Thunder Over the Plains (1953)

User Rating:

6.0/10   

Director:

André De Toth

Writer:

Russell S. Hughes (written by)

Release Date:

27 October 1953 (USA)

Genre:

Romance | War | Western

Tagline:

HIS WAS THE MOMENT HE HAD TO COUNT HIS BULLETS...because he couldn't count on his friends! (original insert-card poster)

Plot:

In Post-Bellum Texas, an army captain tries to keep the peace between overtaxed, impoverished farmers and greedy carpetbaggers.

Plot Keywords:

Carpetbagger | Texas | Murder | Post Bellum | Union

Cast

Randolph Scott	...	Captain David Porter
Lex Barker	...	Captain Bill Hodges
Phyllis Kirk	...	Norah Porter
Charles McGraw	...	Ben Westman
Henry Hull	...	Lt. Col. Chandler
Elisha Cook Jr.	...	Joseph Standish
Hugh Sanders	...	H.L. Balfour
Lane Chandler	...	Mike Faraday
James Brown	...	Conrad
Fess Parker	...	Kirby
Mark Dana	...	Lt. Williams

Also Known As:

Come on Texas (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

82 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Warnercolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (certificate #16086) | West Germany:12 (nf) | UK:U (original rating) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Dijon Street, Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

'Richard Benjamin''s film debut.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Captain David Porter finds Captain Bill Hodges making advances toward his wife, he has a vicious fight with his junior officer resulting in a bruised and bloody left cheek. The next day, however, the cheek appears to have healed overnight.

Quotes:

Norah Porter: Whatever became of Frances Bilky?
Captain Bill Hodges: I don't know. She married a colonel, I think. Maybe it was a general. At any rate, she outranks all of us.
Norah Porter: But that's wonderful! Now she'll have her lifelong ambition to lead the cotillion. Well, I guess that's what I always wanted too.
Captain Bill Hodges: You don't have anything like that around here, do you, Captain?
Captain David Porter: Oh, I don't know. The Indians come down once a month and dance for us.

Far from Randolph Scott's finest

I love Randolph Scott Westerns as they usually manage to rise above the many, many mediocre and derivative films in the genre. Throughout the 1930s-60s, Hollywood churned out a bazillion of cowboy films and after a while, they almost all look the same to me--with the same clichés and myths about the West and the same general story lines. Yet, due to his excellent acting and believable persona, Scott was able to make a long string of these films and they almost always managed to be a bit better--and some even went on to become classics.

Sadly, THUNDER OVER THE PLAINS is no classic. Part of it has to be because the story line is so familiar and unexciting. I've seen a ton of films about the Reconstruction era and this one isn't much to speak of--especially since it is so historically inaccurate. I am an American History teacher and understand that the Reconstruction era is highly misunderstood. Starting with such films as BIRTH OF A NATION, several decades of Hollywood films followed a fictitious Southern revisionist version of history. In this revisionist world, the Southerners were all gentlemen (forget that many owned slaves) and the dreaded "dang Yankees" in the form of "Carpetbaggers" flooded the South to take advantage of everyone. In D.W. Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION, these evil swine were only eventually put in their place by the brave men of the cloth. No, not the clergy, but the Ku Klux Klan--a hate group! While there is thankfully no Klan in this film to save the day, there certainly are the evil carpetbaggers and it's up to good Union officer Scott to save the day for the poor Southerners. Folks, this didn't happen--never did.

Even if the story weren't a lot of historical hogwash, the film is tepid and ordinary throughout. The characters seem too often "black or white" and Lex Barker seemed more like a psycho than an officer (and probably would have been hanged for his actions). Please, give me a film without the one-dimensional characters AND Randolph Scott, such as RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, RIDE LONESOME or THE TALL T--not this mediocre and tepid film.