Robert J. Maxwell The Apache are roughly handled in this "lost patrol" cavalry movie. They're faceless savages -- "barbarians, if you like," remarks Captain Gregory Peck. Well, the Apache were generally pretty tough customers, given to intricate forms of torture such as deboning, beginning with the finger tips, but they never bothered with foolish Banzai charges of the sort we see here. They weren't stupid, and they usually fought dismounted. As it is -- this being 1951 -- the plot resembles a movie left over from World War II, only using Indians as the fanatic villains, rather than the Japanese.Gregory Peck picks out six or seven of the least desirable troopers in the small fort to man a deserted outpost guarding a pass through which the Apache must move before they can attack. The young bugler is a coward; as the crazed Arab Lon Chaney's uniform is padded until the is the size of Man Mountain Dean; Ward Bond is a drunk; Neville Brand is a sadistic bully, and so forth. Peck's cavalry captain is of course flawless in every respect. He radiates dignity the way the others glow with terpitude.They are picked off one by one until only three men are left to be rescued by the galloping cavalry at the climax. The rescue detail has brought with them a "Gatling gun" (with a round magazine), which which the good guys slaughter the bad guys by the hundreds.No one distinguishes himself in this film, but Peck and Bond are professionals and bring a kind of relaxed quality to their roles. A triangular romance with Barbara Payton is thrust into the narrative with a shoe horn and is almost entirely dispensable.Yet, for all its weaknesses, it's not a boring movie. The sheer cliff faces provide an impressive outdoor location. The abandoned fort is a maze of adobe passageways twisting this way and that, sometimes resembling a set left over from a movie about Algiers or someplace. The cavalry costumes with their black blouses and trousers are properly accented by canary yellow neckerchiefs and trouser stripes -- or they would be if this weren't in black and white -- and there is abundant action as the story proceeds. Its diverting and lively but it lacks any poetry whatever. The whole production gives the impression of having been over-engineered. I hate to raise the question of what Ford or Hawks would have done with this material but the voices tell me to do it.

writers_reign Two names, one in front of and one behind the camera, imply a touch of Class that is largely absent here. Gregory Peck was one of the most underrated actors in the history of film and writer Harry Brown had a string of fine credits from A Walk In The Sun onwards. Sadly producer Jimmy Cagney was seemingly reluctant to shell out on a decent budget and may well have manipulated things - Brown, for example, had written Cagney's Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, the previous year and leading lady (no, I'm not making it up, that's what the billing says) Barbara Payton, had appeared in it and was under contract to Cagney which may explain what she was doing, albeit ineptly, here. Peck himself was railroaded into this but even so he was too good an actor and too much a pro to give anything less than his best and the support is at least interesting; Lon Chaney Jnr, Jeff Corey, Gig Young, Neville Brand, Ward Bond, Steve Brodie, all essentially wasted as was all-around director Gordon Douglas. A curio at best.

bkoganbing In the book that Michael Freedland wrote about Gregory Peck, Only the Valiant is described as the worst film Gregory Peck ever made. During those beginning years of his stardom it seems like just about every film became a classic of some kind. Only the Valiant was shot on the cheap and it shows. The book says that Gregory Peck's cavalry uniform was an old costume worn by Rod Cameron in one of his B westerns. It was an independent production by James Cagney and as part of the deal Peck got Barbara Payton who had a contract with Cagney himself and was used in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye which he produced and also starred in.According to Michael Freedland's book, Peck who was still tied to David O. Selznick got $60,000.00 for the part of cavalry captain Richard Lance. Selznick got $150.000.00 and Peck was not a happy camper. Still being the professional he was, Peck did the film.In truth Only the Valiant is a far better film than MGM's big budget The Great Sinner which Peck also starred in. Mainly because of a very competent crew of players that James Cagney gathered for this film. And an interesting script which contains elements of Beau Geste, The Lost Patrol, The Dirty Dozen and David and Bathsheba which Peck had starred in.Peck and Gig Young are rivals for Barbara Payton and Peck is ordered to send Young on a patrol to take hostile Apache chief Michael Ansara to a better staffed army fort. Young gets killed and Ansara escapes and the old Uriah the Hittite story starts circulating at Peck's post.Later he gets an assignment to man an abandoned fort that sits across a narrow mountain pass that the Apaches can't even charge through on horseback. He takes a select group of army misfits, some of whom would like to kill him worse than the Apaches.Even with Ward Bond as an alcoholic corporal, any resemblance between these soldiers and those John Ford cavalry pictures is coincidental. The ones who he takes with him, Sergeant Neville Brand, Lieutenant Dan Riss, Bond, Troopers Terry Kilburn, Steve Brodie, and Lon Chaney, Jr. are a collection that Lee Marvin would gladly have taken on a mission.Chaney has the strangest role. He's named Kabushyan and he's Armenian though the men refer to him as A-rab. He's got one big old gay crush on Gig Young though it's not spelled out due to Code restrictions and he hates Peck worse than the others. It's the best performance in the film.Only the Valiant has an A list cast with B production values, I wish it had been done with a bigger budget.

ballystyk I saw this film twice, both by accident. It is one of those movies that only gets shown at 3:00 am because it is so intense. After seeing this you can understand why John Huston picked Gregory Peck to play Captain Ahab in his version of "Moby Dick". This is a character you can only hate until he redeems himself. The Indians are a serious force of nature whose periodic attacks you fear because the aftermath of each one is so bloody you cringe instinctively which is why I am glad the movie is in Black and White. Gordon Douglas, who also directed one of the greatest monster movies of all time, "THEM", really understands the art of building tension and the pain of violence. Lon Chaney Jr's character goes through some of the same sadistically disturbing drama that Gene Hackman went through when his character was shot in "Bonnie and Clyde". A real nail-biter.