4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I'll come back for you!, December 28, 2004
MOHAWK is a delightfully bad movie that succeeds despite itself. Ostensibly about a 18th century frontier painter (Scott Brady), it's really nothing more than an innocent cheesecake (and beefcake) movie saddled to a western plot.
Our hero Brady is away from the post, painting barmaid Greta's (Allison Hayes) picture when his Boston fiancée, Cynthia (Lori Nelson), arrives. Beautiful Mohawk princess (daughter of chief Ted de Corsia) Onida (Rita Gam) isn't on scene yet, but she arrives soon enough to take her place in the three-sided tug-of-war for the attention of our randy paint pusher.
Things are ducky between the white settlers and the Iroquois (There's land enough for everybody, Chief Ted says at one point), save for the bitter machinations of landowner Butler (John Hoyt) and hawkish Tuscarora warrior Rokhawah (Neville Brand.)
With that set-up, it should come as no surprise that most of act three takes place at the besieged white settlement. Connoisseurs of bad westerns should enjoy the dialogue in MOHAWK, too. There's the obligatory mule skinner observation - "When a woman puts her warpaint on she's more dangerous than any injun!" This pleasant, pseudo-Indian speak exchange between the nasty Rokhawah and good Chief Ted's son - "Your tongue is too long!" "Your knife will not shorten it!" Or this pungent observation by, I believe, the warrior Rokhawah - "He who fills his mouth with big words ends by eating dirt!" They don't write them like that anymore. MOHAWK even has a song plunked down in the middle of it - "Love Plays the Strings of My Banjo."
If that's not enough, MOHAWK has war dances that owe quite a bit more to Merce Cunningham than ethnographic research. There are scoundrels in broadcloth and loincloth, glamorously beautiful women, Scott Brady clocking Neville Brand a time or two, an entertaining, movie ending battle scene. What more could you ask for?
The print, in glorious color, seems to have been taken from a decent master. There are some instances of color flutter, but nothing drastic. The disk also contains interesting text biographies of the stars and excerpts, some uncomplimentary, from reviews of the movie. All in all, a discount disk worth a western fan's attention.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Quality scalped!!!, February 19, 2006
I actually made it through the movie, so shame on me for not having something better to do for over 90 minutes. This is the 3rd DVD title I've watched from Alpha and the quality is really lame. I don't expect perfection on movies from the 50's and earlier, but, flutter, colors going in and out and contrast changing in the middle of scenes is pretty bad. The copies I've watched look worse than what one would find on regular TV.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mohawk, May 21, 2002
This is a rather interesting movie in that it uses a lot of distant scenic and action shots from John Ford's Drums Along The Mohawk. This is most noticeable, because all of a sudden while viewing the film, the production values are suddenly increased and the cinematography becomes almost ravishing instead of run of the mill that the "new" portions of the film just can't match.
As an aside, I remember seeing Drums Along The Mohawk twice when I was a kid in the 1940s in a small town where I grew up and it was in black and white; only when I saw it on VHS in the 1980s did I see the true Technicolor format. And then I was knocked out again when I saw portions of it appear in Mohawk, a film I missed at the theatres and only caught on DVD about a year ago.
Does anyone know of any other films that utilized parts of older films as part of their format to save on production costs? I'd like to hear from anyone on this. I know this happens, especially in World War II films with documentary battle footage, but haven't noticed the use of regular production footage in newer movies, unless they referred to the earlier film as a link in a series.
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