I was looking through the listings on the Cinevault Westerns channel on the "Roku Channel" streamer. Coming up was a movie that sounded like it might be an interesting Revolutionary War movie, so I decided to stay tuned to watch it. That movie was Fort Ti.
Now, being from New York, I know a bit about Fort Ticonderoga and the Battle of Saratoga and that portion of the Revolutionary War. What I didn't know is that the fort had a history before the Revolutionary War, going 20 years back to the French and Indian War (known in Europe as a portion of the Seven Years War). The fort was actually built by the French, and at the time of the movie's action in 1759, the fort was still French. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
At the time the movie begins, we see Albany, NY, which was more or less Britain's northern outpost in New York. Riding into Albany is Capt. Jed Horn (George Montgomery), a member of Rogers' Rangers, who were most famously depicted in a Spencer Tracy movie released back in 1940. Horn is looking for General Amherst, leading the British forces in the area since this is not far from the border with the French colony of Quebec.
Meanwhile, Jed has a brother-in-law Mark Chesney (James Seay), whose wife and kids have been kidnapped by the French. They're being held at Fort Ticonderoga (then Fort Carillon, although I don't recall the French name being used in the movie), mostly as a pawn to ensure that Mark does the French bidding. They want someone to spy on the British so that they know when and exactly where the attack on the fort will come from. The Brits suspect something might be up, and it's up to Jed to figure out what's really going on.
Rogers and his rangers set off north, with Mark in the party, and along the way they find a lone woman. Her name is Fortune Mallory (Joan Vohs) and she claims that she escaped from the fort three days earlier and that she hasn't eaten since. So she falls in with the rangers as well, although she could be a spy just like the possibility of Mark being a spy; the thinking being that the French might have "released" her from the fort. After all, how in the mid-1750s was a pretty woman like this going to survive out in the woods for three days?
The most notable thing about Fort Ti is that it was released in 3-D, something that might be noticed not just from the opening credits, but how short of a time it takes to throw something literally at the camera. Unfortunately, that's about the only notable thing about the movie. Director William Castle must have decided that it was more important to have 3-D effects than to have an entertaining plot, because there's surprisingly little going on here considering how much potential there is in a movie about a battle for a fort in a very picturesque part of the country. There could have been so much action instead of talk and the spy and romantic stories.
As I said, Fort Ti showed up on Cinevault Westerns. Unfortunately, nothing in the Roku Channel's (I really hate the name the picked because they have a ton of channels) lineup shows schedules more than a day or two in advance, so I can't tell you the next time it's going to be on.
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