About
Victor Mature, Guy Madison, Robert Preston, and Anne Bancroft all appear in Anthony Mann’s 1955 American Western The Last Frontier. The movie takes place at a remote army outpost in the outer regions of the American frontier, during the American Civil War, where there are still far more Indians than white people.
CinemaScope and Technicolour were used in the making of The Last Frontier. It has been renamed Savage Wilderness on television.
After being stripped of their belongings by several hostile Indians, trapper Jed Cooper (Victor Mature) and his two closest companions Gus (James Whitmore) and Mungo (Pat Hogan) seek refuge in a nearby army fort led by Captain Riordan (Guy Madison). The three guys are hired by the captain to be scouts. Corrina Marston (Anne Bancroft), who is searching for her missing husband, Colonel Frank Marston (Robert Preston), is also in the fort.
When the colonel returns, it is made clear that he is an absolute dictator, and Jed falls in love with Mrs. Marston as soon as he senses her ambivalence towards her husband. After a terrible fight at Shiloh when more than a thousand of his men were needlessly murdered, Colonel Marston is motivated to make amends. Marston intends to assault the local chief of the Indians.
Red Cloud hopes that this would clear his identity and allow him to rejoin the eastern front of the conflict. He disregards the reality that the majority of the soldiers in the fort are new recruits who are utterly outnumbered and unfit for the brutal combat they will have to engage in with the Indians. Jed must decide whether to put up with Marston’s crazy plan or find a method to get rid of him.
