I feel as if Victor Mature is vastly underrated and gives one of his finest performances in this Columbia western. Maybe it's because of Anthony Mann's direction, or the key scenes he has with Anne Bancroft as the married woman who is the object of his savage affections. But he's also quite splendid in scenes with Guy Madison and James Whitmore, especially with Whitmore. It's like two things are happening with Vic here-- he's having the time of his life with the other members of the cast, and he's thrown himself so completely into playing the part of an undisciplined trapper that he's practically possessed. He has several tirades in this film, often in long takes, and Mann wisely lets the camera go after him. It's most absorbing.We also have Robert Preston playing Bancroft's husband, a bloodthirsty commanding officer. You would nearly expect Vic's larger than life portrayal to push the other players off to the sidelines. But Preston brings his own intensity, a spectacular version of a deranged leader, right up through the center of this story. So we have Vic clowning around in alcohol-induced rants, and Preston forging ahead to commit a series of pre-meditated killings, involving both the enemy natives and his own soldiers. Two train wrecks happening at once, and it's no wonder viewers cannot take their eyes off the screen.It was one of the year's top grossing films when it was released back in the mid-1950s. Audiences devoured it whole. If this film was released first-run today, it would still be a smash hit.

This is by no means a bad western. In fact, most would call it a classic. It is however, a bad action movie. Instead of battle scenes, the film chooses to focus on a fur trapper's struggle with fast-approaching civilization. When the trapper, played by a visibly aging Victor Mature, pays a visit to a cavalry fort, the officer in command convinces the trapper and his buddies to join up as scouts. With the Civil War raging back east, the cavalry is in need of soldiers out west to control Indian trouble. I've always liked Victor Mature, but he's better when he has a co-star to help him carry the movie. The final battle is pretty good, but for a cavalry movie, this is a snoozer.

Ordinarily, Anthony Mann made westerns with 'the big guys' - James Stewart, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda . . . the A list cowboy stars. But in this B+ film, he tackled something notably different and had quite a bit of success with what turned out to be a truly one of a kind western. The main character, played by Victor Mature, is a trapper/ mountain man, and ordinarily they are romanticized in films - Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson, that sort of thing, where the hero is not in fact a typical mountain man but a clean cut heroic figure who hangs out with real mountain men. Not here. For once, a true mountain man - vulgar, crude, animalistic - is the central figure, and it's something to see, giving Mature one of his better later roles. The real acting chops are provided by Robert Preston, excellent as a self-absorbed Custer type cavalry commander, and James Whitmore, the poor man's Spencer Tracy, as another of those old timers who feel themselves trapped between ever more hostile Indians on the one side and the oncoming force of civilization on the other. Even more impressive is a very young Anne Bancroft as the officer's wife, who is initially repulsed by the very sight of Mature's grisly character, then finds her own veneer of civilization slipping away as she begins to realize, to her own shock, that she's attracted to him. Rarely if ever has a remote frontier fort been so accurately realized on screen, without the romantic allure that John Ford gave such a place in his masterful Fort Apache. The battle sequences are big scale and notably violent, and particularly impressive if you seen them in widescreen format. Good show, and underrated movie, all around.

While this picture may be minor Anthony Mann, it's a very off-beat, well acted, western. Mature is the anti-thesis of Mann's uber-hero, the driven, edgy loner played to perfection by Jimmy Stewart. Mann plays to Mature's strengths by casting him as the uncivilized, passion driven scout given to bouts of raucous drunkenness. Robert Preston is very good as the obsessed, kill-crazy Colonel whose wife (Anne Bancroft) Mature covets He also slugs her! Wow! Savage Mature!