Savage Sam (1963)

A young man is taking care of his house and of his little brother while their parents are away. They have a dog (the titular Sam) to whom the younger brother is very much attached. The Apache surprise everybody in the region with an attack after a long period without hostilities. They abduct the two brothers and a young woman who is with them. The boys' uncle rounds up a posse to search for the abductees. Sam helps them find the savages' trail.

Juvenile Western. The Apache (and one Comanche) are the enemies, but the film wastes a few lines of dialogue to explain their position.

[Pack: Don't tell me about right and wrong.         
White: I'm not trying to tell you anything, Pack.
Pack: Then don't argue with me about Injun killing.           
White: I wasn't arguing. I merely said the reason the Indians fight so hard is the white man's crowding in, killing off the buffalo. That's all.
Pack: Them Injuns don't own the land, they don't own the buffalo.   
White: Maybe not, but after thousands of years they feel as though they have a right to it.       
Pack: They're gonna learn different. And I learn 'em.       
White: Sometimes hard to tell who the savages are.       
Pack: Dirty Injun lover !           
Beck: Quit that! Quit it out, I said! Quit that!       
Pack: He can't talk to me that way !                     
Beck: I said, quit it.  We go fightin' amongst ourselves, we're never gonna catch no Injuns.]

Then it wastes a few more lines to explain Pack's position:

[White: I didn't mean to get him so upset.
Beck: I know that.                   
White: I never saw a man so full of hate.           
Beck: Well, there's things that can sometimes breed hate in a man. 
White: Not like that.         
Beck: You're new out here, white. You're gonna find this is a hard country. You go to fightin' it, and it fights you right back every inch of the way. Ain't Virginia.               
White: I realize that, Beck.     
White: I mean, out here a man puts in a crop of corn and you bust your back watering it and hoeing it, and just before harvest it gets set on by hoppers. They hate the land. And you got about 50 head of cattle ready for market. Then blight comes along and kills 'em all off. You get so you hate everythin'.
White: But not other people the way he does.           
Beck: Look, a couple of years ago, Pack come home-- he come one day and he found his cabin burnt to the ground and his wife and three kids was killed. All of 'em was scalped. And he about went crazy grievin'. That can turn into hate real easy.]

The proceedings pack a good deal of action but not a whole lot of originality. As is usual in every film, well, almost every film, there is a surface of relative blandness or convention which poorly disguises a more explosive underlayer. In this case, the underlying thesis appears to be that the white woman has a superior sex appeal to non-white males.

Rating: 39