What? That's how it ends!?!? Captain McCloud gets the girl? How did that happen, when the whole time Lieutenant Whitley called on her whenever he had the chance. Sure, McCloud might have shown a romantic interest, but if one recalls his self-invitation to dinner in the early part of the picture, Miss Clemson (Audrey Long) asked him to bring along the young lieutenant who 'seems a friendly sort and rather lonely'. I guess the Captain was good at ignoring the signals.You've got an average Cavalry Western here with the compulsory villains making trouble between the good guys and the Indians. However the good guys have a troublesome soldier in the ranks as well, as Major Nathan Stark (Robert Shayne) relieves the almost promoted McCloud, intent on keeping the Apaches led by Geronimo under control, if not outright removing them from the territory.As soon as old Sagebrush (Eddy Waller) got that arrow in the back from renegade Cliff Taggert (Douglas Kennedy) you had to figure what was coming next. If you've seen enough of these Western yarns, you knew that the arrow used was going to end up being from the arsenal of a different Indian tribe. No one ever lets the bad guys in on that trick so they keep right on using it to their disadvantage.A nice plus for this film was the use of a non-White actor in the role of Geronimo. Miguel Inclan appears to have quite a few movie credits to his name, and he did have kind of a warlike, regal bearing for an Apache that he used to good effect. That whole business with the Apaches speaking in Spanish though was a bit of a puzzler. Maybe that's what Geronimo meant when he said "There is bad medicine in the wind".

I had to keep telling myself this is a modestly budgeted 50s affair. It was not supposed to be a John Ford western. As such, I have to evaluate it according to what it has, instead of what it could have had. So let's see, what it does have are sincere performances from George Montgomery and a group of players whose names are not too recognizable now. It also has nice Technicolor and a quickly pasted together plot, using scenes that we've seen in countless other films about native uprisings. Even the title seems fairly bland and uninspiring. But at least you know what you are in for when you start watching a Columbia picture of this type. And as a piece of entertainment, it is at least able to hold our attention. This is a remarkable feat given the fact there are lengthy scenes of Apaches speaking Spanish (without subtitles) which we must endure right alongside George Montgomery. But he got paid to put up with this.

In a film that's a cut rate version of the story told in the John Ford classic Fort Apache, George Montgomery stars as the Indian wise and fair army captain on the Arizona frontier. Montgomery is in charge of a post that is dedicated to keeping the whites out of sacred Apache homeland.Easier said than done as there's gold in those Apache hills and some unscrupulous whites want it. Adding to that there's a glory hunting army major who's looking to advance his career by stopping Geronimo played by Robert Shayne.The only cast link to Fort Apache is that of Miguel Inclan who was a stoic and impassive Cochise in the Ford film and in Indian Uprising Inclan plays a more animated Geronimo.Though not quite as good as Fort Apache, Devil's Doorway or Broken Arrow Indian Uprising is a solid western film with good action sequences. And in that the Indians are three dimensional characters it's a valuable teaching tool as well.

A modest Western, not without interest, though I found the ending a bit too neat. Relatively early for Hollywood (1952), it recognises the Indians' case - it was their land in the first place and it was whites (miners in this case) who broke the treaty. If anything, it shows Geronimo to be almost too co-operative and understanding. And the Apaches are acted by authentic-looking non-whites, rather than having whites in make-up.George Montgomery looks quite good in the role of the grandly-named Chase McCloud, but mid-film some of his wide-eyed reaction expressions are a bit comical.There's a subdued love interest with Audrey Long, apparently in her last film in a low-key film career. None of the other actors were familiar to me, apart from Carl Benton Reid whose limited screen time didn't justify his high billing.