This is a strange western that I think owes some inspiration from John Ford's classic Cheyenne Autumn. Like the Ford movie it's concerning starving Indians on the reservation, in this case Arapahoe who resolve not to starve any longer.

Especially when post commander John Mills has plenty of army supplies in his fort and won't feed the Arapahoe or give them guns to hunt. His fort is a last chance outpost where apparently the army sends all its misfits from the commander on down. Holding some kind of discipline together is Sergeant Ernest Borgnine.

Into the mix rides gunfighter Rod Taylor in the title role together with Luciana Paluzzi and her niece Victoria Vetri. Paluzzi and Taylor had a little something something going back in the day.

In any event the Arapahoes have them boxed in with a massacre impending. Our sympathies are completely with the Indians on this one. This post contains some of the worst specimens of human being ever gathered together in one spot. Mills is a frightening spectacle with Borgnine enforcing his edicts on an unruly post. Of course there's a reason he's a drunken shell of a man which we learn near the end of the film.

Chuka misses being a classic because of the pedestrian direction it got from Gordon Douglas. Someone like Delmar Daves or John Huston could have made it a classic. The cast is a good one.

John Ford would never have directed it though, no way he would have portrayed his beloved United States Cavalry like this.

CHUKA is a fun western for Rod Taylor, not one of the best of its type but solid enough as a piece of entertainment. The film is set within a fort occupied by the US army and laid to siege by a vengeful army of Indians. With little chance of rescue from outside, tempers fray within the walls and danger comes from inside as well as out.

This kind of backdrop typically brims with suspense and so it proves here. Taylor was always one of my favourite stars of the decade and he plays the ultimate tough guy here with his tough-bitten, unsentimental turn. The film has better characterisation than you'd expect for the genre as well as solid action scenes and a surprisingly pessimistic feel. The violence has a harder edge than expected. It feels a little like THE ALAMO in places albeit a version made on a lower budget.

John Mills has a fine role as the alcoholic colonel in charge of the fort's defences while Ernest Borgnine is a hard-as-nails sergeant. Borgnine's dragged-out fist-fight with Taylor is one of the great ones, up there with those featured in COOL HAND Luke and THEY LIVE. Louis Hayward is the old timer and James Whitmore has a good character part as a boozer. THUNDERBALL actress Luciana Paluzzi's red-haired beauty is a nice addition to the mix to boot.

When a single concept keeps intruding on one's enjoyment of a film it has to be mentioned. For myself, I kept wondering how a former British soldier with a French surname is in command of a U.S. Cavalry garrison in 1876. I wouldn't mind so much if this was a Thirties of Forties 'B' programmer but here it was 1967 so maybe a little background would have been in order.

There's a lot more one needs to overlook in the picture as well, but having Luciana Paluzzi on hand as a Mexican senorita sort of balanced things out. Her mysterious association with gunslinger Chuka (Rod Taylor) is eventually revealed as things reach critical mass at Fort Clendennon, though it's never really confirmed whether she was still married or not. However I did notice a wedding band on her finger at one point, so I guess you have to make up your own mind at some point.

Say here's something I never saw before - how about those clever Arapahoe Indians spearing the wall of the fort so they could use them as steps to breach the perimeter. I thought that was rather ingenious. Speaking of those spears, how is it that Chuka was able to remove one that entirely pierced his body? One minute it was there and the next minute gone. But even that wasn't as amazing as Senora Veronica (Paluzzi) taking an arrow in the back when she was standing against the wall of a barricade. How does that work?

Oh well, trying to make sense of it all isn't going to get you anywhere. There were a couple of good moments like Chuka duking it out with Sergeant Hahnsbach (Ernest Borgnine),and the Indian attack on the fort was staged fairly well. I guess in the end we're supposed to understand that Chuka was a former cavalry soldier based on the narrator's description of the cross placed on a small grave after the dust settled. Just another question mark in the story that could have been explained better to keep us all from guessing.