Oregon Passage

Another of the movies that was sitting on my DVR for a while that I needed to watch before it expired was the cavalry western Oregon Passage. Having watched it, I wrote up this review which is going into my queue of movies to post about at some later date since, as of this writing, I've got a few too many military-themed movies scheduled in close proximity.

The scene is 1871 in Oregon, which is already a state, but still has a bunch of Indian tribes in the less-developed parts of the state that aren't exactly happy about the encroachment of the white man. Chief among these are the Shoshone, led by Black Eagle. At a fort, the cavalry have enlisted the help of a member of a different tribe, a man named Nato, to try to find Black Eagle. He gives Lt. Ord (John Ericson information that sends the cavalry out on a raid. Unfortunately, they don't find Black Eagle, but Little Deer, a member of a rival tribe who has been kidnapped by Black Eagle with the intention of becoming Mrs. Black Eagle, as it were. The cavalry returns to the fort.

Now, Black Eagle is sure to be pissed about having bride stolen, never mind the assertion that he stole her himself. He's going to start organizing the various tribes to get together to raid the cavalry forts. But in the meantime, there's the other half of the story that we have to get to. Lt. Ord is serving under the fort commander, Maj. Dane (Edward Platt), who is decidedly ill-suited to commanding this fort. He's rigid and, having dealt with Plains Indians in the past, thinks he can just deal with the Shoshone in the same way regardless of whether that's working in reality. Worse, he's got a trophy wife, Sylvia (Lola Albright), whom he's brought to the fort from Washington presumable to keep her under his watchful eye since she's good enough looking to tempt other men.

Among those other men just happens to be Lt. Ord, although in Ord's defense, he apparently knew Sylvia back east so they have a past together. Sylvia thinks the two of them can just pick right up from where they left off back east. She's also inherited money, and keeps trying to convince Lt. Ord that if only they leave this god-forsaken fort together, they can run off to South America or someplace else where the US government will never find Ord. They can't stay in the US, of course, since in that case Ord would be a deserter and be found and probably executed.

Meanwhile, Little Deer, having been rescued by Ord's raid, seems to think this is some sort of omen that the two of them are destined to be together. To that end, she keeps making totems that are supposed to be symbols of this fate, not that Ord is intending to be with Little Deer. Not that he's malicious about it, it's more that he's focused on duty rather than love. He's also focused on trying to get Maj. Dane not to undertake policies that he believes are going to be a disaster. And, among all that, there's still Black Eagle out there, waiting to attack....

Oregon Passage is a competent enough B western, although it's one of those movies that feels rather formulaic and mildly old fashioned even by the standards of the late 1950s when it was released. It's not a bad little movie for the most part, although it's a fairly simple tale of good versus evil by the end. The one bigger negative is the print. There were some scenes that gave me the impression that stock footage was used from other movies, although I don't see any indication of this on IMDb. But the color quality and the focus seem to change from shot to shot. Oregon Passage is a good enough movie to sit down with on a rainy day, but nothing that will be remembered as an all-time great movie.