This is a UA release, one of two that Victor Mature co-produced with John Wayne's Batjac company. It has a modest budget and plays like a TV movie or extended episode of TV's Wagon Train. But the ideas presented are grand in scope, and it's a shame there wasn't a larger budget to take advantage of all its cinematic possibilities.
The film offers Mature as a no-holds barred widowed father trying to take his young daughter west to start a new life in Oregon. Along the way, they meet two sisters doing the same after one lost her fiancé in the Civil War. The backgrounds of the main characters are very well explained.
Soon there is an attack by Modoc natives. We never get to see the natives as individuals; instead, we see them intermittently as a hostile element our little traveling group must occasionally fight off. After the initial attack, we are introduced to a black Union soldier, played by Rex Ingram. He's in no shape to travel, but Mature's character insists on taking him along. Of course, there is the eventual realization the old soldier is dead weight. The scene where Ingram threatens suicide to force the others to go on without him is a highpoint of the film.
I liked the way the plot smartly progressed, and there was one action sequence after another, with just enough resting time in between, for us to continue getting to know the characters better. Naturally, it all culminates in a standoff involving more Union soldiers versus the Modoc. The soldiers are not all incorruptible (in a short sequence two try to steal the payroll). Adding to the complications is the fact that Mature, to protect his daughter and the one surviving sister, must join forces with the Union, though he himself had been a rebel Confederate.
So there is a lot being said in ESCORT WEST, and while it is somewhat formulaic and predictable, we care about the people in the story and their relationships. As I said, this could have been expanded more cinematically if the budget had been greater. We could have seen flashbacks of what the leads experienced during and immediately after the war. We also could have seen some more of the attack involving the natives, which mostly happens off-camera. Plus I think a better denouement where they finally arrive in Oregon could have been filmed.
But it's still a very effective thought-provoking independent western picture.
The film offers Mature as a no-holds barred widowed father trying to take his young daughter west to start a new life in Oregon. Along the way, they meet two sisters doing the same after one lost her fiancé in the Civil War. The backgrounds of the main characters are very well explained.
Soon there is an attack by Modoc natives. We never get to see the natives as individuals; instead, we see them intermittently as a hostile element our little traveling group must occasionally fight off. After the initial attack, we are introduced to a black Union soldier, played by Rex Ingram. He's in no shape to travel, but Mature's character insists on taking him along. Of course, there is the eventual realization the old soldier is dead weight. The scene where Ingram threatens suicide to force the others to go on without him is a highpoint of the film.
I liked the way the plot smartly progressed, and there was one action sequence after another, with just enough resting time in between, for us to continue getting to know the characters better. Naturally, it all culminates in a standoff involving more Union soldiers versus the Modoc. The soldiers are not all incorruptible (in a short sequence two try to steal the payroll). Adding to the complications is the fact that Mature, to protect his daughter and the one surviving sister, must join forces with the Union, though he himself had been a rebel Confederate.
So there is a lot being said in ESCORT WEST, and while it is somewhat formulaic and predictable, we care about the people in the story and their relationships. As I said, this could have been expanded more cinematically if the budget had been greater. We could have seen flashbacks of what the leads experienced during and immediately after the war. We also could have seen some more of the attack involving the natives, which mostly happens off-camera. Plus I think a better denouement where they finally arrive in Oregon could have been filmed.
But it's still a very effective thought-provoking independent western picture.