Cristi_Ciopron
The characters of this comedy live at crossroads: the painter (between the fort and Boston and the Iroquois village; also between art for customers, and art for art's sake, and art as a sensitive depiction of those less known to the larger world), Greta (between hopeless love and her habits and resignation), the misanthrope (between settlers, officers and natives), the officer (on the threshold of two worlds, between law and custom and anarchy, being just in unbalanced situations), the spinster, the Iroquois (between wisdom and mistrust); some learn to adapt (like the painter, Onida, her father the chief), others already have (like Greta or the officer in command of the fort), others fail (like the misanthrope and the Tuscarora), others are victims (like Onida's brother), and settlers continue to arrive; most pass from laughter and nonchalance to speed and strategy (the painter, the officer, Onida, her father laugh, the painter, the officer again, the army called for rescue speed, run), because most of them still rely on wisdom, which has different forms for different places in life, yet all these forms have to converge for the good of the communities (the fort, the Iroquois village, and as a matter of fact the script takes up these two poles, of strongly differentiated community, rather then the settlers, an amorphous quantity), not only the settlers, but also the niece and the aunt don't belong to the plot, the fort and the city loose a painter, the Iroquois chief gains a son, the painter guesses this is the more coherent solution, but the village remains not so far from the fort, and quietly surrounded by settlers, the situation remains far from ideal, with mutual hostility only overcome by a few, mutual hostility as expressed by the wagon master and the settlers and the misanthrope and the Tuscarora and then the tribe. Brady does a swashbuckler role, for a wholly inoffensive kids' movie, anachronistic in most respects, there are at least a couple of involuntarily funny scenes (when the painter escapes from the Iroquois village and runs across the fields and woods, chased by the natives, and when these are shown pillaging the settlers and leaving with chickens in their hands), and severely unlikely situations (the girl arrived from Boston and claiming to be the painter's fiancée), and the movie doesn't convince as an idyll; if the painter wasn't supposed to be annoying, intensely lousy, the misanthrope was, and Hoyt achieves this with an unsettling efficiency. This mediocre movie begins in an atmosphere of gaiety and vaudeville, with a lousy, annoying shrewd painter being humbly and submissively pursued by several women, and everybody offering hearty acting, but wait until the confident painter and the Iroquois woman start learning the language of love, in the Mohawk village (these are perhaps pleasant moments, but for Brady's trying to look confident and assured), then the war council is gathered (after the chief's son has been killed by John Hoyt), the painter runs away, the army also arrives running, both these scenes look oddly silly.I liked one of the women. She's the country version of a _soubrette, clever and generous. Allison Hayes ('Greta') is the only likable character, physically delicious.It is a liberal's idyll, with strong and assertive Iroquois women, good-natured soldiers and pompous but wise natives, most bent on peaceful cohabitation; not only the characters, but the idyll is made of cardboard, because if the idea was generous, the talents were mediocre. Rita Gam as 'Onida', and Brady aren't my idea of movie leads. All this could have been charming, and perhaps seen by a kid it was so, though its fate seems deserved. With an ungainly script, the movie could have been more funny if someone else than Brady had been given the lead.
classicsoncall
The IMDb credits state this film was done in Pathecolor, but I have to admit, this was the oddest looking movie I've experienced yet. Repeatedly one has characters in vibrant color back-dropped by scenery or sets in black and white. At times various scenes appear entirely sepia hued, and there are frequent transitions between day and night within the same time frame. More than anything, it appeared to me that someone was hired to colorize a black and white film, and simply decided to do only half the job. Since no one else mentioned this in the other reviews I've read, I might assume it's a quirk of the print I viewed from the Mill Creek Western Collection. So if you have that set, you'll probably experience what I just did.Now I don't know what to make of Scott Brady. He portrays sort of a womanizer in the picture and his taste runs the gamut, but all of his girlfriends are quite attractive. It made me chuckle actually, because in his 1959/1960 TV Western Series 'Shotgun Slade', he also fancied himself somewhat of a ladies man, but in a somewhat laughable sort of way. You'll just have to catch a couple of those episodes to see what I mean.The other reviewers on this board recap this story pretty well so no need to go into detail here. The kick for me was the casting for this flick, with Rita Gam, Lori Nelson and Allison Hayes all vieing for Brady's attention. TV and movie Western fans will no doubt enjoy catching Neville Brand here as a Tuscarora Indian Chief who wants to mix it up with the white soldiers. He's kept in check somewhat by Mohawk Chief Kowanen (Ted DeCorsia), but the picture does manage a fairly thrilling battle to close out the show. And say, did I get this right? That's Mae Clarke as Kowanen's wife Minikah, who a quarter century earlier caught a grapefruit in the smacker from Jimmy Cagney in "The Public Enemy". There's a bit of trivia you'll be glad to know.What's rather interesting to me now that I've watched the picture, I actually rather enjoyed it even though it's pretty clichéd in most respects. Maybe it's because the principal players didn't seem to be taking things all too seriously and just had a good time putting this thing together. The one scene that really stood out for me was when Jonathan Adams (Brady) and Indian babe Onida (Gam) went for a swim, and wound up playing with a Mohawk version of Frisbee.
Dalbert Pringle
Mohawk has got to be one of the corniest cornball movie-romances ever. When it comes to "love" stories, Mohawk's contrivances border, at times, on the downright laughable.Set in the mid-1800s at Fort Alden (a remote army post in Texas), Johnathon Adams (a hack-artist and full-time womanizer who's presently juggling 2 gorgeous babes) falls (if you can believe this) head-over-heels for a Pocahontis-type, Iroquois beauty named Onida. With her clear, blue eyes (yes, blue) and decidedly Caucasian features, you can well-bet that Onida's cover-girl looks only add to the already escalating absurdity of Mohawk's flimsier-than-flimsy story.If you can believe it - Not even when war breaks out between the whites and the redskins does this truly cornball romance between Johnathon and Onida lose its demented intensity or pale even a fraction.Ho-hum.As an added bonus that hinges on the ridiculous - Mohawk contains numerous scenes where one minute it's daytime and the next moment it's nightfall - or - Often enough, one minute the skies are perfectly clear and then, presto, clouds dominate the entire heavens.Anyways - If you're bored and looking for a laugh, or two, check out Mohawk.
dougdoepke
I remember as a teenager passing a theater poster of a scantily clad Rita Gam and wishing I had the money to go in. I know now what I didn't then-- it was my lucky day. Even a longer look at that shapely leg wouldn't have made up for all the bad acting (deCorsia's wooden Indian should be planted in front of a cigar store), the stupefied poetic dialogue ("You shine like a moon above the stars,"), the ridiculous Hollywood casting (malt-shop teen Tommy Cook as Indian warrior), and the ultra-cheap production values (backgrounds painted by art class dropouts). Heck, they couldn't even stage minimal outdoor battle scenes, using stock shots from 1939's Drums Along the Mohawk instead. Note too, how artificially the Indians emerge from the forest as though they're expecting a parade to pass by. At least the producers knew enough to play up the sex angle with a bevy of Indian maidens apparently recruited from a Las Vegas stage show. I'm just sorry that director Kurt Neumann's name is attached to this misfire. He did manage a number of quality low-budget sci-fi flicks like The Fly (1958), Kronos (1957), and the ground-breaking Rocketship X-M (1950). Maybe there's a lesson here, like it's easier to direct bug-eyed monsters than a bunch of phony Indians.
