I recall sometime in the late 1970s a film called SOLDIER BLUE being broadcast on ITV . It was on past my bedtime so unfortunately I never saw it but I distinctly remember my parents discussing it the next day and how shaken they were by the amount of violence the movie used in showing a massacre against the Indians at the end . As years passed I have heard how this movie has become a cult classic and how it was an allegory on American involvement in South East Asia and being something of a fan of this type of movie I looked forward to seeing it . Unfortunately it's not a film that appears on the TV schedules and when the BBC broadcast it tonight I think this was the first time it'd been broadcast since my parents saw it nearly 30 years ago

I must confess while I was watching it I was in something of a state of shock , not so much because of the violence ( I'll come to that in a moment ) but because it's a truly bizarre movie . You can just imagine Joseph Levine scratching his chin while reading several scripts on his desk featuring different genres and deciding that he's going to make a movie featuring bits and pieces from all of them so we have

1 ) A love story between two protagonists where opposites attract

2 ) A couple hiking in the great outdoors being kidnapped by a sadistic thug and having to run for their lives

3 ) A standard western that borrows ideas from THE SEARCHERS

4 ) An ( Anti) Vietnam war movie that's the perfect antidote to THE GREEN BERETS

All of these are incorporated into SOLDIER BLUE and I'm afraid that it doesn't really work . Can you believe that if this was an unsolicited script arriving on someone's desk that it would be produced ? It's like watching clips from several movies edited together , edited together very well I might add , but still edited from other movies . Thus we see a calvary platoon massacred early into the film while the next hour is devoted to two people wandering around the wilderness not liking one another but finding themselves falling in love . These scenes are like watching a star vehicle for Rock Hudson and Doris Day if you ignore the leftist / rightist diatribes

As for the violence , it's probably as violent as the stuff Peckinpah was doing at the time with slow motion death scenes where people spurt blood , a cinematic violence that hasn't dated very well in the 21st Century since it appears clichéd . There is one slight difference and that is director Ralph Nelson doesn't shy away from showing innocent children getting shot down , even in 2005 the massacre scene still carries an impact and the impact would have been bigger still if the Indians hadn't been shown massacring a Calvary unit earlier , but I guess when discussing what was happening in 'Nam the movie wants to have its cake and eat it

It's impossible not to discuss SOLDIER BLUE without mentioning Candice Bergen as Cresta . Men of a certain age have confessed how their ideal woman would be Bergen in this movie and I can certainly see their point , it's not just Bergin's physical presence but the written character too . Obviously Cresta is a total anachronism but she's a very memorable strong woman , a sort of hippy chick fused with Emma Peel and along with the Indian massacre Cresta is what people remember most about the movie . Peter Strauss as Honus seems a bit too old for the role and the part should have gone to a younger actor while Donald Pleasence seems to have wandered in from another movie

This is a movie that I have wanted to see since I heard about it many years ago and after seeing SOLDIER BLUE I still don't know what to make of it . It's certainly a very strange film that's heavy handed and got perhaps too much to say for itself . It's like watching a Walt Disney movie spliced with an exploitation movie , in short it's one of the most bizarre movies a Hollywood studio has produced and that alone makes it worth watching

The movie talks a soldier (Peter Strauss) and a woman (Candice Bergen) abducted by Indians and now freed . Later on , they are attacked and will have to face off deal of dangers and taking on a cutthroat weapons smuggler (Donald Plesence) until a final massacre .

In this Vietnam-era Western there are noisy action , shootouts , fights , a love story , extraordinary landscapes and a big deal of gratuitous violence . The film is based on real deeds regarding ¨Sand Creek massacre¨ and there are some remembrance about Vietnam killings and hardship on racial themes by that time . The highlight of the movie , of course , is the Cheyenne massacre with lots of blood and guts , it results to be an authentic butchery and was censured , prohibited , cut , and severely trimmed in some countries . The motion picture is classified ¨R¨ for the cruel murders and isn't apt for little boys, neither squeamish . The violence of its Indian slaughters , in which seemingly every part of the bodies were slice off and blood fountained all over the screen , brought worldwide queues and much criticism in the newspapers . The picture achieved too much success , in spite of violence and crude theme and excessive final brutality . The ending confrontation amongst the cavalry and the hapless Cheyennes is breathtaking and overwhelming.

Peter Strauss interpretation as a naive and innocent ¨Soldier Blue¨ is top notch and Candice Bergen as a reckless and impulsive girl is magnificent . Robert Hauser's cinematography is excellent , the landscapes are glittering and spectacular . Roy Budd's musical score is atmospheric and imaginative . The motion picture is well directed by Ralph Nelson though he develops an extreme ¨exploitation violence¨ in the final episode . Nelson traveled around the world to defend the film , his biggest box-office hit , insisting that the violence was utterly necessary and it was sincerely meant . Rating : Good , though very criticized for gory scenes . Well Catching , 'a must see' for action-starved Indian Western buffs who will enjoy the action and strong themes .

While riding through the Cheyenne territory transporting a safe to Fort Reunion and protecting the white woman Cresta Marybelle Lee (Candice Bergen), who had lived in a Cheyenne village for two years and sympathize with them, the twenty-two men of the cavalry are attacked by the Indians. Only Cresta and the naive, idealistic and clumsy private Honus Gent (Peter Strauss) survive, and together they walk to Fort Reunion, where Cresta is supposed to meet her fiancé Lieutenant McNair (Bob Carraway). Along their journey, Honus protects Cresta against Kiowa Indians, destroys the shipment of a trader of weapons and falls in love for Cresta, but he does not believe in Cresta words that the Cheyenne village is peaceful. When the cavalry attacks, he witnesses the hideous massacre of five hundred peaceful Cheyenne, more than half composed of women and children, and realizes that Cresta was telling the truth.

In 1970, I was in my first year of high-school, and my classmates and I went at least three times to the movie theater to see this fictional story based on one of the most hideous crimes of North America history, the Sand Creek Massacre on 24 November 1864, in this awesome and controversial motion picture. This movie rewrote the Western genre, in a period of Vietnam War, "peace and love" and "Billy Jack", and for the first time the Indians were disclosed as human beings and owners of a land invaded by the "white men". Further, the director Ralph Nelson does not spare the savage action of the cavalry, depicting the rapes, scalps, decapitations, mutilations and shots with gore in very graphic and impressive images. In that occasion, I felt in love for gorgeous Candice Bergen and her natural beauty in the best role of her brilliant career. At least in Brazil, this movie has never been released on DVD; I own a very rare VHS in my collection, released by Globo Video distributor. Unfortunately the edition is cut (it seems that somebody has censored the movie), reducing the impact of the violent scenes, and has terrible mistakes in the subtitles written by Maria Tereza Nocera, who translate for example "private" by "sargento" (sergeant in Portuguese) among other "atrocities" like the Brazilian title. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Quando é Preciso Ser Homem" ("When It Is Necessary to be Man")