For some unknown reason, Susan Hayward falls in love with Tyrone Power, but he's in love with South Africa. He has the beautiful, incredible Susan Hayward in his arms and he wants to leave for South Africa? In any case, he feels his calling, and he plans to travel there from Ireland. She declares her love and says she'll marry him and go with him. The next day, he leaves without her. How mean and hurtful! How are we supposed to root for him? Years later, Susan is seen sailing into South Africa, married and with a child. This was her great plan: to marry someone else, bear his child, and then reunite with Tyrone to prove how much she's loved him all these years? How are we supposed to root for her? Neither of the leads are nice people, and their motivations are really tough to get behind. It's clear someone wanted this movie to be a lush, love triangle epic, but the end result hardly succeeded. Try Elephant Walk if you want a similar setting with better characters.

20Th Century Fox produced and released some epic motion pictures in Delux Color and CinemaScope in the 1950's such as The Robe, The Egyptian.Untamed was one such movie with would be advertised as monumental and sweeping in it's scope.. The story of a young women named Katie O'Neill Kildare born of the Irish landed gentry who loses everything in the Irish Potato Famine of 1847. She and husband Sean migrate to South Africa and join Boar pioneers to become part of the Great Trek and help settle the Orange Free State.Susan Hayward was queen of the 20TH Century Lot at that time and got first pick of any of the roles that the studio had available. She hoped Untamed would be her Gone With the Wind and any resemblance between Katie and Scarlett O'Hara is purely intentional.Fox matinée idol Tyrone Power is Boar military commander Paul Van Riebeck who is sort the Ashley Wilkes of this tale and Katie pursues him as Scarlett pursues Ashley.Richard Egan portrays Kurt Hout a Boar settler who is in lust with Katie and is always more then willing to play the chump for her. Agnes Moorehead and Hope Emerson were two of my favorite Hollywood...er.. ah...actresses and their involvement in any film always upgraded it's quality. Veteran director Henry King was 20TH Century Foxes top drawer helmsman and a personal friend of Powers. He ha also directed Hayward in several of her best films.King kept the story very visual.Untamed starts out with a bang.Paul Van Riebeck comes to the O'Neill Estates in Ireland to purchases horses from Squire O'Neill , Katie's father.Paul and Katie dislike each other at first so you know that they will soon passionately in love with each other. Paul can't let his feelings for Katie interfere with his duty to his cause so he returns to South Africa to resume his mission, leaving Katie heartbroken. Like Scarlet, Katie just isn't used to being dumped by a man.So it's not surprising that when the opportunity presents itself shes off to South Africa with her husband and child in tow to... start anew.For me the best part of Untamed is the trek and the Zulu attack. This segment is dramatic, exciting and beautify filmed. After the Commando's rescue of the wagon train,however, the story slides into soap opera and becomes fairly predicable. A good film for Hayward and Henry King fans with one of Egan;'s better performances and of course Agnes Moorehead and Hope Emerson.

Farmers throughout Europe, unsuccessful with their returns, journey to South Africa to take advantage of the free and fertile land, but must pass through hostile Zulu territory first. The wagon train sequence will be familiar to any western fan: it's the Settlers versus the Indians all over again, with the Zulu tribe on the attack and out for blood (we don't even know why they are so hungry for war). Susan Hayward plays a farmer's wife from Ireland who ends up widowed and caught between two men who desire her, Tyrone Power's leader of the Boer Fighter Commandos and Richard Egan's hot-blooded homesteader. Four screenwriters adapted Helga Moray's novel, but none were able to lift this one out its vat of musty clichés. The picture does look good in widescreen and vivid color, yet the characters are neither likable, sympathetic, nor interesting. ** from ****

I was amazed that Katie (Susan Hayward) could be such a bitch - so self-centered, so arrogant, so unappreciative, and so willfully embroiling Paul (Tyrone Power) and Kurt (Richard Egan) in a contest over her affections - and not be justifiably rewarded, even a little, by film's end. She slaps Paul in the face, teases and flirts, then rejects, then accepts Kurt, all while being in love (?) with Paul. I found it most incredible that Paul could lower himself to the point of actually pursuing (let alone ending up with) her after she tells him that she'd married her husband and had a child with him, watched him die (without a twinge of emotion) defending her and the wagon train, and came to South Africa in the first place just so she could be near him, Paul! This woman is unscrupulous to the nth degree, and that she could avoid any degree of lasting hellfire, and could repeatedly twist the two male love interests (Paul and Kurt) around her little finger throughout the film, was wholly unsatisfying. Kurt was somewhat hotheaded, and I'd have expected him to come to the end he does. But Paul seemed more rational, and should have disassociated himself from this woman as soon as he got that slap - but didn't. Life may be unjust, but in the movies we expect to see villainy uncovered and subject to its own reward. Not only was Katie not so repaid, but the male leads looked stupid in the process for not seeing who and what she really was. Thumbs down, all around!