War Paint

Lesley Selander was a prolific B movie director. That is all I know about him. I do not know that I have watched any of his other flicks, but on the strength of WAR PAINT I would say that I am not losing much.

With a decent cast for a B picture - including Robert Stack, Charles McGraw, Peter Graves, Keith Larsen, Walter Reed and beautiful Joan Taylor as a sqwaw - the acting rates sufficiently high to hold your attention.

The script provides the downside: unrelenting in its penchant for tragedy, we see Larsen as the subversive son of the Indian chief kill soldiers, then his sister Taylor does it, and finally the Cavalary troops kill each other. In between, a soldier who has just become a father drinks poisoned H20 and croaks without seeing his son - the single most tragic and heart-wrenching event in the film.

Stack has a fiancée but by the end of the movie he appears to be more inclined toward going off into the sunset with the Indian chief's daughter, peace looking set to stay.

The length is 89 minutes, pretty standard for B pictures... but it feels a lot longer and heavier, what with all the deaths. 6/10.

"War Paint" (1953) starring Robert Stack is a good "mission across the desert" movie with good actors, an OK script, and portrays US Army deserters who murder loyal Army soldiers and try to murder their commanding officer, and almost succeed.

Very few movies portray this important military discipline problem which has happened often in US and other Army military history.

US Army officers are issued sidearms (handguns) to defend themselves against enlisted men they command who may decide to disobey orders and murder the commander who gave them orders they disobey.

During the War In Vietnam, the phenomenon of enlisted men murdering officers who commanded them was publicized and often called "fragging." Enlisted men who attack and try to murder officers, and sometimes succeed, is not new to military experience. Leading a military unit is dangerous for many reasons, not only because of enemy fire, but due to "friendly fire" from soldiers part of one's military group, which "friendly fire" is, sadly and tragically, sometimes intentional.

Murdered officers killed by their own men is not new in military history.

This "War Paint" (1953) movie set in desert country about a small military unit led by a single junior (low level) officer (a Lieutenant) played by Robert Stack shows enlisted men, about a dozen of them, made desperate by harsh no-water desert conditions, and greedy due to a gold mine they come across on their way to delivering a peace treaty to an Indian tribal chief (the mission the military group has in the "old West" of post-Civil War 19th century times in the far west desert country. (This movie was shot entirely in California's "Death Valley," located near the Nevada/ California state border, famous for it's moonscape appearance where almost nothing, plant or animal, can live, or does.) The movie story is very simple, and not a little eerie.

It was made the same year Robert Stack starred in the first 3-D movie titled "Bwana Devil," set in Africa.....another Robert Stack adventure movie.

"War Paint" is a good movie for several reasons, including it's unusual and forthright treatment of bad soldiers doing damage to good soldiers, all in the same Army and supposed to be on the "same team." A single female character is included in the cast, and she is supposed to be an Indian maiden, the daughter of the Indian tribal chief the military group seeks to present with a US Govt. peace treaty.

The girl is beautiful, dressed in a form fitting doe-skin dress, has a perfect complexion, lovely thick dark braided hair, every hair neatly in place, a very pretty face, and a great, curvy female figure, including chorus girl legs shown off when she rides horses or wrestles around on the ground when attacked by soldiers or attacking the soldiers on her own.

She is not a typical movie Indian girl...not submissive, not inarticulate, not demure. She's smart as hell in every way, and shows off her good mental qualities (which match her dazzling appearance) without apology or restraint.

Her physical beauty is a welcome visual relief for movie viewers who must watch the movie story set in the dull and ugly moonscape desert environment which oppresses the struggling soldiers for obvious reasons.

The Indian maiden does not join the military group until the movie is 2/3rds over, and then she is their hostile and unpleasant prisoner, outspokenly "anti-White man!" But we see her (the audience does) well before the actor soldiers do, and we see her comely features and great legs.

She helps her brother, who opposes the US Govt. treaty his father, the Indian tribal chief wants and supports. The brother murders American soldiers, is taken prisoner by the military group, escapes, attacks the group, and finally is killed, all while the younger adult female sister assists her brother and stays out of sight of the military group....until the last 1/3 of the movie when she shoots a straggling soldier during a rifle battle she initiates, and is caught, taken prisoner, and retained as a hostage to present to the Indian tribal chief.

Predictably, she befriends handsome Robert Stack, and at the end of the movie, only the two of them (Stack and the girl) remain....all other soldiers part of the "mission across the desert" have died.....most due to being killed by fellow soldiers.

The whole movie is unusual and thought provoking, worth seeing.

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Written by Tex Allen, SAG-AFTRA movie actor. Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for more information about Tex Allen.

Tex Allen's email address is TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com.

See Tex Allen Movie Credits, Biography, and 2012 photos at WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen. See other Tex Allen written movie reviews....almost 100 titles.... at: "http://imdb.com/user/ur15279309/comments" (paste this address into your URL Browser)

You can almost hear the grunting and straining as director Lesley Selander labors mightily to arise from the quicksand of the Saturday afternoon cowboy matinee that has been his happy place to the more rarified air of the 1950s psychological western. Ultimately, of course, Selander loses the battle and slips back into standard hero/villain, shoot em up land but it was a noble attempt and should be recognized as such. Of course, Selander isn't helped in his struggle by having around his neck the millstone of a supremely dull leading man, Robert Stack, who seemed to do decent work only when Sirk was around to direct him. And the screenplay, with its yawner of a mutiny sub plot and a most unconvincing, 180 degree switch of character on the part of Joan Taylor, is not exactly Frank Nugent or Marguerite Roberts. So let's give it a generous C plus for the scenes of survival in the desert and good support from such 50s western stalwarts as Charles McGraw, Robert Wilkie and Douglas Kennedy, among others.

This could have been a well-made western. With Robert Stack, Peter Graves, and the line-up of supporting characters including a beautiful 'Indian' woman, the acting really wasn't half bad but someone skimped terribly on script-writing and the action scenes.

The rattlesnake scene was horrible. The snake was clearly either dead or a rubber fake, you could see the string tied around its neck that was slowly jerking it along. That was the most fake rattlesnake I've ever seen in a western. I suppose they couldn't afford a real one.

The scene where they drank at the water hole in the cave was even worse. Supposedly near-dead from thirst, all they did was shake their heads in the water and blow bubbles and make noises. Those that did draw water into their mouths spit it back out into the pool right in front of the others who were 'drinking'.

The fight scenes and deaths were the worst. I won't even go into detail about how poorly scripted and acted they were. There was clearly a skinny male stunt person taking the Indian girl's place when she wrestled the soldier. And the way the combatants who were next in line to be killed would stand up in full view to shoot in order to be shot was laughable.

I liked the overall plot and the cast, Robert Stack was good and the dialog not bad. But the director must have been so convinced that these elements would carry the film that he paid no attention to these details. I can't even rate it a 5 because of these blatant oversights.

An unjustly-overlooked masterpiece. The almost-unrecognizably young Robert Stack plays the hardened CO of a company entrusted with delivering a treaty. If the chief for whom it is intended does not receive it within the week, he will declare war. Of course, complications ensue...Many of the characters and plot points seem cliched, but only because the film shows its age. Look past the vestiges of '50s moviemaking--blue-eyed squaws, etc.--for strikingly modern subject matter: divorce and Native American rage at continued injustices in particular. Tremendously taut and exciting, to boot. See this movie!