I think I am a member of a minority who found this film enjoyable! I did not notice that the film was filmed in Spain, nor the historical inaccuracies particularly though I watched a documentary once that showed Little Big Horn as a hill. I just took it as an interesting film with some great actors and lovely scenes of swift moving calvary.I believe the film was trying to show the contradictions and sense of unease in doing his duty in Custer's (presumably) complex character through the many scenes; though Robert Ryans irritating scenes were totally superfluous and revealed nothing of Custer as desertion was a capital/flogging offence in any army. Robert Shaw gave a good performance of a taciturn commander searching for glory. As to his English accent that people keep winging about I thought it fairly subdued and after all we do not really know how Custer sounded. Moreover, I will wager these same reviewers did not complain at Gregory Peck portraying an Englishman in films like The 'Guns of Navarone' or that other great American actor (you know who) portraying Sir Thomas More in 'A Man for all Seasons'.........(Robin Hood anyone?) The music is stirring though for the final battle I thought the director must have previously watched The 300 Spartans. The circling indians seemed a tad silly, but for all that a very watchable film.

I've heard people complain of the historical inaccuracies of this film based on Custer's field position at the Little Big Horn.Stylizing history is not revising it. This film sequences real events in a stylized way, and emotionally depicts the events of Custer's short life.I refuse to accept the charge of historical revisionism from those who accept all out lies in so many other "based on a true story" films on the basis that the film shows no real bloody mutilations.Custer was about thirty-six, married, and brutally honest. Honest men always make enemies - those enemies may have been responsible for his early demise more so than any Cheyenne, by withdrawing from combat and leaving him isolated at Little Big Horn.This movie captures those events and, I believe, helps the viewer develop sympathy for all the characters, including poor Libby, his wife.

Various elements of this movie make it worth seeing, but this does not include the Last Stand itself, which is poorly done, a big disappointment. It fails in every category. After Lieutenant Colonel Custer (Robert Shaw) returns from giving testimony in Washington, he abruptly tells Captain Benteen (Jeffrey Hunter) and Major Reno (Ty Hardin) of the three-way march against the Sioux and Cheyenne that will take place, and the Seventh Cavalry takes off. There is no captivating dialogue. The scenes are rigid, unorganized, uninteresting, with no substantive interpretation of the cavalry's movements. The death of Custer is done in a pathetic, historically inaccurate attempt at dramatics that completely backfires. The viewer is left with no sense of drama or legacy of the battle. Still, the rest of the film is interesting. It represents a good effort at capturing the real-life chemistry of Custer and the flavor of the period's conflict between whites and Indians in the Midwest/Dakotas.**The comments below may contain spoilers**Custer is not portrayed like the hero in "They Died with Their Boots On." Instead, the portrait of Custer in this film seems close to the truth. "Custer of the West" was made only two years before "Little Big Man," during the Vietnam War. But it is not a satirized Custer that is presented; rather, it is a straight-shooting one. Robert Shaw plays Custer the glory hound, the one who desires action, the military man who will execute his duties without regard to whether they offend one's sense of ethics in mistreatment of Indians. He is a cold, rigid, hard-ass person. He takes over his camp with a preoccupation for discipline in the face of lazy soldiers who want to feign diseases when Indian-fighting duty calls. Major Reno is put down for his well-known alcoholism, and Custer makes clear to Captain Benteen he does not care about Benteen's sense of honor toward the Indians. It is an historical fact that Benteen hated Custer and refused to aid him when Custer requested help at The Battle of the Little Bighorn ("Custer's Last Stand"). This film seems to want to explain why.Would you really find the person described in the previous paragraph interesting? Libby Custer (Mary Ure) is worked into the movie more than incidentally, but nowhere are the inner workings of the man explored, with her or anywhere else. Shaw's Custer is an impersonal Custer, without much in emotions. Still, as he is cast, Shaw puts on a good performance, and I disagree with some of the commentators on this board who say he displays an English accent. He sounds American.The early parts of the film have a number of scenes involving good action, with some imagination, and wide-open-space cinematography. Whites are encroaching on Indian land; they are interested in mining and railroads. Indians attack railroads and stagecoaches and, at one point, a large white settlement celebrating Independence Day. Custer has a couple of minor skirmishes with the Indians. In one, he pursues the Indians across a desert and attacks them from below the rock face they have scaled in their retreat. As for major action, Custer's Seventh Cavalry, on orders from General Phil Sheridan, attacks and destroys Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle's village in the Battle of the Washita River, in Kansas. General Sheridan had been Custer's Civil War commander and long-time patron, and he was the one who gave Custer his post in the Dakotas. He calls Benteen a "bleeding heart" for being sympathetic to the Indians. Sheridan claims he has told all his officers "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." The real-life Sheridan claimed he never said that. Regardless, it is an historical fact that he was contemptuous of the Indians, and his attitude represented the mindset of the time. In the battle, The Seventh Cavalry kills not only Black Kettle and numerous warriors, but many women and children. Director Robert Siodmark holds back nothing in presenting what occurred in Custer's only major engagement against the Indians before the Last Stand.The most important scene of the film occurs after this battle. It, rather than the Last Stand, encapsulates the movie. A Cheyenne Indian visits Custer's HQ to ask him about his intentions, as Custer correctly perceives. Custer makes it clear he is not a moralist. He is not in a position to make the substantive decisions, he is an officer in the army, and will obey orders. If that involves trampling the Indians in violation of some ethical notion, so be it. Custer tells the Indian the problem is that the whites are more advanced than the Indians. He tells him that the Cheyenne were stronger than tribes from whom they took land, so they can expect the same from the whites who want their land. Later, the writers try to acquit Custer a little bit by 1) his remarks that the railroad being built will just lead to trouble from the Indians and complaining about what the Indians have to put up with and 2) his testimony in Washington on Indian Bureau corruption that the "Indian Problem" is the fault of the policymakers. This is historically true; according to Custer's testimony, corruption in the granting of Western post traderships and various other dishonest dealings were cheating Indians as well as the U.S. Cavalry. However, although the film presents miners intruding on Indian territory, it does not treat Custer's personal interest in gold mining.As I previously observed, I think "Custer of the West" is worth seeing in spite of the Last Stand's being poorly done. It would be most interesting for people who know some of the history surrounding Custer's post–Civil War life and the conflicts with the Plains Indians leading up to the Last Stand.

While other commentators in this forum have found fault with the historicity of the film, including this quote from Gen. Sheridan, and the failure of the producers to faithfully envision the Montana setting with its Spanish locations, those would have been issues overlooked had the picture been better made and the hero better cast. Robert Shaw was a fine actor and he rose above this to make some really good movies (JAWS, THE STING) but he never seemed to catch the essential charm that Ronald Reagan and Errol Flynn brought to his characterization thirty years before. I'm not especially disappointed when Hollywood twists history to tell a great story as long as it's filled with action, well acted and artfully staged. But there was so much about this film that fell flat. Some action sequences were pretty good, like the log flume flight by the soldier, the railroad car's attack by Indians and subsequent fate after being uncoupled, the town being razed, the miners in the runaway wagon. These were well done and suspenseful and some I've never seen before in quite the way they were done. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn't make up for these best parts. The romantic scenes are a poor imitation of those done by Errol and Olivia in THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON and the climactic battle is almost boring compared to the one with Flynn. Akira Kurosawa was approached about making this picture and he could have done better certainly. But with the actors he would have had and with the production budget with which he'd been hamstrung, it might have been one of the worst pictures of his career. He was wise to turn away from it. Unless you're a western aficionado like yours truly, you'd be wise to follow suit. Dale Roloff