Like Billy Jack(1971), who passionately hated killing but did so anyway, this is an anti-violence film that revels in violence.
Very controversial on its release, this dramatisation of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 – where scores of Cheyenne were brutally killed in what General Nelson A Miles, a cavalry officer, termed “perhaps the foulest and most unjust crime in the annals of America” – does not stint on the appalling carnage meted out by the US Cavalry.
A paymaster’s detachment of the US cavalry is attacked by Indians seeking gold. Two white survivors trek through the desert, on their way to more cliches.
It closely resembles Little Big Man(1970) in its tale of a white person – in this case, Candice Bergen – who is kidnapped by Cheyenne tribesmen and becomes culturally enriched rather than bigoted.
Like Arthur Penn’s critically rated film, the vilified Soldier Blue owed a lot to the hugely influential book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and is an explicit allegory of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
Scenes of women and children being raped and mutilated were cut by the British censor, and Ralph Nelson’s film was widely condemned for its extreme violence.
For scenes where victims of cavalry charges lost arms and legs, Nelson hired real-life amputees, both adults and children.
Donald Pleasence plays a wily old gun runner who owes allegiance to no one.
Cresta Marybelle Lee
Candice Bergen Private Honus Gant
Peter Strauss Isaac Q Cumber
Donald Pleasence Lieut John McNair
Bob Carraway Spotted Wolf
Jorge Rivero Captain Battles
Dana Elcar Colonel Iverson
John Anderson Lieutenant Spingarn
Martin West Running Fox
Jorge Russek Private Menzies
James Hampton
Director
Ralph Nelson
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A paymaster’s detachment of the US cavalry is attacked by Indians seeking gold. Two white survivors trek through the desert, on their way to more cliches.
