Such a frustrating disappointment

It is a performances centric movie

hyped garbage

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A cracking start to this 1956 western which unfortunately tends to slow up towards the end. I loved watching Dale Robertson as Jim Hardie in Well Fargo on TV with his quick draw left handed gun belt, when I was a kid. I notice one reviewer here says 'No Major Stars' which made me smile a bit, as I imagine the author is from a more recent generation of film and TV fans. Linda Darnell was certainly a major star in the 1940's in films like My Darling Clementine and both Dale Robertson and Ward Bond were major TV western stars in the 1950's/60's in Wells Fargo as mentioned and Wagon Train, in fact their stars grew after this film Dakota Incident was made in 1956. Sadly Linda Darnell died in a house fire in 1965 at the young age of 41. As I said earlier, the film opens with a terrific scene involving three outlaws who fall out which climaxes in a street gunfight, obviously with that famous left handed gun being the winner. All this in the first half hour, after which the story involves a coach being pulled into town with all the occupants dead due to an Indian attack. Several residents want a ride on the coach to Laramie and insist on going so our hero, Robertson takes on the task. There follows more Indian attacks and double crossing until just a handful of characters are left alive, and regrettably the picture ends with a rather predictable toned down ending which is rather disappointing for a film that started out so promising. If only the second half had lived up to the first I would have recommended it more highly.

This western gets of to a good start when two bank robbers connive to shoot the third in the back and take his share of the loot. Too bad for them they didn't check that he was dead because he will bump into them again in town. In many stories the conclusion would be when he faced down the two who tried to kill him; here that is just the beginning of his adventure. He is one of several people wanting to get to Laramie; it seems everybody wants to go there including a senator who is preaching the case for peace with the Indians, a woman called Amy Clarke who wants to catch up with the partner who robbed her and a travelling minstrel. The ticket seller tells them that the stage is full but when it finally arrives it is clear that there will be places available… those aboard are full of Cheyenne arrows! They don't get far before the coach loses a wheel and they have to take cover in a dry riverbed as the Cheyenne prepare to attack. When the attack comes not all of them will make it out alive.I was surprised just how much I enjoyed this less well known western, the opening scene got me interested and I was not bored from that moment till the end. I hadn't heard of any of the actors before but thought they all did a pretty good job, especially Dale Robertson who played the bank robber John Banner and Linda Darnell who played Amy Clarke; it isn't surprising that all the male characters took an interest in her; she was stunning in her scarlet dress. I feared that it would be an old fashioned 'white man good, Indian bad' film however by the end our anti-Indian hero had grown to respect them. The action was pretty tense and I was surprised at how much bright red blood we see; most of the westerns I've seen from this era show very little if any. If you enjoy westerns of this era I'd certainly recommend this one; it might not be a classic but it is still worth watching.

Dakota Incident has to be one of the strangest westerns I've ever seen. Not good, but definitely strange.A driver-less stagecoach rides into the town of Christian Flats with all passengers killed. It's scheduled to go on, but very few for obvious reasons want to risk the Cheyennes on the warpath out there. But Linda Darnell, Regis Toomey, John Lund, Whit Bissell, and Ward Bond each have their reasons for going on. And Dale Robertson who killed John Doucette in a gunfight after Doucette and Skip Homeier shot and left him for dead in the desert, is so anxious to go he's willing to drive the team.Of course the Cheyennes attack the intrepid group of passengers if forced into a dry wash for cover. Who will live and who will die is the remainder of the film.Dakota Incident came at the very end of Republic Pictures before Herbert J. Yates pulled the plug on his little studio. Westerns were their specialty, but normally of the kind Roy Rogers made. This would not have been a Rogers product. In fact it's beyond belief. The characters aren't ground in any kind of reality. Whit Bissell is taking back ore samples from his claim, but Robertson discovers it's iron pyrites, fool's gold. Toomey is a guitar playing cynic who goes mad from thirst. Darnell is after a cheating manager of her's, but really doesn't know what to do when she finds him. Lund is looking to bring in Robertson who committed a crime he took the rap for, but has to bring him in alive. For that he'd require help, but doesn't have any.But the worst is Ward Bond who's a United States Senator on his own peace mission to the Cheyennes. In real life Bond was a most right wing individual and I'm not sure this wasn't some kind of a caricature of what he would perceive as a liberal. He's really quite the fatuous fool, but I think that might have attracted him to the role.I tried to get into Dakota Incident, but couldn't. And the ending was a bizarre fantasy to say the least.Give it three stars for the cast involved.

A widely unknown strange little western with mindblowing colours (probably the same material as it was used in "Johnny Guitar", I guess "Trucolor" or something, which makes blood drips look like shining rubies), nearly surrealistic scenes with twisted action and characters. Something different, far from being a masterpiece, but there should be paid more attention to this little gem in western encyclopedias.