Drums in the Deep South

Plot synopsis:
Best friends Clay Clayburn (James Craig) and Will Denning (Guy Madison) graduate from West Point and visit their friend and fellow graduate Braxton at his Georgia plantation in 1861. Clay had once loved Braxton's wife Kathy (Barbara Payton) and still does. When war is declared they soon find themselves fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War.
By 1864, Clay now a Field Artillery Major in the Confederacy is renowned for accepting but surviving suicide missions. He is given another. To delay General Sherman's March to the Sea, a local guide can lead a party of men and their disassembled cannon inside caves that lead to the top of Devil's Mountain where a battery of guns can destroy the railroad and the Union troop and supply trains that travel it, buying time for the Confederacy. Devil's Mountain is coincidentally near Braxton (who is now fighting elsewhere for the Confederacy) and Kathy's old plantation where Kathy remains with her uncle. Kathy agrees to monitor the activities of the Northern invaders and signal Clay's outpost from her window through a mirror by day and a lantern by night. Through her activities, Clay's men are notified of the arrival two supply trains and destroy both of them.
Arriving at the plantation is Will, who is now a Major in the Union Field Artillery. When the two men meet each other in combat, neither knows it as each is in an artillery position hundreds of yards from the other. However, the love of Clay's life, Kathy Summers, does know and tries desperately to save her two good friends from killing each other.
The Union Field Artillery cannot achieve the elevation or range with their cannon to clear the Confederate guns at the top of the mountain. Inside the mountain, the Union Infantry cannot find the path to the top and are delayed by Confederate snipers.
As the railroad line has been blocked by two destroyed trains, Union headquarters send a giant Naval Dahlgren gun manned by sailors and mounted on a flat car that has the capability to wipe out the Confederates. Kathy is able to supply Clay's guns with wire from her piano that is used to reinforce the barrel of one of Clay's guns that with a double charge and maximum elevation is able to destroy the naval gun and further block the railroad line.
Will has Union Army Engineers mine the inside of the mountain with explosives that will literally blow the top of the mountain. Kathy wishes to act as a mediator to get Clay and his men to surrender that the Union army is keen on as it will save time. However, Clay calculates that the explosion will send the cliff down over the railway line further blocking the Union's supplies.

