Smoke in the Wind (1975)

Five Union soldiers are returning home to Arkansas after the Civil War, thankful for surviving, eager to resume their lives.

But Arkansas was Confederate during the Civil War, and leaders in the community of Winslow aren’t about to welcome back Union soldiers — scalawags, they call them — with open arms.

Col. Joab Cullen (Dan White), who lost his plantation during the war, would like to haul them before his tribunal for possible hanging.

His chief henchman, Mort Fagan (Myron Healy) would rather forego that formality.

All of which won’t add up to a happy homecoming for Cagle Mondier (John Russell) and his sons, Whipple (John Ashley) and Till (Billy Hughes).

There are romantic complications as well. Before the war, the colonel’s daughter Laurie was sweet on Whipple. Now he’s falling for a young woman named Sarah in need of rescue.

And Mondier’s daughter Hannah has been planning to marry Smoky Harjo, who thinks he’s part Cherokee. Mondier forbids that union because of a dark family secret.

Review:

This marked the last directorial effort for Joseph Kane; and that last feature film appearance for Walter Brennan.

And despite the presence of old Western hands like Russell and Healy, it’s a very dreary affair.

The actresses in particular, deliver Z-grade performances. The script is of little help. The action scenes are crudely filmed.

Ma Mondier seems barely fazed by the death of her husband and son. And try not to groan too loudly when that dark family secret is revealed.

As for Brennan, his part is minor, that of a shopkeeper who helps out the Mondier family while the men are away at war.

The other director, besides Kane, is Walter Brennan’s son, who also played bit roles in about a half dozen Westerns during the 1950s. This was his only film as director.

The movie was filmed around Windsor, Ark., in 1970-71. Brennan died at age 80, the year before it was released. Kane died in 1975 at age 81.

Directed by:
Andy Brennan
Joseph Kane

Cast:
John Ashley … Whipple Mondier
John Russell … Cagle Mondier
Myron Healey … Mort Fagan
Walter Brennan … H.P. Kingman
Susan Huston … Laurie Cullen
Linda Weld … Sarah Kimbrough
Henry Kingi … Smoky Harjo
Adair Jameson … Hannah Mondier
Dan White … Col. Joab Cullen
Lorna Thayer … Ma Mondier
Billy Hughes … Till Mondier
Bill Coontz … Stapp Huckaby
as Bill Foster
Jack Horton … Gib
Bill McKenzie … The Bartender

Runtime: 98 min.

Title tune: “Smoke in the Wind”
by Ernie Macy and The Blue Infinity

Memorable lines:

Smoky Harjo: “Ain’t nothin’ like whiskey to wipe war stench out of a soldier’s system.”

H.P. Kingman: “I reckon you heard me speakin’ ’bout plantin’ time. Let me tell you something. There might even be some plantin’ of troublemakers like you if you cross ol’ Cagle Mondier and his boys.”

Ma Mondier: “Never liked to hear a morning dove this time of day.”
Hannah Mondier: “Ah, ma, that’s nothin’ but superstition. You know that.”
Whereupon the Mondier boys arrive to deliver the news of their pa’s death.

Col. Joab Cullen, about his late wife: “She was a good woman, Laurie. Salt of earth, I’d say. If your mother had been alive when the war broke out, I feel certain that she would have insisted I go Union. I never could understand why she hated slavery so.”

Laurie Cullen to Whipple Mondier : “You’re not just a Union sympathizer and a scalawag, you’ve turned into a liar too!”