The Last Frontier (1955 film)

The Last Frontier is a 1955 American Western directed by Anthony Mann and starring Victor Mature, Guy Madison, Robert Preston and Anne Bancroft. The film is set during the Civil War at an isolated army base at the far reaches of the American frontier, where the Indians still far outnumber the whites.

The Last Frontier was filmed in color as a Widescreen movie. On television, it has been shown retitled as Savage Wilderness.

Plot

Trapper Jed Cooper (Victor Mature) and his two best friends Gus (James Whitmore) and Mungo (Pat Hogan) are relieved of their possessions by some unfriendly Indians, so they seek shelter at a nearby army fort, commanded by Captain Riordan (Guy Madison). The captain recruits the three men as scouts. Also at the fort is Corrina Marston (Anne Bancroft), waiting for her missing husband, Colonel Frank Marston (Robert Preston).

Jed quickly falls in love with Mrs. Marston, sensing her ambivalence about her husband; when the colonel returns, he is revealed to be an unmitigated tyrant, driven to redeem himself after a disastrous battle at Shiloh, where over a thousand of his men were killed unnecessarily. Marston wants to attack the regional Indian chief, Red Cloud, believing this will restore his good name and return him to the battle back east. He ignores the fact that most of the men at the fort are raw recruits, hopelessly outnumbered and completely unprepared for the vicious fighting they will face with the Indians. Jed is faced with the decision of letting Marston go on with his mad scheme, or finding a way to do away with him.

External links

• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049431/