Fort Bowie (1958)

The west started to grow up in the Fifties and Fort Bowie was not the kind of film that would have been a Saturday matinée feature for the Gene and Roy crowd a decade earlier. It deals with sexual attention and suggested infidelity stuff that was not covered by those Republic cowboys in this United Artists release.A pair of biblical stories served as plot devices for Fort Bowie. Jan Harrison is the bored wife of commander Kent Taylor and one day in a fit of pique like Potiphar's wife after Ben Johnson rejects her advances says that she and Johnson got it on. Taylor reacts like King David and sends Johnson on a Uriah the Hittite like mission to try and talk to Larry Chance as Vittorio leader of the Apaches to surrender peacefully.Quite understandably Vittorio is in no mood to talk peace with any white men. An eager for promotion officer played by J. Ian Douglas massacred a bunch of Apaches who came in under a flag of truce. By sheer luck and rescue from an unexpected source Johnson escapes.The climax of the film is a slam bang see saw battle for Fort Bowie is the highlight of the film and western fans who crave action will have no cause for complaint.Color might have added something, but Fort Bowie is a western fans dream.

Ben Johnson is nothing if not a genuinely likable guy. Sure, he's from Oklahoma and Texas and grew up with horses and for all we know his politics, combined with all that equinity, may have put him somewhere to the right of Genghis Kahn. But that would be hard to believe. He's measured and slow in speech and demeanor. When he says "Yes, sir" or "No, sir", it sounds like he's been using those polite forms of address since infancy. I've always liked the guy, even when he was a heavy in "Shane." (He reformed.) He's handsome too, and he sits a horse splendidly. Under John Ford he was never anything except a "trooper" or, at most, a sergeant. Here, he's a commissioned officer. It's easy to see why he might have gotten mixed up in the unholy mess that is this movie.Alas, he's not only a Captain, he's a romantic lead. It just doesn't sound kosher when Ben Johnson is compelled to say something like, "Listen, you mean more to me than any woman I've ever known, but you're not for me." That's not Ben Johnson. That's the screenwriter, Maurice Tombragel, taking a snooze instead of working.At least the woman he's romancing, the mammose Maureen Hingert, is beautiful. She was Miss Ceylon somewhere back in the 1950s. She doesn't look much like an Apache though. She's all glamorized up with eye make up and lipstick and silken hair. But then so is the dissatisfied and ambitious wife of the Commanding Officer. He's Kent Taylor. She's Jan Harrison. Taylor has a Hollywood haircut and the neatly trimmed beard of a college professor. He acts like a Hollywood utility player. Jan Harrison can't act at all, but at least she was "Miss Washington State" at some point. With a little imagination Maurice Tombragel could have interpolated a swimsuit competition. ("Darling, why don't you and Chanzana go down to the river, slip into your tiny bikinis, and have a nice swim? I'll join you later with the videocam." See how easy it is?) I don't know how far I want to bother getting into this. The musical score is by Les Baxter, who did some nice arrangements for pop songs in the 50s, but this is generic and could have been written by a Magic 8 Ball. The Apaches speak Indianese. "You get off horse. Leave guns." (That's a direct quote.) You know, I hate saying this, but it's impossible to watch a movie like this -- cavalry versus Apache -- without Ford's enchiridion coming to mind, especially examples like "Fort Apache" and "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon." Ford's movies have a lived-in quality. It's not just that characters are fleshed out with human quirks, while here everyone is stripped of every feature that doesn't advance the story. It's that in "Yellow Ribbon," John Wayne wears red long johns under his dusty uniform. Here, the uniforms are tightly tailored, not baggy and used. The boots are refulgent. They're so polished they probably emit a glow in the dark.There's a scene in which a sergeant is captured and tortured by the Apache. ("Torture him. Torture him good.") Well, the truth is that the Plains Indians were pretty rough customers when it came to torture, though of course it wasn't torture to them. They probably called it "enhanced execution." The Apache might debone captives, beginning with the phalanges, but they expected the same treatment from their enemies. The attitude towards battle of the Indians on the high plains was remarkably similar to that of the Greek city states -- bravery was a virtue of the highest order.Anyway, however much I enjoy Ben Johnson, he's not enough to save this movie. Let's fillet this sucker.

At a cavalry outpost, the colonel (Taylor) dispatches a captain (Johnson) on a suicide mission among the Apaches because of rivalry over his wife's (Harrison) affections.The colonel loves wife Allison, but she loves the captain, I think. And, the captain loves her, at least some of the time. However, the rest of the time, he loves Chanzana, but Chanzana is half Apache, and I think she loves Apache leader Victorio. Oh well, I may be wrong about all this, but then the script can't seem to make up its mind either. So maybe you can sort it out.Good thing there's lots of action to interrupt this frontier soap opera. In fact I don't know when I've heard more shooting. Seems like somebody's always wiping out somebody else. Boy, was I surprised when the major shoots all the Indians carrying that white flag of truce. Pretty rotten thing for our guys to do, which sets off all the shooting because now the Apaches want revenge.But then it seems like the Indians like roasting our guys over an upside-down spit. That's pretty rotten too and not in any multi-cultural handbook I know of. Then too, that part reminds me of another good Apache movie, Ulzana's Raid (1971), where the Apaches also practice some strange culinary arts. Even stranger, however, is when the Indians defend the fort against attacking cavalry (I love that wagon-ramp trick). Now where has any Western fan seen that upside-down world before.Anyway, it's an okay Western with some interesting sidelights and the great Ben Johnson. I'm just wondering why they went all the way to scenic Kanab, Utah to film, and then didn't didn't do it in Technicolor. Then again, maybe they spent their budget on all the big shoot- outs. But-- bottom line-- if you can untangle the big who-loves-whom puzzle in this movie, I'm sure there's a place for you at People magazine. Otherwise, you might want to catch up with this cowboys-and-Indians on an especially slow night.

I just finished watching Fort Bowie, and was pleasantly surprised at what a good movie it was. I had never seen it before and the review I had read said it was a low budget film, but the cuts must have come from the actors salary. Ben Johnson was super as was most of the rest of the cast. I also was thrilled to see Johnny Western in a fairly noticeable role. The action scenes were certainly big budget caliber. I recently saw the last western that Ben Johnson made and there was little change in his appearance, except for a bit of weight gain. To me his acting is as natural as John Waynes. Kent Smith did a creditable job in his role. As far as the other actors I wasn't familiar with any of them except the "old sarge", but the movie was far better than I was expecting.