The Black Dakotas

During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln sends an emissary with a peace treaty to the Sioux Indians. He also sends a gift of $130,000 in gold. This attracts the attention of Brock Marsh, the secret leader of a Confederate spy ring, who wants to keep the treaty from being signed and to also get his hands on the gold. Ruth Lawrence and Mike Daugherty work together against the machinations of Marsh.

STARS: Gary Merrill, Wanda Hendrix, John Bromfield

65 min | Western | 1954 | Color

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Forgettable but fun

This is the lousy example of what grade B pictures are most of the time. This one makes no exception, standard stuff full of clichés and foreseeable chaarcters and situations. I did my best to find something unusual and surprising but it was useless and also hopeless, a fight lost in advance. Except maybe Gary Merrill's character as a surprising evil dude, but this is not Alan Ladd in ONE FOOT IN HELL either. But because I am a big B movies buff, it remained a comfortable moment. I did not pay attention to check if it was produced by the infamous Sam Katzman; I had not the courage to push the back forward button of my VHS; cause I have this film from a late TNT channel taping off, from the nineties or late eighties. But I recognized the Columbia B department trade mark. Music score for instance.

This is actually VERY good.

For anyone who has seen Eye of the Needle, starring Donald Sutherland and voluptuous Kate Nelligan this is similarly scary.
In that film, Feber the Needle (stiletto) kills his landlady and then anyone getting in the way of his spy mission. This film starts out with Garry Merrill the spy who turns out to be his own mission of getting the gold for himself, not the Confederacy, but yes not letting the Sioux have it and starting a massacring Indian war ... which Minnesotans had already gotten a taste of in The Great Sioux Raid of1862, historically.
First, he kills in cold blood the real Federal agent to carry the treaty to the chief, then his accomplice (Noah Beery, no less) kills the town marshal and judge who have discovered his impostering, then an Indian who wants to burn him at the stake, and then at various times his own Confederate sympathizing men, and then US Cavalry bringing the $100,000 to seal the treaty.
And he always rationalizes to his Southern gang that his spy mission requires such ruthlessness.
Jay Silverheels - aka Tonto - does an excellent job as a young war chief.
Actress Wanda Hendrix's character is quite voluptuously beautiful herself ... and spunky. (Is *that* why the spy spared her? NOT likely.)
Our hero finally has it out with Merrill's evil spy, but A LOT happens in those 60 minutes, and the conflicting loyalties are reminiscent of The 7th Dawn starring William Holden and Capucine about the postwar Malaya Emergency.