Soldier Blue (1970)

Candice Bergen is Cresta Lee, a pretty white woman being taken back to her soldier fiance after being held captive by the Cheyenne for two years.

Honus Gent is Peter Strauss, a private in the cavalry detail that’s escorting a paymaster’s wagon and Cresta Lee back to the army post.

Then the Cheyenne under Spotted Wolf (Jorge Rivero) attack. By the time the fighting ends, the only whites left alive are Cresta Lee and Honus.

Two years with the Indians have taught Cresta Lee a thing or two about the West. She’s seen Indians massacred for trying to defend their land.

Honus knows little about the West. His father died at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He’s views Indians as murdering savages, especially after the way they treated the dead bodies of his fallen comrades.

The two begin a journey to safety. Along the way, they encounter another band of Indians, a trader named Isaac Q. Cumber and grow closer.

Finally, with Honus suffering from a gunshot wound, Cresta Lee decides to continue alone — to get help for him and to warn her Cheyenne friends.

A Col. Iverson (John Anderson) has learned the location of their camp. And he’s out for revenge.

Review:

The film is best known for the graphic depiction of the attack on the Indian camp by Iverson and his men, an attack complete with rape, mutilation and beheadings. And, indeed, those scenes — the film was released during the Vietnam War — are still powerful today.

Far more charming is the story of Honus and Cresta, with her shocked by his naivete and he shocked by her earthliness. In one of the scenes sure to make you smile, Honus and Cresta are bound by the feet and wrists by the trader; he’s trying to chew the rope around her wrists. But he keeps taking breaks to lower her dress back over her bare bottom.

The film comes courtesy of Ralph Nelson, who gave us the cavalry as heroes in the entertaining “Duel at Diablo” and serves up another memorable cavalry vs. Indians film here.

But it’s also flawed. If the goal was realism, it’s hard to imagine a woman of the 1860s as outspoken and sexually aware as Cresta Lee. And at one point, Nelson has Spotted Wolf claim he wants no war with the whites. Hold it: Wasn’t he the chief leading the attack on the paymaster’s wagon, then using the money to purchase guns from Isaac Q. Cumber.

The film depicts the attack on a peaceful Indian village by Col. John M. Chivington and his Colorado militia in 1864. Nelson has a cameo in the film, as Alp Elson — his name with the first letters dropped.

Directed by:
Ralph Nelson

Cast:
Candice Bergen … Cresta Lee
Peter Strauss … Honus Gent
Donald Pleasance … Isaac Q. Cumber
John Anderson … Col. Iverson
Jorge Rivero … Spotted Wolf
Dana Elcar … Capt. Battles
Bob Carraway … Lt. McNair
Martin West … Lt. Spingarn
James Hampton … Pvt. Menzies
Mort Mills … Sgt. O’Hearn
Jorge Russek … Running Fox
Ralph Nelson … Agent Long
as Alf Elson

Runtime: 112 min.

Memorable lines:

Soldier, part of the escort after Cresta Lee is rescued: “Look at her, sitting in there. Two years captive with those red bucks. Don’t it make you wonder though?”
Honus Gent: “Why?”
Soldier: “How many of them got to her? Don’t it get you all worked up?”

Cresta Lee: “Are you wounded?”
Honus Gent: “No, that’s not my blood.”
Cresta: “Good, because we’ve got a long wait. They’re gonna be messin’ with those (troopers’) bodies down there for hours.”

Honus Gent: “I should be here, lying with them — my company.”
Cresta Lee: “Why? You’ve come out pretty good, seems to me. They’re all lying here dead and you’re still walking.”

Honus Gent: “You saw what they did — taking off scalps.”
Cresta Lee: “And who taught them that little trick — the white man.”
Honus: “And cutting off hands. And cutting off feet. And cutting off …”
Cresta: “I know what they cut off. But at least they don’t make tobacco pouches out of them. Uh-uh. That’s something else you soldier boys made up.”
Honus: “You’re lying.”
Cresta: “You ever see an Indian camp after the army’s been there? Huh? You ever see the women and what was done to them before they were killed? Ever see the little boys and girls stuck on the long knives? Hmm? Stuck and dying? Well, I have.”
Honus: “You’re lying.”
Cresta: “Go to sleep.”

Cresta, after Honus has been wounded: “How’s your leg?”
Honus: “It still moves.”

Iverson: “Put in your minds the dark abominations of these godless barbarians — murder, rape, torture. And when you think of your comrades — fallen, butchered comrades — ask yourselves: ‘Are we going to give them the same mercy?’ You just bet we are.”

Cresta, after the massacre: “Got a prayer, Soldier Blue? A nice poem? Say something pretty.”

Peter Strauss as Honus and Candice Bergen as Cresta, encountering a band of Kiowa warriors in Soldier Blue (1970)

Candice Bergen as Cresta and Peter Strauss as Honus, disagreeing on what to do with Cumber’s cache of guns in Soldier Blue (1970)

Candice Bergen as Cresta and Peter Strauss as Honus, tied up by the gunrunner in Soldier Blue (1970)

Peter Strauss as Honus with John Anderson as Col. Iverson in Soldier Blue (1970)