Watch The Last Frontier For Free

You won't be disappointed!

Good movie but grossly overrated

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I couldn't help feeling Victor Mature's character here was a complete lunatic, his maniacal rant in front of the assembled cavalry troops in the latter part of the story should have banished him from anywhere near Fort Shallan. But then having Anne Bancroft's Corinna Marston 'sort of' fall for the undisciplined savage, well, that just blew away the whole story for me. It's one thing she wasn't happy in her marriage to the Colonel (Robert Preston), but to be influenced by Jed Cooper's (Mature) affections was simply too incredible for this viewer to fathom.The dynamic between Colonel Marston and Captain Riordan (Guy Madison) was a bit of a puzzler too. As short sighted as Marston was in pursuing his vendetta against Red Cloud's Tetons, he still thought it honorable that Riordan tried and failed to have him removed from his command at the fort. You would think the Colonel would have had his second in command further demoted or sent packing to the brig. I just didn't understand it at all.The over arching theme of the story has to do with civilization snaking it's tentacles further West with the Native American Indians marking time until the last of their way of life makes it's lonely exit. The final battle between the Tetons and the Cavalry has a ring of authenticity to it, but that's about as far as it goes for this frontier Western. Most everything else is as plausible as Jed Cooper being made a sergeant and getting the girl.

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.

Very enjoyable 50's Western. I have it in my collection and recommend it to Western fans.Mostly Victor Mature's movie and quite well done in my estimation.He's a trapper who joins a frontier post as a scout. Red Cloud caught three of them on their land and took their possessions. They all joined as scouts after their loss.Victor has set his eye's on the Colonel's wife and lives life on the post without much regards to regulations.Action done quite convincingly but no great depth or much feeling to other characters.50's Westerns are my favorites and this slides easily to a satisfaction. A Western of this kind is in the pages of the past and perhaps never to be made much again. One to enjoy. Gave it a 7 rating. Likely 6.8 worthy but films like these become more precious over time.For film-noir fans..."The Big Steal" "They Live By Night" "Side Street" are most wonderful movies to be enjoyed. Bought and viewed. Noir seems to resemble Westerns in a way. Some long ago and never forever.

Ordinarily, Anthony Mann made westerns with 'the big guys' - James Stewart, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda . . . the A list cowboy stars. But in this B+ film, he tackled something notably different and had quite a bit of success with what turned out to be a truly one of a kind western. The main character, played by Victor Mature, is a trapper/ mountain man, and ordinarily they are romanticized in films - Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson, that sort of thing, where the hero is not in fact a typical mountain man but a clean cut heroic figure who hangs out with real mountain men. Not here. For once, a true mountain man - vulgar, crude, animalistic - is the central figure, and it's something to see, giving Mature one of his better later roles. The real acting chops are provided by Robert Preston, excellent as a self-absorbed Custer type cavalry commander, and James Whitmore, the poor man's Spencer Tracy, as another of those old timers who feel themselves trapped between ever more hostile Indians on the one side and the oncoming force of civilization on the other. Even more impressive is a very young Anne Bancroft as the officer's wife, who is initially repulsed by the very sight of Mature's grisly character, then finds her own veneer of civilization slipping away as she begins to realize, to her own shock, that she's attracted to him. Rarely if ever has a remote frontier fort been so accurately realized on screen, without the romantic allure that John Ford gave such a place in his masterful Fort Apache. The battle sequences are big scale and notably violent, and particularly impressive if you seen them in widescreen format. Good show, and underrated movie, all around.