfolk of imminent danger; Coleen Gray, memorable in Red River and The Killing, shows genuine indecision about her feelings for him, while Willard Parker projects stolid blandness as the thudding voice of authority.
In the supporting cast, Arthur Shields plays yet another reverend, but more complex than usual this time, subject to serious errors of judgment balanced by acts of courage. James Griffith is fine as a smarter-than-usual cavalry officer, and Clarence Muse brings real dignity and pathos to a small part — as he always did.
The solid characterizations keep Apache Drums watchable, even in the dull stretches, and when the scary parts come, with the townspeople trapped in an old church, unable to see the drum-beating attackers till they leap in from overhead like harpies, the tension really ratchets up. And there’s a truly nightmarish bit toward the end with Willard Parker a captive of the Apaches, locked outside the church, unseen from inside, screaming at everyone not to let him in!
I guess Val Lewton will always be remembered for those remarkable films at RKO, but Apache Drums is a fitting, if minor, coda to a great career.
September 4th, 2015 at 8:29 pm
One of those films that improves with watching more than once, and I agree about the atmosphere pushing this beyond its rather mundane Western roots.
Here, as in early Westerns, the Apache are used less as characters than as a force of nature. It dates back at least to Ford in THE IRON HORSE and could still be seen as late as ULZANNA’S RAID and MACKENNA’S GOLD.
Today it would be unconscionable to do that, but it did resort in some good Westerns.
September 5th, 2015 at 2:42 pm
This sounds to me a lot like John Carpenter’s ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, which Jon and I watched together sometime this summer. We both enjoyed it, but I don’t think either of us wrote up a review.
September 5th, 2015 at 2:54 pm
Carpenter was actually remaking a western, Hawks RIO BRAVO, from around the same period.
September 5th, 2015 at 3:29 pm
Yes, I know the linkage between PRECINCT 13 and RIO BRAVO, but while I haven’t seen APACHE DRUMS, and based only on Dan’s review, I was wondering out loud how close the similarity might be between it and PRECINCT 13 as well.
After I posted the unstated question, I went looking online and found this blogger who sees a lot of merit in the resemblance. Scroll way down to the bottom:
https://fiftieswesterns.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/the-val-lewton-blogathon-apache-drums-1951/
Sounds like APACHE DRUMS is a movie I should watch, and soon.
September 5th, 2015 at 5:06 pm
Just on its own it is a good little western with the Lewton touches making a good deal of difference and a solid cast. I’m a little more forgiving of Fregonese direction, after all it is a western made for a western audience.
I wonder if Carpenter had this directly in mind or unconsciously drew on it — I think sometimes when we give a film credit in that manner it is more a case of something the director saw and perhaps didn’t directly remember. Like writing, almost everything you read or see goes into the mixmaster.
September 5th, 2015 at 5:39 pm
Steve,
Following a link in the link in your previous comment I ran across something that illustrates my point in the last comment I made. Reviewing this film a reviewer mentions a scene in which Arthur Shields character, a Welshman, stirs the trapped townspeople to sing Men of Harlech and compares it to the scene in ZULU where the Welsh soldiers surrounded by Zulu sing the song implying in doing so that the latter owes something to this film whereas in fact the actual soldiers at Rorke’s Drift did sing to the Zulu warriors chanting around them, a historical fact either Lewton, screenwriter David Chandler, or director Fregonese likely drew on here. Film people used to be well read and educated outside of film then. The reviewer draws an erroneous analogy by not knowing a historical fact likely well known by the people involved in the making of APACHE DRUM.
Some historical perspective is needed before making these claims too quickly. Likely John Carpenter did see this, but that does not mean it superseded RIO BRAVO as the basis for ASSAULT or was a direct conscious influence at all. Coincidence does happen, ask courts that deal with plagiarism suits which are notoriously hard to prove.
Even Freud admitted sometimes a cigar was just a cigar. Agatha Christie had a character in a short story called James Bond and Rudyard Kipling wrote a story called .OO7 but that does not mean Ian Fleming read or noted them consciously.
Richard Lupoff makes a good case that Edgar Rice Burroughs read Edwin Lester Arnold’s GULLIVAR OF MARS and PHRA THE PHONECIAN but even he only claims it is likely as a source for John Carter. Creativity is such, and the mind of creative people so active and porous, that almost anything may have triggered it without conscious effort.
It is a fun game to play, but I think we give these got ya revelations more weight than they can bear sometimes. As has often been pointed out about writing and about film making doing it well is stealing from everyone.
I have a problem with these claims because I know as a writer how often I draw on unconscious memories of material I could not consciously identify when I write, some half formed memories of something seen in child hood whose name I don’t know or might even have only seen described in later reading. You can always tell when writers are too slavish in these influences because their work is derivative and not overly creative. It is true of creative talent in film as well, look at the difference between the work of Steven Spielberg and Brian de Palma.
September 6th, 2015 at 2:56 pm
John Carpenter said that Rio Bravo and Night of the Walking Dead were among the biggest influences on ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wasn’t also subconsciously influenced by this film and other such Westerns with roaming, marauding Apaches.
I like the reference to Zulu. I thought of that as well
September 7th, 2015 at 3:58 pm
Since films are art by committee in most cases influences are hard to pin down. With blue pages coming down every day of filming it is hard for SAG to even determine who wrote the damn thing much less where the inspiration came from beyond what the talent involved actually says.
There is no dearth of films from this period of small groups penned down by Indians and you can go back to the silent BEAU GESTE and Ford’s LOST PATROL if you want for other variations. I suspect Carpenter, a film lover of my generation, saw them on the small and big screen as I did whether he noted any of them as he does RIO BRAVO and WALKING DEAD or not. It is also a theme that happened in real life, and as RIO BRAVO the film references the Alamo so has Carpenter in relation to ASSUALT. There is also Rorke’s Drift, often called the British Alamo, as mentioned and the siege of the embassies in Bejing during the Boxer Rebellion, Bataan, and the siege at Khrisnapor in the Sepoy Rebellion to name other historical examples.
Any and all of them likely influenced Carpenter and this film. It is no accident Sheild’s sings MEN OF HARLECH though since that incident from Rorke’s Drift was a well known historical fact long before the film ZULU.
There were a good dozen men who claimed to be the inspiration for James Bond for instance, and most of them had a good claim. I knew at least five of them in England in the seventies and everyone of them had good reason to make the claim though no one of them exactly was Fleming’s Bond.
I just think at times we simplify too much when we look for these hidden influences.