Chuka (1967)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Director:

Gordon Douglas

Writers:

Richard Jessup (novel)
Richard Jessup (screenplay)

Release Date:

23 July 1967 (USA)

Genre:

Western

Tagline:

Of his kind Chuka's the best there is. At fighting. At loving. And when it had to be - at killing!

Plot:

While Indians besiege a U.S. Army fort in 1876, residents of the fort a gunfighter, a stagecoach driver, two Mexican women, and a motley company of soldiers try to come to terms with their pasts. |

Plot Keywords:

Fort | Punishment | Beautiful Woman | Discipline | Military

Cast

Rod Taylor	...	Chuka
Ernest Borgnine	...	Sgt. Otto Hahnsbach
John Mills	...	Colonel Stuart Valois
Luciana Paluzzi	...	Veronica Kleitz
James Whitmore	...	Lou Trent
Victoria Vetri	...	Helena Chavez (as Angela Dorian)
Louis Hayward	...	Major Benson
Michael Cole	...	Spivey
Hugh Reilly	...	Captain Carrol
Barry O'Hara	...	Slim
Joseph Sirola	...	Baldwin
Marco López	...	Hanu (as Marco Antonio)
Gerald York	...	Lieutenant Daly
Herlinda Del Carmen	...	Indian Girl
Lucky Carson	...	Stage Driver

Also Known As:

Chuka: The Gunfighter

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Pathécolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Singapore:PG | West Germany:16 (nf) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Company:

New Art Film Company

Quotes:

Col. Stuart Valois: I've discovered, Mr. Chuka, that to a savage kindness means weakness. He'll despise you for it. The moment you turn your back, he'll put a knife in it. I offer you that piece of intelligence. It might save your life someday.
Chuka: Colonel, they're awful hungry out there. I think they're mean. And unless you give them food or the rifles to hunt their own, they're gonna come in here and *take* it. That's a little piece of intelligence that might save *your* life sometime.

An Historical Landmark in Awfulness---Featuring a Stellar Cast

This may be one of the strangest A-List movies ever made. It has a superb international cast (U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Italy), but the story is unbearably childish, intolerably boring, and riddled with errors and plot missteps that defy belief. Just a very few: no cashiered foreign officer could possibly get a commission in the U.S. Army, much less rise to the rank of Colonel; no Colonel wears major's leaves as his rank insignia; no Colonel ever commanded a fort consisting of what appears to be no more than a squad of soldiers (not to mention that no frontier fort was ever held by a mere squad); no Americans served in the British Army's Sudan Campaign; Chuka NEVER misses his shots at the rapidly moving Indians, regardless the range and the fact that, rather than aiming, he lunges, throws out, his pistol when firing, which absolutely GUARANTEES a miss; poor Louis Hayward (at the end of his career) agrees to lead a mutiny, which no officer in the U.S. Armed Forces has ever done; there was no concept, ever, of a fort to which were banished incompetent, criminal officers and cast-off, second-rate men (where do they GET ideas like that?)---this could go on forever. Given the idiocies of the plot and parade of one moronic scene after another (e.g., the Commanding Officer going around the dinner table and grievously insulting every single officer in his command), it must be admitted that the highly professional cast did its very best with the hopeless script (written by someone with no knowledge of the military or the American West)---but that was like trying to breathe life into the first 500 pages of the Manhattan telephone directory. Years from now this film---given its stellar cast---will be pondered upon as one of the great mysteries in Hollywood production and film-making.