Tags: romantic

Review:
Really a far better "Civil War" motion picture than I had expected although I must say I found both the Confederate major and his lost love a bit cardboard.
What is remarkable about this film is that it shows us in detail how some southern soldiers climb trough an inside cavern a gigantic rock taking some cannons and from there manage to hit the northern trains and everything that happens in the ensuing battle.
William Cameron Menzies is perhaps the best production designer in American motion picture history (Gone With the Wind, et alia) and his work as director applies the design principles which he espoused, such as with this film, including a prime emphasis upon cinema as a graphic art, a visual rather than literal interpretation of a script, filling that metaphysical space between scenario and direction with an artist's point of view, while avoiding a potentially incorrect objective sensibility.
The narrative tells of a pair of best friends and West Point classmates, Georgian Clay Clayburn (James Craig) and Yankee Will Denning (Guy Madison) who are wearing officers' coats of opposing artillery units during the War Between The States, and of the inevitable military engagement between them, featuring a most dramatic segment involving the difficult placement of Confederate cannons atop a mountain overlooking Union rail supply lines, shot with Menzies' intriguing pictorial effects and unique camera angles.
An independent King Brothers production under the aegis of RKO, DRUMS IN THE DEEP SOUTH is not replete with good performances, although Craig is solid as is his custom, while Barbara Payton, as Clayburn's lover, tries hard and is at the pinnacle of her short-lived beauty, with Dimitri Tiomkin's lush score properly evocative for this generally prescriptive film..
It was a bit distracting during the love scenes but he seemed to, thankfully, drift away from it during the action sequences.Guy Madison was cast because he was easy to look at.
Every time they passionately kissed I kept thinking about her poor naive husband off surrounded by Sherman's Army while she played footsie with his alleged old best West Point friend.The special effects were very interesting and quite well done.
If you are going to spend the special effects money to matte in a giant plantation house you can at least matte it into a rich green landscape rather than a rocky gulch.I won't even mention (well actually I will) the fact that the main geographical feature of the movie is a hollowed out, honeycombed, Devil's Tower from Close Encounters.
I can't say I've seen a film that only needs 2 seconds to wrap everything up and turn off the lights.But there are a few good things that made this movie appealing.
Your generic Civil War movie has a smashing good Cavalry charge in it and lots of dashing guys on horses waving swords and flags.
I recently purchased a 4 DVD set, which included "Shoot Out", "Apache Rifles", "Sitting Bull" and "Drums in the Deep South." Like most westerns of its type, it has a very basic plot.
Combine that with the added dramatic irony of two friends fighting each other without realizing it, and lots of fast paced action, it makes for a fairly good western movie.
What I found to be very disappointing was that two DVD's (I exchanged it today for another copy of the same movie) both have glitches, such as the picture skipping a little bit (kind of a like a skipping CD or broken record, except it's pictures, not sound) and pausing here and there for no reason.
Spectacular drama with intrigue during American Civil War. The film deals with an old rivalry between two former West Point Academy roommates , under the present circumstances are on opposite sides in Georgia 1861 during the American Civil War (1861-1865) .
War breaks outs , both of whom are Officers from Union (Guy Madison) and Confederation (James Craig) , besides they compete for the same woman (a gorgeous and blue-eyes Barbara Payton) and wind up in a military showdown .
In the movie , Confederates put cannons in the Mountain of the Devil for attack supplies trains lead towards Atlanta and the Union soldiers use a big naval cannon .This historic drama takes parts from ¨Gone with the wind¨ , it packs a loving triangle with action , shootouts and suspense .
Principal protagonist is Barbara Payton (she formerly acted in important films as ¨Dallas¨, ¨Only the valiant¨) as one of the saddest stories from dark chronicle Hollywood .
I watched DRUMS OF THE DEEP SOUTH for two reasons: because it's directed by visual genius William Cameron Menzies and it stars Guy Williams.
Even though it started slowly and this is basically a B-movie, the film eventually overcame those weaknesses because it contains one of the coolest things I've seen in a movie in a long time: a battle, with cannons, in and on Devil's Tower!
The story's setting is not in Wyoming, where Devil's Tower is actually located, but in Georgia and, like your typical B-movie, the script is filled with easy coincidences.
Had the friendship between James, Barbara and Guy's characters been a bit more fleshed out, the human aspect of the story could have been as riveting as the visual aspects, which is what really makes this little gem shine.
It's obvious that Steven Spielberg saw DRUMS OF THE DEEP SOUTH and was "inspired" to use the Devil's Tower as a setting for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.The image & sound quality of the DVD was pretty bad.
Hopefully, this movie will be released with a pristine transfer so we can finally see this cool William Cameron Menzies film as it was meant to be seen and heard..
The cast and characters are adequate, if nothing more, and while the settings and details sometimes stretch history and/or credibility, in a more general sense the situation rings true with the kinds of things that happened during the conflict.The beginning sets up two potential conflicts, with a romantic rivalry intersecting with a friendship that will be tested by the fighting between north and south.
The main plot, which concerns the desperation effort of a small band of Confederate soldiers to break up a crucial Union supply line, produces some interesting drama and is told with generally interesting details.
I usually don't hold out much hope when it comes to movies about Mr. Lincoln's War. Hollywood seldom gets it right on all things Southern and/or Confederate.
He is the fourth character, actually, in the love triangle, which is where he does best.The southern belle's husband appears only briefly, and is afterwards only spoken of in his endeavors in this Civil War adventure.The other member of the triangle is an artillery officer for the South, who resembles Gable in looks, but in character is more like John Wayne.Guy Madison plays the Union artillery officer opposing him.
He is also a friend of all three of the other characters.The story is a familiar one, one that has been made many times since, of Confederates on a mountain, trying to buy time for their army.What really makes this film special is that it could have been cliché, but it avoids all of the clichés.
Barbara Payton is who keeps those drums a beating in the Deep South.
In the film's prologue she and husband Craig Stevens are entertaining two old friends from West Point, Yankee boy Guy Madison and Barbara's secret paramour James Craig.Babs is planning to run away with Jim that night, but news of the firing on Fort Sumter brings everybody's plans to a halt as the men go off to war on their respective sides.
Flash forward to four years later and Stevens is in prison, but circumstance has brought Madison and Craig back to the neighborhood.Craig is given a rough assignment, bring a pair of cannons to the top of a hollow ridge called Devil's Mountain and rain fire and destruction down on Sherman's supply train on the railroad tracks below.
The main thing about Drums in the Deep South is the lack of preservation regarding both picture and sound.
Both were pretty bad in VHS, equally bad (of course) in DVD.The joy of watching this low budget Civil War era movie is seeing our brave men fighting against the invaders entering our Confederacy.
Others might care who gets Barbara Peyton, but I simply care about whether cannons are in place to effectively blast General Sherman.Although the North was industrial and more populated compared to the South's agriculture, the more numerous and well equipped army of the North was ill-matched against the Southern sharpshooters.
Director William Cameron Menzies served up one of the worst movies about the Civil War aka The War Between the States aka The War of Northern Aggression ever made.
In "Drums in the Deep South" the story begins in Georgia on the eve of the firing upon Fort Sumter at a plantation mansion that looks like a prefab golf clubhouse.
West Point grad Braxton Summers (Craig Stevens) returns from a business trip with a gift for his seemingly adoring spouse, Kathy (Barbara Payton).
He mentions that he's invited two academy classmates, