Warpath (film)

Warpath is a 1951 American Western film directed by Byron Haskin and starring Edmond O'Brien, Polly Bergen, Dean Jagger, Forrest Tucker and Harry Carey Jr. The film was released as a Fawcett Comics Film #9, in Technicolor, in August 1951.

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Warpath
Film poster
Directed by	Byron Haskin
Screenplay by	Frank Gruber
Story by	Frank Gruber^[1]
Produced by	Nat Holt
Starring	Edmond O'Brien Dean Jagger Forrest Tucker Harry Carey Jr.
Cinematography	Ray Rennahan
Edited by	Philip Martin
Music by	Paul Sawtell
Color process	Technicolor
Production company	Nat Holt Productions
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	August 1951 (1951-08)
Running time	95 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1.25 million (US rentals)^[2]

John Vickers (Edmond O'Brien), a former United States Army / Union Army officer in the American Civil War has spent eight years hunting for the three men who murdered the woman he loved. He finds one of them, Woodson, and kills him in a gunfight, but not before learning from him that the other two men have joined the United States Army cavalry, and, unbeknownst to him, are in the ill-fated 7th Cavalry Regiment.

Vickers travels to the upper western Dakota Territory (now North Dakota), where he plans to reenlist in the Army as a buck private recruit under the command of General George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876), (James Millican), at Fort Abraham Lincoln, to continue his search in the ranks of the Army cavalry. En route he sees a sergeant named O'Hara (Forrest Tucker) physically manhandling an attractive young woman and intervenes. Molly Quade (Polly Bergen), is grateful for his intervention, but Sgt. O'Hara gets even later when Vickers coincidentally ends up serving under him at the fort, giving Vickers the most unpleasant menial dirty duties and assignments.

Molly has come to the fort to help her father Sam Quade (Dean Jagger) run a general store. He is opposed to her attraction to this new recruit Vickers. While out on an assigned mission, a troop of soldiers led by Captain Gregson (Harry Carey Jr.), are badly outnumbered by a band of Lakota Sioux warriors until being rescued by General Custer and his troops. Vickers is recognized by General Custer as a former Union Army officer from his Civil War days a decade before and is promoted to first sergeant.

O'Hara realizes that Vickers suspects him to be one of the killers of his fiancée. An ambush attempt fails, so the Sergeant deserts the Army and flees. A military wagon train is formed to evacuate civilians from the fort while Custer prepares to do battle with the Sioux natives near the Little Bighorn River further west in the southeastern portion of the adjacent Montana Territory at what turns out to be the later tragedy of the famous Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876/ Along the way, Molly, her father, Vickers and several others are taken captive. They see that ex-Sgt. O'Hara is a prisoner too, and when he learns Custer's men will be hopelessly outnumbered and probably slaughtered, he, despite his earlier crimes and desertion, tries to go warn the general and sacrifices his own life running through a gauntlet line in the village, distracting the Sioux until the others led by Vickers can escape.

Molly, her father and Vickers grab some unguarded horses behind their tent and ride off and hide from the Indians until daylight. Molly becomes aware that her father is the third killer that Sgt. Vickers has been seeking for years. Before she can persuade Vickers not to kill him, Sam Quade rides off in the darkness by himself to try to warn Custer, which will certainly lead to his own death.

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