Really Surprised!

Memorable, crazy movie

Just perfect...

A lot of fun.

Slaughter Trail is a B western with some grand pretensions. But it's come down in Hollywood history for a most ignominious reason.Watching this film with it's musical score which can only be described as overbearing, I have a feeling what Howard Hughes was trying to do is recruit a singing cowboy for RKO films. They already had Tim Holt who was as reliable a B picture cowboy hero there ever was, but he was not a singer. I guess Hughes saw what money Herbert J. Yates was raking in with Roy Rogers over at Republic and decided he'd get one as well.So Terry Gilkyson who was a very good performer and much better song writer got recruited and sang some of his material which was not his best and worse, looked like they were shoehorned into the picture. But worse than that, there's this annoying chorus which sang a lot of the story and frankly overwhelmed the actors, extras, even the horses. Needless to say Terry never got to be a singing cowboy. But he did write such classics as The Bare Necessities and Dean Martin's great hit, Memories are Made of This.The plot concerns an inside woman on a stagecoach jewel robbery. That's right, the outlaws who are Gig Young, Myron Healey, and Ken Koutnik plant Virginia Grey in the coach as a passenger which they receive word is carrying some valuable jewels. It's a great act Grey and Young pull off. Young takes her away from the coach to presumably a fate worse than death and they do properly act out the scene within earshot of the passengers, but what he does is slip her the swag. Last place the authorities might look, if she doesn't run off with it.But when they flee the robbery it's on tired horses so they stop at a cabin to take some replacement mounts and shoot three Navajos who object. That puts the Navajos back on the warpath, didn't help that one of the casualties was Chief Ric Roman's brother.That's the situation that Captain Brian Donlevy at the fort has to deal with when the coach and the outlaws arrive there for protection. How it all works out is predictable, but in a gaudy sort of overproduced way.In fact that's the problem with Slaughter Trail. It's a simple no frills B western that got souped up into something almost grotesque.But the real reason Slaughter Trail entered into history is that this film apparently marks the official beginning of the blacklist. Originally Howard DaSilva was to play Donlevy's part and may have in fact completed his scenes, when Howard Hughes officially fired him for Communist sympathies. His scenes were completely re-shot with Brian Donlevy in the lead.Considering what a fiasco this film turned into, I'm not sure whether Donlevy or DaSilva ought to have thanked Hughes or kicked him in his private preserve.

Hilariously inept - like "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon" remade by five-year-olds.Spoilers ahead: Despite its title, and the high bodycount, "Slaughter Trail" is in fact a musical with Injun battles instead of dance numbers.If you ever wondered what Ed Wood might have done with a B-movie budget, this film should answer your question. Some decisions may have been bad only in retrospect, such as filming in the short-lived Cinecolor process, which resulted in faces changing hue within the same shot. But there was definitely some ill-advised skimping on the film's main set, a cavalry fort that seems to be partly a Norman castle.Terry Gilkyson, who later wrote the 'The Bare Necessities' for Disney's "The Jungle Book", supplies a score full of original ditties which would have been wonderful for a cartoon but which fit Western action like a fuzzy slipper stuck in a stirrup. One song tells how "horse hooves pound, and their melody sounds, like the hoofbeat serenade"...during a dead-serious scene of a cavalry patrol. Other songs literally narrate the story shot by shot, introducing characters, describing their moods and gestures - as they happen on screen - and even stop to advertise the Cinecolor process(!) The script sends ferocious Navajos on the warpath to avenge the killing of two of their band by an outlaw trio. By the end of the film, what looks like a hundred Navajos and cavalrymen have bitten the dust (thanks to repeated footage of the same characters dying over and over.) But the chief is satisfied once he sees the trio of badguys have been slain. As the singer helpfully informs those of us who weren't paying attention, the Navajos ride away, their battle called off. The cavalry captain, surrounded by the corpses of his fallen comrades, cheerily waves his appreciation.The direction could most charitably be described as wooden, or more to the point, Wood-en. Navajos are consistently shot off their horses in pairs -- never just one. Virtually every red man on foot dies by throwing his hands in the air and keeling over. The film also employs the most cautious stuntmen in Hollywood, who crouch before dropping off a one-story roof (and still fail to stick the landing) or turn to look behind them as they slide, "dead", down a rocky slope.The star is Brian Donlevy, who surely deserves an Oscar for not blushing. After the endless final battle scene -- "climax" is scarcely the word -- he scans a list of the dozens of his troopers killed, and shrugs, "It could've been a LOT worse." Trooper Andy Devine gets to sing and robber/murderer Gig Young laughs at Andy's antics...which leads a character who had been held up by masked bandits to rat Gig out: "I'd know that laugh anywhere!" And lest anyone forget just what a nasty piece of work Howard Hughes could be, recall that as head of RKO, Hughes was first in line to blacklist original star Howard Da Silva when HUAC denounced him. It would take Hughes another six years to finish running that once-celebrated studio into the ground, but it didn't help things when he insisted on reshooting Da Silva's every scene for this film, substituting Donlevy.It was nearly a decade before Da Silva was able to work in Hollywood again. But all things considered, for getting him out of "Slaughter Trail", he should have sent Hughes a thank-you note.

I have always loved this movie from my childhood watching it on Saturday morning. Have not seen it in years and now must make sure i catch AMC when it airs. To me the coolest thing about this movie was the catchy song. I can still remember it to this day "All that you can hear are the hoof beats on the ground as the Redskins ride along Slaughter Trail." not PC for sure but this was 1951 and the star was booted because he was "tabbed" a commie lover. Wow how non-PC can you get. would love to see it again and again again. I was hoping this was not one of those lost films destroyed by time and am glad to see TNT still willing to show it.

Once in a while Turner Classic Movies will air a movie that most people aren't familiar with. Such was the case with "Slaughter Trail." Good on-location photography, a fast-moving script, characters worth caring about, and a look at life in the wild west all make the grade. Add an interesting color palate-- Cinecolor-- with its subtle tones, light-years from Technicolor, and you've got an sense of open-air realism to it all. The use of the narrative ballad, a la "High Noon", makes it well worth a look. TCM's Robert Osborne said that Brian Donlevy's part was initially filmed with Howard da Silva in the role, but da Silva got caught up in the Hollywood Blacklist and producer Howard Hughes, being the staunch anti-Communist he was, re-shot all of da Silva's scenes with Donlevy prior to its release. Interesting tidbit, not at all visible in the final product.