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Custer of the West (1967)
Rate:
2
Viewed:
3/25
3/25:
May I present Custer of the West for a sleeping aid?
Two hours and twenty-one minutes...that's insane! It's one of the most boring movies I've seen in my life.
Originally, I picked it up for the final battle of George Armstrong Custer's life, but the show took so
long that I gave up caring anymore. I doubt very much is accurate. In truth, nobody knows because the Indians
left behind zero survivors.
The biggest mistake is not going further back to Custer's days at West Point which better explains his eventual
character. He was one of the worst graduates ever in the history, racking up 726 total demerits but
failed to be thrown out of the school due to not hitting the unlucky number of 200 in any year, and finished
dead last in his class.
Once Custer was in the service during the Civil War, it's true that he made his mark as a reliable if reckless
fighter, beginning in 1862, rose rapidly through the ranks, was at Gettysburg, and became the first officer to
receive the surrender of the Confederate army (the table on which the papers were signed at Appomattox Court House
was gifted to Custer's wife Libbie). Afterwards, Custer was without war, and many men hated him. Having made a
regular habit of disobeying orders, he was never a general of any kind going forward after July 28, 1866, just a
lieutenant colonel, but he was still addressed by his former rank.
For the next ten years, Custer was involved in small amounts of fighting with Indians, participated in their
genocide (women, children, elders...it didn't matter) and rapes, and took an 18-year-old girl in 1868 to be
his sex slave for a year or so (Libbie knew about her and eventually put a stop to it). They were all done in
the name of promotion with a possible eye on the U.S. presidency. In the spring of 1876, he got caught by politics
in Washington, D.C., and was ordered to testify at congressional hearings in regard to corruption in Army posts.
Afterwards, he was sent back to the frontier.
On June 25, Custer's scouts spotted an Indian village by Little Bighorn River, and he thought of attacking
there the next day but decided to forego it by going ahead immediately. His force was divided into three
battalions which were soon overwhelmed by Indians in a ratio between two and three to one. Again, nobody
knows what really happened. All bodies were scalped and mutilated. Shot in the head and just below the heart,
Custer's eardrums were pierced so he could "hear," and an arrow was forced up his penis.
Libbie kept her husband's memory alive by writing books which transformed his status into a
mythologized hero. Once she died in 1933 at age 90, her life's work as well as many other hagiographic books,
which were often filled with lies and falsehoods, came undone when Frederick F. Van de Water's
Glory-Hunter: A Life of General Custer was published. Custer, who possessed very little talent in
military strategy, had a long string of good luck with overwhelming odds in his favor until it finally ran
out on him that fateful day at the Little Bighorn (the Indians prefer to call it Greasy Grass).
Custer of the West either doesn't capture above a great deal or choose to ignore the truths. Robert Shaw
is a good pick as Custer and has the eyes, but he should've grown his hair and goatee more to match the image.
Unfortunately, all of the Indians are whitewashed, and their mistreatment isn't brutal enough. There are
some ridiculous scenes that have nothing to do with Custer. If the landscape looks weird, that's
correct...the whole thing was shot in Spain. As a result, the film bombed at the box office, only making
ten percent back of the $4 million budget.
All in all, if you are interested in a truthful movie about George Armstrong Custer, Custer of the West
ain't it.