Director: Gordon Douglas
Starring: Clint Walker, Edd Byrnes, John Russell
In 1870s, in the Sioux territory south of the Missouri, trapper and Indian scout Luther Yellowstone Kelly is hired by the army at Fort Buford but runs into trouble with the Sioux.
I enjoy Clint Walker in Westerns. With his big physique and deep, clear voice this man was born to be a cowboy! Unfortunately, I did not enjoy ‘Yellowstone Kelly’ as much.
The film had so much potential and was going so well – and then the woman showed up, romance interfered and the film became an ‘all about the woman’ farce. Clint Walker stars as trapper Yellowstone Kelly, who is also a fur trader. Upon meeting him, young Anse Harper offers his services to Kelly, and so the two travel together.
Along the way they are pursued and eventually captured by the Sioux Indians. Many years ago, Kelly saved chief Gall’s life. Gall asks Kelly to remove a bullet from a Sioux girl’s spine. With the Sioux being such a wise tribe, I found it unbelievable that they couldn’t do it themselves – or at least had a medicine man among them as they always do – and needed Kelly’s help, who was a trapper and not a doctor. The girl in question is Wahleeh, who later manages to ride alone by horse to Kelly’s home.
Chief Gall agrees for Wahleeh to stay at Kelly’s place so him and Harper can look after her until she is well enough to return to the tribe. Harper, however, starts having feelings for Wahleeh. Although Kelly warns Harper it will never work between a Sioux and a white man, he, too, starts having feelings for her. And this is where the film started losing my interest. I also found the film slow paced – slowed down significantly by the romance element. It became too much about the woman. In fact, it became all about the woman…
As a result there is little in the form of cowboy action (yet it started off so well!), so if its a classic cowboys and Indians movie you’re after, this is not it. Clint Walker did still manage to make the movie watchable.
Would I watch it again? No.
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