Mohawk (1956)

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The IMDb credits state this film was done in Pathecolor, but I have to admit, this was the oddest looking movie I've experienced yet. Repeatedly one has characters in vibrant color back-dropped by scenery or sets in black and white. At times various scenes appear entirely sepia hued, and there are frequent transitions between day and night within the same time frame. More than anything, it appeared to me that someone was hired to colorize a black and white film, and simply decided to do only half the job. Since no one else mentioned this in the other reviews I've read, I might assume it's a quirk of the print I viewed from the Mill Creek Western Collection. So if you have that set, you'll probably experience what I just did.Now I don't know what to make of Scott Brady. He portrays sort of a womanizer in the picture and his taste runs the gamut, but all of his girlfriends are quite attractive. It made me chuckle actually, because in his 1959/1960 TV Western Series 'Shotgun Slade', he also fancied himself somewhat of a ladies man, but in a somewhat laughable sort of way. You'll just have to catch a couple of those episodes to see what I mean.The other reviewers on this board recap this story pretty well so no need to go into detail here. The kick for me was the casting for this flick, with Rita Gam, Lori Nelson and Allison Hayes all vieing for Brady's attention. TV and movie Western fans will no doubt enjoy catching Neville Brand here as a Tuscarora Indian Chief who wants to mix it up with the white soldiers. He's kept in check somewhat by Mohawk Chief Kowanen (Ted DeCorsia), but the picture does manage a fairly thrilling battle to close out the show. And say, did I get this right? That's Mae Clarke as Kowanen's wife Minikah, who a quarter century earlier caught a grapefruit in the smacker from Jimmy Cagney in "The Public Enemy". There's a bit of trivia you'll be glad to know.What's rather interesting to me now that I've watched the picture, I actually rather enjoyed it even though it's pretty clichéd in most respects. Maybe it's because the principal players didn't seem to be taking things all too seriously and just had a good time putting this thing together. The one scene that really stood out for me was when Jonathan Adams (Brady) and Indian babe Onida (Gam) went for a swim, and wound up playing with a Mohawk version of Frisbee.

I remember as a teenager passing a theater poster of a scantily clad Rita Gam and wishing I had the money to go in. I know now what I didn't then-- it was my lucky day. Even a longer look at that shapely leg wouldn't have made up for all the bad acting (deCorsia's wooden Indian should be planted in front of a cigar store), the stupefied poetic dialogue ("You shine like a moon above the stars,"), the ridiculous Hollywood casting (malt-shop teen Tommy Cook as Indian warrior), and the ultra-cheap production values (backgrounds painted by art class dropouts). Heck, they couldn't even stage minimal outdoor battle scenes, using stock shots from 1939's Drums Along the Mohawk instead. Note too, how artificially the Indians emerge from the forest as though they're expecting a parade to pass by. At least the producers knew enough to play up the sex angle with a bevy of Indian maidens apparently recruited from a Las Vegas stage show. I'm just sorry that director Kurt Neumann's name is attached to this misfire. He did manage a number of quality low-budget sci-fi flicks like The Fly (1958), Kronos (1957), and the ground-breaking Rocketship X-M (1950). Maybe there's a lesson here, like it's easier to direct bug-eyed monsters than a bunch of phony Indians.

Kurt Neumann gets screen credit for directing Mohawk, but I'd estimate that about one third of the film was shot by John Ford. Not that Pappy was around at all while this abysmal excuse for a B eastern/western was made, mind you. A little more than fifteen years earlier, he had directed a film on the same subject, the majestic Drums Along the Mohawk, for 20th Century Fox, with Henry Fonda in the lead. Somehow, some way, the producers of Mohawk got the rights to use the magnificent action scenes - attack on a frontier fort, a lone man running through the woods to get reinforcements while pursued by three Indians - within the context of their cheapo-cheapo production, which essentially is to westerns what Robot Monster is to sci-fi: As awful as it is, if you catch it in the right mood, you may find it to be so bad that it's entertaining. The plot, totally anachronistic as compared to Ford's ultra-authenticity, has Scott Brady (later Shotgun Slade on TV) as a loverboy (though a solid actor, he wasn't cut out for such a part). He's a painter who talks gorgeous Hollywood starlets (er . . . make them frontier lasses) into taking off most of their clothes for one of his portraits. Lori Nelson (pert blonde), Allison Hayes (star of The Fifty Foot Woman - the original, that is), and Rita Gam (as a Mohawk babe) all fall for him, and his character has more in common with Hugh Hefner than Henry Fonda in Ford's film. The point is, most of Mohawk was shot on a studio set in about three days, with a frontier fort that is mostly a big painting the actors stand in front of. Then someone screams something on the order of "The Mohawks are coming!" and, whoooosh - we cut to stock footage from Ford's film that is on a grand scale. The entire chase of Fonda is included, only when it comes time for a close-up, there is Brady's face instead of Hank's. It's that kind of a movie. Remember, you were warned.

Ridiculous western about the love of Casanova painter for an Indian girl. It was shot almost entirely in a studio, though the story is set outdoors, so it seems pretty fake, too. It also features a battle between, you guessed it, the BAD Indians and the GOOD whites. Oh, those bad Indians....3