bkoganbing I saw this film years ago on television when I was a kid. I remembered it vividly and I've not written any review of it as I wanted to see it fresh before doing so. Now thanks to YouTube I have seen it and it is as good as I remember it.Stephen McNally stars as a roguish gambler who kills someone accusing him of cheating. That's all mayor, veterinarian, and blacksmith Willard Parker needs to throw McNally out of town. In fact an attack of Puritanism has swept the town of Spanish Boot and the saloon has closed down and the girls ordered to leave. But when McNally goes after them he finds them massacred by the Apaches.Two hundred strong under Vittorio and they've crossed the Mexican border and wreaking general mayhem in Arizona. The town bands together and takes refuge in a church which does have good walls, but also windows to high up to shoot from, but great for the Apache to scale.Though both McNally and Parker act real juvenile at the beginning both are goofy over Coleen Gray in the end they both step to the plate.Apache Drums was the last film of Val Lewton, his only western, but it has its moments of horror and suspense so associated with Lewton. It's not a film for the faint of heart, but I recommend it highly for western fans and Lewton fans.

peter-2749 This really is a poor film.Whilst the basic story is a typical good old yarn, the performances (with the exception of James Griffith as the Army commander) are very one-dimensional and the characters are hackneyed and do not develop.The production values are also very low and make-up on some of the "Apaches" in the title are more akin to a horror movie than a western, consequently one's mind starts to wander which is not helped by such a pedestrian-paced storyline.And as for direction, there is a literally-laugh-out-loud scene when they sing where you can not only tell that everyone singing is from the Welsh valleys that even the main character does not lip-synch in time. Although there is a slight raising of tension towards the latter parts of the film it is only slight and not really enough to make you have any doubt about the ending.I love westerns and am trying to see as many as I can at the moment but this is one of which I wish I had not bothered wasting an hour and a half of my time.

huwdj As I watched this film I could not understand why they kept referring to Arthur Shields as Welsh. This is an actor who has specialised in Irish doctors and priests and who made no attempt to change his accent to play a Welsh preacher. And then came the song, Men of Harlech, in Welsh ! To watch everyone desperately trying to mime to the song was one of the silliest things I've seen in a very long time. Everyone has since seen how well this song can work in Zulu but to drop it into this average Western was decidedly odd. It was as if some one had a song to use and a someone else a script and the two were simply rammed together regardless of the fit.

junk-monkey There are moments of genius in this movie, though, as the other reviewer says, it is let down by a talky script - and the lamest "the cavalry arrives and that's the end of the movie" in B western history - because that's what happens; after a long drawn out, interestingly shot siege in the church, the cavalry arrives and the movie ends. Just like that. No denouement. The movie just ends. Everyone leaves the church without a backward glance for all the dead and dying loved ones within and there's a cutesy shot of a little donkey trotting up to its mother. It's so weirdly sudden after all the long drawn out, moody, tense, heightened tension that preceded it that it completely whips the metaphorical carpet out from underneath you.The moments of genius though, make what is, after all, a pretty short film worth watching. And a textbook example, like all Lewton's movies, on how less is more, and how to make a small budget go a long way. The scene in the desert where the gun-less anti-hero is riding on to (as he thinks) safety after promising to warn the town is nicely edgy and unsettling. And the low angle shot in the church where the town is burnt casting beams of brilliant red light across the ceiling was great. That one shot was worth the admission price for me.The lighting is terrific, the direction, art direction, and cinematography great - but it's a pity about the script. With a better script - there are no sub-plots or parallel action in the movie - this would have been a classic up there with the likes of Shane, High Noon, and 3:10 to Yuma.Interesting.