weezeralfalfa Presumably, the title relates to the Red Feather Saloon, and flaming-haired Arleen Whelan, who sometimes sings there. Arleen's character: Carolina, is your iconic 'bad' girl, as opposed to Barbara Rush's 'good' girl, Nora. They both have occasional incidents with the lead male: Sterling Hayden, as Tex. Tex saves Nora from great harm on several occasions. Thus, naturally, she is friendly with him. But, she also feels gratitude toward wealthy local, Lucky Lee, who looked after her, after her parents were killed and their house ransacked and burned by The Sidewinder and his band of renegade Utes, who have been the terror of Arizona Territory for 20 years! Now, Lucky has asked her to marry him, and she has accepted. However, Nora has also developed an obvious attraction to Tex, and worries about his safety. Meanwhile, Lucky has a beautiful Ute mistress in Turquoise(Carol Thurston), which doesn't seem to bother Nora. Turquoise thinks Lucky should marry her, but he says a man in his (exalted) position should marry his own kind..... Caroline has an attraction/repulsion relationship with Tex. Sometimes, she tries to have him killed. Other times, she saves him from being killed. Sometimes she's angry at him. Other times, she proposes that they run off together. Caroline also has a thing going with cowboy Showdown((Richard Arlen). Most of these romantic conflicts will be resolved in the spectacular climax battle between The Sidewinder plus his Ute vs. most of those characters I've talked about, plus the US cavalry. This battle takes place in and around the Montezuma Castle Pueblo cliff dwellings, with a number of successive ladders to climb to the top......The main point of the story is the search for the identity of The Sidewinder, and eliminating him and his Utes......Some of the other characters include: Tombstone(Ian MacDonald): a shady gunslinger type, Forrest Tucker as Lt. Blaine, and his sidekick: Edgar Buchanan, as Sgt. O'Rourke. Another easily identified character actor is George Cleveland, who plays the aged Dr. Fallon: horse and people doctor, dentist, lawyer, justice of the peace, and no doubt a few other odd skills.......The location shooting takes place in various scenic areas of Arizona, and complements the 3 beautiful women included. You can see it all free, at YouTube

Spikeopath Flaming Feather is directed by Ray Enright and written by Gerald Drayson Adams. It stars Sterling Hayden, Forrest Tucker, Arleen Whelan, Barbara Rush, Victor Jory, Edgar Buchanan and Richard Arlen. A Technicolor production, music is by Paul Sawtell and cinematography by Ray Rennahan.The mysterious outlaw known only as The Sidewinder is in cahoots with the Native Americans and terrorises Arizona's settlers. But when The Sidewinder chose Tex McCloud (Hayden) as one of his targets, he hadn't banked on Tex linking up with the U.S. Cavalry to hunt him down.Enjoyably energetic Oater that makes up for what it lacks in originality with gorgeous location photography and a barn storming finale. Ray Enright was a good old pro at this sort of thing, and here he doesn't waste any time with pointless filler scenes or drawn out conversations that don't advance the plot. From the get go we are thrust into an action sequence, and from there on in the film rarely pauses for breath.Hayden and Tucker make for a beefy coupling, and although the mystery element is not exactly rocket science to work out, the presence of three lovely lady characters does spice up the intrigue surrounding The Sidewinder and those in pursuit of him. It all builds to a wonderful finale that starts out with a Little Big Horn type siege, which then develops into a pursuit and battle up at the Montezuma Castle Monument in Arizona, where fire pit punch ups and ladder skills enthral greatly.It isn't hard to pick holes in it, it is after all one of those quintessentially early 1950s Westerns that was ignorant to intelligent scripting and screenplays. Yet for sheer gusto and consistently airy beauty this is a must see for Western and Hayden lovers. 7/10

vintagevalor-803-330765 This a good picture for what it is. It seems to start out as a formula western with an age old plot, white man running with Indians doing bad things, lone hero sets out to stop him, etc. However the script is pretty good, there is some suspense, though we sort of know from the get-go who the bad guy is,the moment he shows on the screen. I love Sterling Hayden...for a guy who really didn't like being an actor, he does all right. Barbara Rush is beautiful and appealing. Forrest Tucker just shows up, and Victory Jory steals the picture with his oily charm.Edgar Buchannian is wasted in a role he really isn't suited for.However, all in all, a pretty good picture. I enjoyed it.

Marlburian At one time the IMDb cast list did rather spoil things by telling us who the Sidewinder is, but since I wrote this review some years ago it seems to have been amended. So I'm altering what I wrote then.There are several possibilities about who the Sidewinder is, and I had my own suspicions (which eventually proved to be correct) as soon as he appeared. Sterling Hayden was his usual wooden self in the lead role, Forrest Tucker was sufficiently rugged as the army officer, but Edgar Buchanan made an unconvincing sergeant - almost as much so as Andy Devine in "Two Rode Together".In the opening shoot-out at his ranch, Tex seems to have a revolver that never needs reloading; I counted 17 successive shots, though six of these were fired when he was sheltering in the cattle pen; arguably he could have reloaded out of camera, but he then gallops off, firing another 11! And when the stagecoach leaves town it's picturesquely filmed from under a distinctive tree - which features again later in the coach journey after Tex has done his rescue act.The film is redeemed by a good closing fight between the whites and the Utes, with an unusual setting for the inevitable concluding fisticuffs.