Product: Drums in the Deep South [VHS] (1951)
Rating: 3.0
A B-movie epic worth seeing.
Director William Cameron Menzies, set designer for "Gone with the Wind" and the original "Invaders from Mars" (1953, which he also directed), keeps this modest Civil War story moving along nicely and with sufficient human-interest details. Guy Madison (TV's "Wild Bill Hickock") and James Craig are close friends who end up on the North and South sides, respectively, and who, not surprisingly, must fight one another in the movie's final reels, though they do so out of sight to one another. Come to think of it, we only see them together some two or three minutes at the start of this reasonably exciting B-epic that belies its budget, courtesy of Menzie's set designs, in spite of harsh early-fifties color and a less than liberal budget. Nothing profound, but this notable picture does convey some of the tragedy of friends and loved ones torn apart by the most horribly personal war in our history.