Drums in the Deep South (1951)

**_A suicidal Confederate mission to stop Sherman’s supply line_**

This is a surprisingly good Civil War movie starring James Craig, Barbara Payton and Guy Madison, shot eight years before the similar John Ford/John Wayne “The Horse Soldiers.” While the geography is disingenuous, being shot in central California east of Stockton, the widespan topography isn’t the focus, but rather the characters and their immediate background, such as the antebellum manor, the trees and the caves. You can only see the distant geography in the train sequence, which is relatively late in the film.

Although the story is fictitious, there were Confederate missions to destroy Sherman’s supply line to stop his taking Atlanta, such as the endeavors of cavalry leader Joseph Wheeler. There was no Devils Mountain, but there is Stone Mountain in that general area of northern Georgia, although it isn’t shaped like Wyoming’s Devils Tower, which was the model used for the fictional mountain of the movie.

The film works because it wisely throws in human interest amidst the historical backdrop. And I don’t mean just the relationship of Kathy and Clay. The ending is genuinely moving.

At times, this might seem like it’s a B&W flick, but it’s not. The color system used was not Technicolor or Eastmancolor, but SuperCinecolor, which sometimes looks like B&W with a tint. The only colors that project out are vibrant ones, such as the deep blue of the Union uniforms. Lighter colors come across with a gray tinge.

Since the flick’s copyright wasn’t renewed it fell into the public domain, which means the prints available are dubious. The version I saw was okay at best (I’ve seen worse), but I’d love to see a high-quality, restored print.

It runs 1h 26m and was shot in Oct-Nov 1950 at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio and on location in Sonora, which is a 2.5 hour drive east of San Francisco; the railroad scenes were filmed on the Sierra Railroad in the same county.

GRADE: B+