Seeing that I'm the first to review MASC, I guess it must be one of those hard-to-find films that have recently become available thanks to the Web; I watched this on Youtube. It's based on one of the most unhonourable acts by soldiers in the history of the United States, instigated by Colonel Chivington, named in the film as Templeton. John Derek plays an amalgam of the two officers who refused to fire on the Native Americans when ordered to do so.
There are a couple of clichés in the film, with Derek saving the life of a son of the Indian chief and becoming his blood brother. Unusually there is absolutely no love interest and the only females I can recall are squaws. (I congratulate the film's makers on not including the gratuitous and often contrived romance that features in nearly all Westerns.) The film gives the impression that the white participants were part of the Union Army, rather than the more informal volunteers that committed the actual massacre. They are armed with breech-loading rifles, not the muzzle-loaders that must surely have featured in the real battle of 1894.
All the cast members perform well enough. I was glad that I discovered this film.
There are a couple of clichés in the film, with Derek saving the life of a son of the Indian chief and becoming his blood brother. Unusually there is absolutely no love interest and the only females I can recall are squaws. (I congratulate the film's makers on not including the gratuitous and often contrived romance that features in nearly all Westerns.) The film gives the impression that the white participants were part of the Union Army, rather than the more informal volunteers that committed the actual massacre. They are armed with breech-loading rifles, not the muzzle-loaders that must surely have featured in the real battle of 1894.
All the cast members perform well enough. I was glad that I discovered this film.