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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

When the film begins, you see Captain Shafter (Ray Milland) being thrown out of the Cavalry for attacking another officer. The exact circumstances are unknown.In the next scene, years have passed and Shafter is heading west on a stage coach. He is going to re-enlist in the Cavalry under an assumed name...and wouldn't you know it that the guy he attacked years ago (Hugh Marlow) is there and looking to get revenge on Shafter. All this, by the way, is set during the period in which Crazy Horse is on the rampage and heading to a showdown at the Little Big Horn.This is a very standard western and Milland is just fine. There is nothing particularly bad nor good about this one...a decent time passer with a satisfying finale.

This film starts with Colonel Kern Shafter (Ray Milland) being dishonorably discharged, no doubt the best scene of the movie. And there lies the problem, to keep up the movie on the same level. Perhaps with John Ford and Victor McLaglen (Forrest Tucker as a good guy, come on!!), or Anthony Mann or Budd Boetticher, this might have been achieved, not an easy task. But still, this is a good western, built around Custer's last stand. Hugh Marlowe is Capt. Edward Garnett, Shafter's rival before the film starts and also his rival after, on account of two different women the latter (Josephine Russel) played by lovely Helena Carter. One might ask what motivation was behind Shafter placing himself under the command of Garnett after having stabbed him in the past, but the film does not elaborate on that. On the other hand, very good action, and cavalry scenes, and great scenery. Just lower your expectations after the beginning and you are on to a good entertainment.

The book "Bugles in the Afternoon" is regarded as one of the better novels relating to Custer's Last Stand, and this film is a reasonable adaptation, not that it devotes much time to the battle itself. Rather it concentrates on a love triangle, with some good cavalry action with the Indians that is almost incidental to the Custer massacre.I blinked a little at Kern Shafter's appearance on arriving to enlist at Fort Abraham Lincoln; he looked extremely smart, even for the gambler he had become. I assume his motivation in rejoining the colours was nostalgia for army life,though this wasn't completely evident.The well-known participants in the battle - Custer, Reno, Benteen - don't get much screen time, and the General himself has only a few lines. At least he looks the part, with the short hair he favoured for a hot campaign rather than his trademark long locks. Purists may raise their eyebrows at the cavalry using repeating rifles, when in fact they carried single-shot carbines, and pack-animals rather than the wagons shown supplied the troops in the general battlefield area.But all in all, it's a reasonable cavalry Western, but not in the same league as those of John Wayne and John Ford.

BUGLES IN THE AFTERNOON (1952) uses the stirring saga of Custer's Last Stand as a backdrop for a rather trite story of a love triangle involving two cavalry officers in love with the same woman. Ray Milland plays Kern Shafter, an army Colonel who was stripped of his rank and dishonorably discharged for stabbing another officer, Captain Edward Garnett (Hugh Marlowe), with a saber during the Civil War. Ten years later, Shafter finds himself on a cavalry outpost in the Dakota Territory, under the command of the very same officer. Soon, they come to blows over a new woman, Josephine Russell, played by Helena Carter. Garnett assigns Shafter to increasingly dangerous missions, culminating in the scouting of Indian positions just before the action at Little Big Horn.There is lots of action, great location photography and numerous enjoyable western scenes of men on horseback fighting Indians and rescuing townsmen and such. Unfortunately the film is badly miscast. Ray Milland is too laidback for a role that required someone a bit younger, tougher and more embittered, like John Payne (who excelled in this kind of role in films like CAPTAIN CHINA, CROSSWINDS and PASSAGE WEST) or a bit more ramrod straight like Randolph Scott, who was making plenty of westerns for the same studio (Warner Bros.) at the time. While she's absolutely gorgeous, Helena Carter has such polished diction and precise finishing school manners that she never appears believable as a settler in this hardscrabble western territory. She never shows emotion and scolds her two would-be lovers with carefully measured words rather than letting loose a little honest fury at them for their ridiculous behavior. Hugh Marlowe excelled at playing smarmy, officious types, but he wasn't much of a tough guy and never poses a sufficiently convincing threat to the hero. Worse, there are three great actors in the supporting cast who excelled at playing heavies-Forrest Tucker, Barton MacLane, and James Millican-yet they all play nice guys here. What a waste! Tucker, in particular, seems to be auditioning for a part in a John Ford western by imitating both Ward Bond and Victor McLaglen.Luckily, the Sioux and Cheyenne are on hand to menace the cavalry. In one of the best scenes, early in the film, Milland rides alone into a band of armed, hostile Sioux to identify and apprehend two braves wanted for murdering a trio of prospectors. Marlowe hopes the Sioux will kill him, but Milland gets his suspects and rides out unharmed. The Sioux are led by Chief Red Owl, played by Indian actor John War Eagle. The other Sioux are all played by real Indians as well. Later in the film, Sheb Wooley is seen briefly as Custer. George (Superman) Reeves has a small part as one of the cavalry officers. The film was produced by William Cagney (James's brother), directed by Roy Rowland, and written by veteran screenwriters Geoffrey Homes and Harry Brown from a novel by famed western author Ernest Haycox.