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I first saw this film as a boy in what was probably its second run through the theatres in the mid '50's. I loved it then; my now 25 year old son loved it in the '80's and I love it today. It is a '50's era cowboy v. Indian shoot 'em up in an unusual locale, the Florida Everglades.
The plot is very straightforward--Coop is an army officer in pre Civil War Florida who has seen his Indian wife murdered and lives with his son and a loyal detachment of soldiers on his own island. The bad guys are running guns to the "hostiles" from a fort on the other side of Lake Okeechobee. Coop and his men are sent on a mission to take the fort, destroy it and return home. They go by boat and take care of the fort but things go awry and they must brave the swamps on foot with a Seminole war party hot on their heels as they try to return home.
The movie basically consists of Coop getting his assignment, taking the fort and then, for the last 75% of the film, trying to get home against great odds. This one is solid action from virtually start to finish in the '50's good guys v. bad guys style. It is superbly done. Accepting it for what it intends to be, I enjoy it just as much at 50+ years of age as I did as an 8 year old.
If you are a baby boomer and loved the action films and TV shows of your youth, you will thoroughly enjoy this one. Not only does it feature Coop in the lead--his usual quiet but brave and resolute self--but the supporting actors are excellent. Arthur Hunnicutt as Monk is superb. Hunnicutt received an academy award nomination for a similar role in "The Big Sky" several years later. He was a Walter Brennan type--just as good but not as well known. He played Davy Crockett in Republic's "The Last Command" and was a superb sidekick to John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in "El Dorado" nearly 15 years later. Hard core baby boomers may remember Robert Webb, whose character is the narrator, as TV's Saturday morning action adventurer "Captain Midnight."
This film does an excellent job of creating and maintaining suspense from start to finish. I can not conceive of anyone who likes '50's action films not thoroughly enjoying it. Why anyone would see it as "racist" is beyond me. It's just the troopers against the Indians--just like any western of the era, except set in Florida against the Seminoles pre Civil War instead of in the west after. Coop's character was married to an Indian princess and has a surviving son with her. This is racist? Please!
One point of note is that the fort used by the gunrunners and taken by the troopers early in the film is the Castillo de San Marcos--constructed in the 1600's and still standing in St. Augustine, Florida. You can tour it today. The famous Seminole chief, Osceolea, was held prisoner there but escaped.
See the film, see the fort. They are both fun.
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For Gary Cooper fans, this is an above average flick. It's not in the same class as The Westerner or Sgt York, but it has plenty of suspense and action. It also has one of the hottest leading ladies I've ever seen! Apparently some hotshot must have married her (Mari Aldon) and cut short her career because this seems to be her only lead role. As for Coop, he's in fine shape-ok, a little past his prime, but still handsome and tough. His entrance scene is a great shot showing what a Golden Age movie star ought to look like.After attacking and destroying the Seminole Indians arms cache (Florida circa 1840) most of the movie concerns the small band of soldiers led by Cooper being chased through the Everglades by some seriously fearsome Seminoles. In a way, it's a chase movie, and the retreating group is in a situation of convincing danger. Therein lies the heroic nature of a Gary Cooper character in his adventure films: he is a formidable opponent, but he can be killed. He is not the superhuman as Clint Eastwood often is, or even John Wayne. You get the feeling that he may not make it to the end of the movie. However, he is the kind of man you would put your faith in and follow just about anywhere. Coop seems to be enjoying himself in the film and looks like he's doing many of his own stunts. The climactic and imaginative underwater knife duel is well done and caps the tension of the story. I have to admit, the movie started a bit slow for me, but I continued watching and was pleasantly rewarded. For a younger Gary Cooper, and more violent film, I would recommend The Real Glory, but this is a harder to find movie than Distant Drum. One bit of criticism is, as usual, with the quality of the print. It's not terrible, but it is faded somewhat. I give it four stars because of the action and suspense, Cooper's lively performance, and Miss Aldon is HOT!
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I was very disappointed at the sound quality of this video. The sound goes up and down and buzzes in various places.Have returned for replacement twice and so I have to believe the problem is with the Master Disc.Honest reviews on Distant Drums (1951)
Gary Cooper plays an army captain who has gone native, removed himself from the garrison to live on his own private island with the half-breed son by his murdered Indian wife. Disdaining uniform for more 'primitive' furs, he is described by his onlooking partner in this film as part 'savage'. He is no Colonel Kurtz, however, but the soundest and bravest of soldiers his mission is to blow up a fort held by the ruthless Seminole tribe, after releasing the largely Hispanic prisoners, opening the way for Zachary Taylor's army to move in.Cooper's apparent savagery is contrasted with the narrator, who, opening the film writing his diary, is linked to civilisation and culture. A genteel gentleman-officer, clean-cut in an absurdly clean uniform, with gleaming rapier by his side, he is next to useless in the wilderness of the film's setting. Though set in the Everglade swamps of Florida, 'Drums' is a curious mixture of Western and jungle adventure, which the great Raoul Walsh films as a sort of pinball game, large groups chasing or fleeing one another, from left to right and all over the place.
'Drums' has a ridiculous script, leavening cod-poetry and silly historical contextualising with wooden heroics and romance; the acting is generally stiff, not helped by the sharp cuts between location shooting and studio shots. None of this matters. If Robert Altman is the master of group interaction, then Walsh is the master of group action, his camera and wave-like editing even faster than the hordes of rushing braves or knackered infantry dotting the film. His no-nonsense approach, focusing on the narratively pertinent and avoiding the superfluous, merely picturesque or heavily symbolic (the narrator indulges in metaphors, but his poetic pretensions are routinely mocked) does not preclude sequences of great beauty, whether it is Walsh's intense respone to the jungle's rich colours, or the action build-ups framed in dramatic silhouettes. There are at least three astonishing, creeping pans revealing groups agonisingly waiting for attack or surprise or support or just anything.
The relationship between the hero and Mari Aldon, frankly pert and sexually demanding, catch Cooper at an erotic pitch not seen since his 30s masterpieces with Marlene Dietrich. In true Wagnerian style, however, this sexual smouldering co-exists with an all-encompassing stench of death. The film's most memorable images frame unimaginable slaughter the post-massacre tableau of corpses spread out over the fallen fort, worthy of 'Gone With The Wind'; the skull-crowned burial mounds of the Seminole, once again raising the future spectre of 'Apocalypse Now'; their death pits of crocodile swamps, victims only revealed by their floating hats; the breathtaking underwater stand-off between Cooper and his rival Chief. The racism of the film, and a narrative in which Cooper's savagery must be normalised, and Aldon's anti-social desires tamed, are offset by Coop's embodiment of both American and Indian within himself, and in the ironic narrative that sees time-stained struggles over land played out in treacherous swamps.
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