Graphic, Very Violent, Powerful and Sometimes Silly.

I first saw Soldier Blue on my TV set in the early seventies, just after having had cable TV installed, and having opted for HBO. Watching "R"-rated movies, unedited on TV at the time was quite a novelty, I can assure you.

One evening, I turned on the HBO channel to watch the film the HBO program (a pamphlet mailed to subscribers) said was being shown, and instead realized that I was watching something altogether different. Here were Candice Bergen and Peter Strauss playing two individuals seemingly stuck in the wilderness of the American southwest, trying to find an Army base, miles and miles away. As I had missed the beginning, I had no idea that each had been part of a Cavalry-led paymaster detail to transport Christa (Bergen) to the base in order to meet up with her fiance, and that the detail had been slaughtered by Cheyenne Indians. (The term, "Native American" hadn't yet been coined.)

For the most part, a rather naive and decidedly prudish young soldier named "Hodus," (Strauss) and Christa manage to annoy one another with each's disparate views on the treatment of American Indians by the Army (Hodus believing that they're all "savages," and Christa knowing that "our" land, as Hodus refers to it, in truth belongs to the Indians), and engage in a bunch of rather silly events stretching out their ordeal in the wild. Nothing prepared me in any way shape or form for what was about to come.

Once Christa finds the Army post, she learns that it's the commander's intention to wipe out a peaceful Cheyenne village not too far away, that she was once part of. Sneaking out of the base, Christa arrives at the camp to warn the Indians, but their chief, having been previously given an American Flag and a peace emblem, feels he can talk to the soldiers and ensure peace, as had been promised him previously.

That which follows is one of cinema's most graphic, violent and brutal depictions of horrendous slaughter that, even to this date, has ever been filmed. To watch this horror unfold before my eyes, and to have no idea whatsoever what I was watching was almost surreal. There was no program to look up, no phone number to call, and of course, no email as this was the early 70's. Here I'd seen a brilliantly done film, that's left me with an indelible impression of man's ceaseless capacity for brutality, and I had no idea what it was that I've seen!

Fortunately, the next day, a friend of mine, who had seen the film, told me its title when I began describing it for him, and from then on I've always remembered Soldier Blue in this odd context.

Now, some 30 years later, I obtained a DVD from Blockbuster Online and watched Soldier Blue once again. The result: it's still an extremely powerful, brutal depiction of just who was the "savage" during the white man/Indian events in the history of the American southwest, but it's also very much a 70's film, and suffers somewhat because of that.

One area in which the film suffers terribly is not the film's fault at all, but that of those who transferred it to DVD: the soundtrack "wobbles" off speed all the time, leaving the opening song (sung by Buffy Saint Marie) decidedly off-key, and much of the musical score sounding equally off-key and sour. This constant wavering of pitch has a technical term that's called, "Wow." Wow is just what it sounds like, and it's very annoying throughout most of the film. There's absolutely no excuse for this, as films as old as 1959's Ben-Hur have soundtracks whose quality vies with today's multi-channel digitized scores, and Soldier Blue suffers needlessly from this frankly, cheap transfer to DVD from film.

Also, Chrisa's "smartass" character, while somewhat shocking in 1974, is more annoying than anything else today, though the rapid-fire banter between Bergen and Strauss still provides a good many laughs and smirks.

The film is set up in three sections: the opening, with the slaughter of the Army detail; the veerryyyyy looooonggg middle, with Bergen and Strauss coping with one another, and dealing with life in the wilderness; and the climactic, gruesome finale. As such, I'd probably rate the first section a 4 out of 5; the middle a 3 out of 5, and the finale a full 5 stars. In fact, the ending does indeed make up for all the rest of the film's shortcomings, as the statement it makes is that strong.

As so much of the film prior to this ending segment is amusing, light-hearted and downright silly, such a brutal ending comes as quite a surprise, and that, I suspect, was the film's intent. The sight of a little girl having a bullet go through her eye and out of the back of her head, or another one having her head chopped off still causes gasps of astonished horror. And, it wasn't the Indians doing this, but the "respectable" white man, thereby leaving the viewer to answer the question, "Just who really was the "savage?" The voiceover at the very end, describing the horror states that this massacre at Sand Creek (a true event) was "among the foulest in the annals of the history of America."

Oh the blood's much too red (typical for the day), and the soundtrack is often a bit too jazzy (irrespective of the warbling due to the lousy transfer), but the final 20 minutes or so still remain some of the most powerful and meaningful 20 minutes in film history.

Soldier Blue, despite its numerous warts and shortcomings, still remains one of filmdom's strongest statements about the mistreatment of our native citizens, and should be seen by all.