The Last Frontier (AKA: Savage Wilderness) is directed by Anthony Mann and adapted to screenplay by Philip Yordan and Russell Hughes from the novel, The Gilded Rooster, written by Richard Emery Roberts. It stars Victor Mature, Guy Madison, Robert Preston, James Whitmore and Anne Bancroft. Music is by Leigh Harline and cinematography by William Mellor.When Chief Red Cloud (Manuel Dondé) - who has had enough of the army's incursions onto his land - evicts three mountain men from the region. Led by untamed Jed Cooper (Mature), the men head to Fort Shallan and take employment as army scouts...By the time that The Last Frontier appeared on the great Anthony Mann's CV, he had established himself considerably in film noir and Western movie circles. Here he manages to get the best of both worlds incorporated to provide an interesting and entertaining piece. Filmed on location at Puebla, Mexico, with the Popocatépetl Volcano providing a beautiful and imposing backdrop, the hiring of Mellor is astute, ensuring the CinemaScope/Technicolor aspects boom from the screen. However, it's not just the beauty that demands to be observed, but also the ruggedness - cum - wildness, to which all things that marry up perfectly to the thematic and allegorical beats pulsing away in the story. Of course, nobody who loves Mann's Western work will be surprised by this.It's a little disappointing that this ultimately isn't a grandiose adventure epic, because all the elements are in place for such, but action exists - with the final battle against Red Cloud's hordes - particularly exciting, but the emotional turmoil, repressed passions and army insanity that resides within Fort Shallan, more than compensates via characterisation weight. Mann throws in some tricksy camera work and neat framing shots to keep the visual experience still further away from the mundane, while Harline provides a compliant and non intrusive musical score.Cast are doing dandy work. Mature turns in one of his best, blending macho strains with confused sadness, Whitmore is a reassuring presence by being believable, and Preston overcomes his usual woodenness to breathe life into his perf as martinet Colonol Marston. Bonus, and taking the acting honours is Madison, who as Captain Riordan never over does things, ensuring his fulcrum character is the glue holding all together. Bancroft looks wildly out of place, her look and the costuming most strange, yet it's testament to her ability that her key character is no token female role, nailing it without histrionics.The ending, sadly, is rubbish, completely at odds with all before it, so it's no surprise to find that it was studio imposed and against Mann's wishes (vision). Still, forgive them for they know not what they do eh... 7/10

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.

When the Blue Coats of the US Army arrive in Oregon Red Cloud, the local Indian chief declares all white people persona non grata. Three trappers, Jed Cooper, Gus and Mungo find themselves relieved of their rifles and the skins they spent a year collecting; debate whether to head north to find work in Canada or head to the nearest army camp to demand compensation. They choose the latter option but end up getting work as scouts. At the fort Cooper meets Corinna Marston, a woman whose husband is the colonel in command of another fort in Indian territory; he believes the man is bound to be dead by now but still heads out to find him. That fort had been attacked but the colonel and some of his men had survived; Cooper brings them back to the fort but soon begins to regret it. Col. Marston immediately takes command and sets about planning a counter attack despite the fort only having a hundred raw recruits. The level headed captain who had commanded the post believes it is unwise but the Colonel is determined to win a great victory to restore his honour after losing fifteen hundred men at Shiloh.This was an enjoyable western with an unconventional protagonist; Victor Mature's did a fine job as Cooper; a crude illiterate man who gets drunk and pursues the colonel's wife... hardly the upstanding hero one expects in such films. Robert Preston's Col. Marston has the heroic look but he is the one who could get everybody killed through his desire for glory. When the fighting comes it is far from glorious; instead it is dirty and brutal, although not graphic, director Anthony Mann did a fine job there. In some ways the romantic storyline seems a bit tacked on but it does serve to show Cooper's lack of concern for 'civilised ways'. The film was shot in stunning scenery; although the slopes of Mt. Popocatépetl in Mexico stand in for Oregon!

Victor Mature, as a barely civilized and mostly out of control mountain man and trapper, may be on the poster, but Robert Preston as a failed Union colonel who led his men to get "cut to ribbons" by Confederate artillery at Shiloh, and is sent to a fort in Oregon for his incompetence, has the most interesting part, married to a young and hard to recognize at first Anne Bancroft. The uncivilized Mature lusts for the colonel's wife, giving the film an interesting and even dark subplot which goes so far as to reference coveting another man's wife at one point by James Whitmore who plays Mature's older and wiser mountain man father figure. Directed by Anthony Mann, this film is lost among his more famous westerns with James Stewart, but even so you really don't need the Indian menace to make this a film worth seeing, although Preston gets to prove his bad judgement as a commanding officer again in a failed expedition to finally bring the Indians under submission, in a well staged attack among the forest that quickly turns into a rout.