Anyone who has seen the 1940 "Kit Carson" will soon discover that the screenplay for the present film is virtually identical, other than the fact that its run time is nearly 30 min. shorter, making it a 'B' film. That's not necessarily bad, as sometimes 'B' films cut the extraneous 'fat' to a minimum. One striking feature of this film is that, in 1961, it was shot in B&W: the same as the original. I suspect, in part, this was because they wanted to use some stock film from the original. For example, in certain scenes, it's clear that Monument Valley is in the background. These scenes were shot in Monument Valley in the 1940 version. Whereas the names of some of the key characters in the 1940 version were the same as historical personages, that's not true if the present film, where Jim Bridger is mutated to Charlie Bridger, for example. Both the actors who played Carson were over 6' tall, whereas the real Carson was 5'5". Many of the mountain men are shown wearing coonskin caps in summer, which is not advisable.....After losing their furs in an altercation with some Shoshone, trappers Stockton, Beaver, and Lopez head for Ft. Bridger, in SW Wyoming. , There, they meet a wagon train heading for California. Included is one Consuela Montalvo, on her way home from several years in Spain. They decide to sign on as trail guides and trouble shooters. They also meet Lt. Kirkpatrick and his charge, who are on their way to Oregon. They volunteer to escort the wagon train until the Oregon Trail splits off from the California Trail. But, at this junction, the Shoshone, supplied with Mexican rifles, attack the wagons, while the cavalry is bottled up in a canyon where the Shoshone have rolled some big boulders down across the exit. They also exchange gunfire with the troopers. Stockton saves the day both for the troopers and the wagon train, with some very risky heroics. Find out how....While journeying, Consuela flirts with both Stockton and the Lt.. To her displeasure, Stockton says he prefers a Native American wife, for several reasons. This makes Consuela classify him as a barbarian, until his later heroics makes her change her attitude. At the end, she feels she must choose between Stockton and the Lt. It's a gentlemanly affair, staged with some initial ambiguity. The real Kit Carson had 2 Native American wives, before settling on a Mexican girl.....There's plenty of action, as well as talk. Just before the Lt. is about to leave the wagon train, a Mexican captive brings news that the US and Mexico are at war with each other. This induces the Lt. to alter his plans and continue with the wagon train to California, at Stockton's insistence. They meet Consuela's father on the trail. He considers himself a Californian first, and Spanish second, thus is not well trusted by either side. He plays a role in evacuating the fort at Monterey, and rounding up civilian backers of the Republic to fight the Mexican army. Unfortunately, the final battle is truncated compared to the 1940 version. Despite lacking the various secondary stars of the 1940 version, this version is not greatly inferior to it. It does have some feasibility problems, as does the 1940 version. Both films are presently available at You Tube. You choose.

If this film does look familiar to you it's because the subject was done for a big budget independent film from United Artists twenty years earlier. Jim Davis's Jim Stockton is standing in for Jon Hall's Kit Carson from the original film. Kit Carson doesn't hold up very well today and this one even less so. Watching Frontier Uprising I was certain I had seen some of the footage before.Things are reaching a boil between Mexico and the USA when Shoshone Indians attack Jim Davis and a group of Mountain Men making their way to Fort Bridger to sell their pelts. They've got rifles this time because the Mexicans have given them some. As we know giving rifles or selling rifles to Indians is a frontier no-no. But the Mexicans want to keep those Yankee settlers out of their sparsely held northern area and the much richer sea coast of California. That's where Davis and two of his Mountain Men sidekicks, Ken Renard and David Mayer come in. They sign on as guides for a wagon train going west and some army troopers come along as well led by Lieutenant Don Kelly. Kelly and Davis start panting hot and heavy for Senorita Nancy Hadley going west to be reunited with her father Nestor Paiva.I didn't that highly of Kit Carson and I think less highly of Frontier Uprising. Action fans will like it though.

This western about a wagon train on its way across the US to California in the 1840s and its travails with attacking Indians and Mexican forces managed to attract a few familiar western faces, such as Jim Davis, Nestor Paiva, Stuart Randall and Addison Richards. Otherwise, it's a boring, mostly studio-bound effort saddled with a script of the consistency of molasses, leaden direction by veteran (which does not, in this case, mean competent) director Edward L. Cahn, very poor performances by a supporting cast of unknowns that explains why they remained unknowns, a preponderance of stock footage, some confused "action" scenes and muddy photography. Davis, as the scout leading the wagon train, tries hard, but his romance with Spanish "senorita" Nancy Hadley goes nowhere, mainly because of the idiotic drivel they're forced to recite and Hadley's shortcomings as an actress (she only made one more film after this, though she did do some TV work). Paiva, Randall and Richards try to inject some life--and professionalism--into the goings-on, but there's only so much they could do, and it wasn't enough. The film's cheapness shows through in every frame, and that's hardly the only area in which it's deficient. A very poor effort not worth wasting your time on.