Captain Thomas Benson returns to Fort Lincoln, the Seventh Cavalry's outpost in the Dakota wilderness, with Martha Kellogg, his bride-to-be. As the couple approach the fort, it is apparent that something is wrong. Benson enters to find the Seventh Cavalry's base strangely silent and motionless. Unknown to Benson, while he has been away General Custer has led the regiment to disaster at the Little Big Horn ...
The stillness and emptiness of the fort could serve as a metaphor for the film's lack of pace and content. The first half consists of endless breast-beating over the recent disaster, and the cavalrymen's torpid dialogue is unrelieved by motion or variety of any kind. It is fully 45 minutes before anything remotely resembling an action sequence occurs.
Benson is regarded with contempt by the remnants of the Seventh, both because he was Custer's favourite and because he managed to avoid the Little Big Horn. Matters are complicated by his choice of fiancee. Martha (Barbara Hale) is the daughter of Colonel Kellogg, the new commander of the regiment, and the man charged with investigating the recent military debacle.
A mundane and leaden horse opera, "Seventh Cavalry" lacks either a coherent structure, interesting action or even a convincing raison d'etre. Benson decides to rehabilitate himself by leading a burial detail out into the battlefield to recover the regiment's dead. He deliberately chooses the drunks and the shirkers, but it is never explained why these men, reluctant soldiers at the best of times, agree to be 'volunteered' for this dangerous work. Once in open terrain, Benson deserts his command to go chasing after a lone indian scout, in flagrant dereliction of his duty. During the pursuit, the two men ride past the same tree stump twice! They fight hand-to-hand, and Benson uses a stick to trap the indian's knife-wielding right hand. Why doesn't the indian simply transfer the knife to his free left hand?
The widow Mrs. Reynolds wails like a soothsayer in the deserted barracks, but neither her text nor her acting carry any conviction. The returning survivors of the Little Big Horn ride into Fort Lincoln, hamming up the weariness and weakness for all they are worth - but where did they acquire the neat, clean bandages? When Benson fights with the loud-mouth Vogel, the scrap is all too obviously conducted by stunt doubles. Even an indian who has been brought up by white folk is unlikely to come out with preposterous lines such as "You are defiling sacred ground". The film's ending is a cheap and hurried reconciliation between the Kelloggs and Benson, shot in an interior to save time and effort.
Randolph Scott was Associate Producer of this piece of nonsense, as well as starring as Benson (despite being patently too old for the part). If one scrabbles around for aspects of the film which deserve praise, one could commend Donald Curtis for his believable Lieutenant Fitch, and the fort set, which is huge and impressive. But that's it.
Verdict - too much talking, not enough motion.
