Best known for producing eerie horror movies, Val Lewton switched to Universal westerns after five years over at RKO. What results is an interesting take on the typical natives bad/white folks good western film with the opening indicating such through their written narration indicating that starving Apaches were on a mission to raid the religious white settlement (which did include a native American as well as a few Mexicans and briefly one
blackk man) after attacking and killing members of a wagon train leaving the settlement.
The white settlers are presented as holier than thou, banishing Stephen McNally after he killed two men in self defense. They also order "entertainment" provider Ruthelma Stevens to leave along with her girls which ends up with them massacred on the wagon train that McNally finds, only pianist Clarence Muse still barely alive to tell him what happened.
With the settlement now trapped inside their church, they fear the potential break-in of the attacking Apaches, a group called the Mescaleros. Under Lewton's producing eye and director Cy Endfield, this sequence becomes as scary as anything he did in his horror movies, and the tension is quite overwhelming. Muse in his small role is quite moving, and Arthur Shields as the hypocritical reverend is very good as well. It should be noted that Chinto Guzman who plays the kind Mexican Chacho is a male actor, not an actress as listed in his page here, although this was his only film.
The white settlers are presented as holier than thou, banishing Stephen McNally after he killed two men in self defense. They also order "entertainment" provider Ruthelma Stevens to leave along with her girls which ends up with them massacred on the wagon train that McNally finds, only pianist Clarence Muse still barely alive to tell him what happened.
With the settlement now trapped inside their church, they fear the potential break-in of the attacking Apaches, a group called the Mescaleros. Under Lewton's producing eye and director Cy Endfield, this sequence becomes as scary as anything he did in his horror movies, and the tension is quite overwhelming. Muse in his small role is quite moving, and Arthur Shields as the hypocritical reverend is very good as well. It should be noted that Chinto Guzman who plays the kind Mexican Chacho is a male actor, not an actress as listed in his page here, although this was his only film.