Excellent but underrated film

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The Cattle Queen of Montana is a robust Technicolor western from RKO that displays the gorgeous scenery of Glacier National Park. Yes, outdoor photography may be most suited to the western genre. And this film proves it.It's easy to see that Barbara Stanwyck is in her element in a story that sets her in the great outdoors. The film, more than others on Stanwyck's varied resume, supports the idea that westerns served her very well. During the course of the story, Miss Stanwyck demonstrates her range as an authoritative ranch owner. Savage natives? Rough cowboys? Natural disasters? They are no threat when she rides on to the scene.

Out of RKO Radio Pictures comes Cattle Queen of Montana, directed by Allan Dwan and written by Robert Blees, Howard Estabrook (screenplay) & Thomas Blackburn (story). It stars Barbara Stanwyck, Ronald Reagan, Gene Adams, Lance Fuller, Anthony Caruso, Jack Elam & Yvette Duguay. The music is scored by Louis Forbes and it's a Technicolor production with John Alton on photography. Locations used for the film are Glacier National Park, Montana & Iverson Ranch, Chatsworth, California. Stanwyck plays Sierra Nevada Jones, a tough cowgirl who along with her father, drive the family herd up from Texas to Montana. Planning to build a ranch to set themselves up, tragedy strikes when they are attacked by some renegade Blackfoot Indians. However, all is not as it seems, just what has shifty Tom McCord (Evans) got to do with things? Why is gunslinger Farrell (Reagan) working for McCord? And can war between the Blackfoot and the white man be averted?Standard formulaic stuff that is only really of interest for the photography of Alton. Cowboys and Indians, good and bad on each side, go head to head in a cliché riddled movie bogged down by a pretty turgid script. Not even the normally classy Stanwyck can lift herself to a performance capable of saving the piece. There's some credit due for making the lead protagonist a strong willed woman, and even tho it's a bit late in the cycle of topic, depicting the Indians as not all savages-as the white man encroaches onto their land-is a bonus. But with American character actors Fuller & Caruso playing the in fighting leaders of the Blackfoot tribe, it just comes across as corny and wholly unbelievable, while Dwan was indeed a more than capable director, here the action lacks zip and the film gasps for some dramatic air as the narrative goes around in circles.The story off screen is more entertaining than the film itself, where Reagan was constantly at odds with producer Benedict Bogeaus. The future President of the United States of America took one look at the script and voiced concerns, suggesting many changes, all of which were ignored. Royalty status was afforded Stanwyck while Reagan got next to no help from the producer, this perhaps goes someway to explaining his limp performance. Tho, again, the script calls for him to be part of one of the most lukewarm and pointless romances in 1950s Oaters, he got no help either way on this picture. Still, there's Alton's photography of the Glacier National Park to hold the attention, even if the "new" scrubbed up print of the film is far from doing it justice.That its claim to fame is being the film playing at the theater in Hill Valley in the film Back to the Future, says volumes, this is poor all told, and not even worthy of recommending to those after a time filling Cowboys & Indians no brainer. 3/10

A story about this movie goes like this:THe production hired some Indians for a few measly dollars a day.But in the meantime,oil was found on their territory and they became millionaires But they had to honor their contract:so they came to the set in limos.Some viewers have complained about a certain racism.I do not think it is so;there are villains among the Indian tribe and among the Whites.For Stanwyck,the film looks like a blueprint for her "Forty guns" (Fuller,1957),although it's less violent and less inventive.But Dwan makes us feel his love for nature

Barbara Stanwyck is the Cattle Queen of the title, Sierra Nevada Jones who fights for her land against a rival land owner who has the local Indians on the payroll. Stanwyck befriends Chief Colorados who helps in her fight, together with a very weak Ronald Reagan who is so cardboard he could blow over in a breeze. Stanwyck is tough, determined and tenacious. She knows what she wants and she gets it. The only pity is that because of Hollywood's conventional Western formula, the narrative won't allow Stanwyck to be active without having her feminised place reasserted at the end of the film.