Rod Taylor, who also co-produced the film, stars as enigmatic gunfighter Chuka, a role that plays like it was written for but rejected by the likes of Steve McQueen. Richard Jessup (The Cincinnati Kid), adapting his novel, tells the tale in flashback, though related by a character not present during 99% of the story. Anyway, it seems that Chuka and a stagecoach driven by Jake (Lucky Carson), and carrying Chuka's former lover, Veronica Kleits (Luciana Paluzzi), and her niece, Helena Chavez (Victoria Vetri, billed here as Angela Dorian), make their way to Fort Clendennon, a woebegone outpost manned by the dregs of the U.S. Cavalry. The unhappy camp, commanded with by-the-book severity by British Col. Stuart Valois (John Mills), corrupt Maj. Benson (Louis Hayward), and devout military man Sgt. Otto Hansbach (Ernest Borgnine), are all too aware that a nearby tribe of starving Arapaho Indians are preparing to attack the fort, though they do little about it, beyond sending world-weary scout Trent (James Whitmore, all but reprising his role from The Last Frontier) to check out the Indian camp.

Until the Alamo-like siege during the film's final minutes, the bulk of Chuka's 105-minute running time is eaten up with long scenes where various characters get drunk and shout at one another. None of the shouting is any good, and the motivations of the various characters are cardboard thin. How sad it is to watch an actor the caliber of John Mills helplessly playing a character so shrill after such fine work only a few years before playing a similar part in Ronald Neame's Tunes of Glory (1960). Of the cast only the always good Ernest Borgnine's intimidating sergeant and James Whitmore's easygoing scout come off well.

Rod Taylor, an immensely likable actor as his best remembered roles in The Time Machine (1960) and The Birds (1963) attest, can't get a handle on his thinly-sketched title character, who bares his teeth in anger one minute, waxes philosophically the next. Sgt. Hansbach asks, "Where are you from?" Chuka replies, "Anyplace I happen to be." Asked by Senorita Chavez, "Are you as bad as they say?" "No man is as bad as they say," is Chuka's response. Heavy.

(Against expectations, Chuka is pronounced "Chuck-a," rather than "Chyuu-ka." Late in the film it's explained that as a boy Taylor's character used to hang around the chuckwagon a lot. I guess it's a good thing he didn't hang around the outhouse.)

The film has an air of cheapness that gets in the way of believability. All scenes inside the fort were filmed on a soundstage, including exterior scenes within the fort's walls. Conversely, shots of the Indians outside, storming the fort and such, are real exteriors, none of which remotely matches the studio-bound sets. (Some of the exteriors outside the fort are obvious studio sets as well, none of which matches the desert terrain of the real exteriors.) There are several elaborately done matte paintings (isolated fort, vast Indian camp) suggesting an epic battle that never materializes.

Most of the fort seems to be one massive set crammed onto a too-small soundstage. You can see that on three sides the painted sky backdrops are pressed tightly against the soundstage's borders, just inches beyond the fort's "walls." For this reason perhaps the sets are colorless and the flat, with singularly unimaginative lighting (complete with multiple shadows from the "sun") thwarting any lingering suspension of disbelief. The sets used on F-Troop were much more convincing.

Video & Audio

Bad as Chuka is, the transfer looks nice, a 16:9 job retaining the 1.85:1 OAR. There's some minor yellow blotchiness that invades the picture for a few moments about 20-21 minutes in, but otherwise it looks fine, with good color (original prints by Pathe) and acceptable mono sound. As usual with Paramount's budget titles, this one's got English subtitles and that's it; there are no alternate language options at all, and no Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

Chuka is pretty awful, a less than routine Western blandly directly by Gordon Douglas from an unpromising script. Despite a good cast, Chuka is stillborn.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.