DigitalRevenantX7 The year is 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War. In Georgia, Atlanta, cotton plantation owner Braxton Summers invites two of his former West Point classmates, Clay Clayburn & Will Denning, to dinner with him & his new wife Kathy (who was formerly in love with Clay). But before they can eat, war is declared. Fast forward to 1864 & Will & Clay are fighting on opposite sides of the war. Clay, now a major with the Confederates, is picked to infiltrate the same area & find a way to sabotage a Union railway & cut off supplies to the Yankees. Placing three cannons on a mountaintop, Clay & his team of volunteers manage to blow up the tracks & a couple of Union trains passing through. They are so good at keeping the area locked down that Will, now an officer in the Union army, is sent in to prevent any further damage. Kathy, who is still living in the old mansion (Braxton has been captured by the Yankees), tries her best to help her former lover fight the enemy. But Will & Clay, who are still best friends, each don't realise that the other is in the area.William Cameron Menzies is legendary in the field of production design for Hollywood's early era. Having won awards for his work on such films as 1924's The Thief of Bagdad & of course his magnum opus, Gone with the Wind, Menzies was so good at his job that when the chance came to finally direct a film himself, he jumped at the chance.With Menzies at the helm, what was essentially a B-grade film made on a limited budget instead looks like a big budget production. It doesn't have the same resources as something like Gone with the Wind but Menzies makes it feel about as large with his resourcefulness.The story is a passably moving tale of a woman caught between two best friends fighting on opposite sides in a war that will end with one side losing badly. James Craig & Barbara Payton both make a good couple & Payton's willingness to spy on her captors in order to help her old flame sabotage the enemy's supply train is both brave & ultimately reckless. The film has one flaw & that is the lack of funds to make the battles look anything but cramped, but Menzies does his best with the limited budget. He even manages to throw in a couple of reasonably exciting moments, with Payton trying to signal Craig while a Union soldier searches for her & Craig's first attack on the enemy train. The cast make the most out of their roles & the film's unusually high production values elevate what is essentially a low budget Civil War drama into a modest war classic.

classicsoncall You'll have to be patient for this film to get going, the early set up involves former West Point classmates reuniting at the Georgia home of Colonel Braxton Summers (Craig Stevens) and his wife Kathy (Barbara Payton). News of the arrivals sends the Mrs. into a mild panic - she and Clay Clayburn (James Craig) had a serious fling four years earlier and it's reignited when the husband Colonel takes care of some off screen business. There's the hint of another side to this romantic triangle (quadrangle?) with the appearance of Will Denning (Guy Madison), but that one doesn't go very far.As a kid I watched Madison's TV Western "The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok" and always found him to be a cool actor. He looked very young to me here in a film released the same year in which his TV program aired, which means it's been quite some time since I've seen any of those episodes. I'll have to get my hands on some.Once the initial set up is developed, the story seems to bog down a bit. Union forces led by Denning are assigned to blow up a mountain fortress from which the Rebs, commanded by his buddy Clay, are tasked with the job of destroying the rail line below, preventing supplies from reaching General Sheridan's army. Payton's character, under house arrest, manages to get information and some supplies to her lover Clay. Neither opposing commander is aware of each other's presence until close to the final denouement.What I had trouble with throughout was the logistics of the tunnels and caves of the mountain fortress resembling Devil's Tower. Even a demolition expert would have trouble explaining to me how mining the base of the tower would eventually wind up blowing it's top off. There's that, and the inconclusive ending that suggested the film's odd couple and the remaining Confederates didn't make it out alive. The Major it seems, didn't seem too upset about all that.

Maciste_Brother I watched DRUMS OF THE DEEP SOUTH for two reasons: because it's directed by visual genius William Cameron Menzies and it stars Guy Williams. Well, I wasn't disappointed by it. Even though it started slowly and this is basically a B-movie, the film eventually overcame those weaknesses because it contains one of the coolest things I've seen in a movie in a long time: a battle, with cannons, in and on Devil's Tower! The bulk of the film is about this battle and I was giddy as a kid on Christmas' Eve. Visually, the whole battle is effen brilliant! The story's setting is not in Wyoming, where Devil's Tower is actually located, but in Georgia and, like your typical B-movie, the script is filled with easy coincidences. Many will object to these things but I didn't care because the battle sequence is already up there as one of my favorite cinematic moments ever. Besides, historical and geographical inaccuracies in movies such as THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY never prevented them from being regarded as great. The score by Dimitri Tiomkin is excellent and provides the right amount of omph to the many battle or suspense scenes. Make no mistake about it, this is more of an action movie than a drama set in the South. The start of the movie is all drama and set-up but the last hour is all action and tension. The actors are serviceable with Guy Williams being the stand-out. What a dashing actor. Unfortunately, his role is almost an afterthought. The story concentrates mainly on James Craig and Barbara Payton's love affair. The (spectacular) resolution of their love affair is surprisingly sad, and nearly elevates the movie from a standard B-movie to a grade-A one. Had the friendship between James, Barbara and Guy's characters been a bit more fleshed out, the human aspect of the story could have been as riveting as the visual aspects, which is what really makes this little gem shine. It's obvious that Steven Spielberg saw DRUMS OF THE DEEP SOUTH and was "inspired" to use the Devil's Tower as a setting for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.The image & sound quality of the DVD was pretty bad. Hopefully, this movie will be released with a pristine transfer so we can finally see this cool William Cameron Menzies film as it was meant to be seen and heard.

rsoonsa William Cameron Menzies is perhaps the best production designer in American motion picture history (Gone With the Wind, et alia) and his work as director applies the design principles which he espoused, such as with this film, including a prime emphasis upon cinema as a graphic art, a visual rather than literal interpretation of a script, filling that metaphysical space between scenario and direction with an artist's point of view, while avoiding a potentially incorrect objective sensibility. The narrative tells of a pair of best friends and West Point classmates, Georgian Clay Clayburn (James Craig) and Yankee Will Denning (Guy Madison) who are wearing officers' coats of opposing artillery units during the War Between The States, and of the inevitable military engagement between them, featuring a most dramatic segment involving the difficult placement of Confederate cannons atop a mountain overlooking Union rail supply lines, shot with Menzies' intriguing pictorial effects and unique camera angles. An independent King Brothers production under the aegis of RKO, DRUMS IN THE DEEP SOUTH is not replete with good performances, although Craig is solid as is his custom, while Barbara Payton, as Clayburn's lover, tries hard and is at the pinnacle of her short-lived beauty, with Dimitri Tiomkin's lush score properly evocative for this generally prescriptive film.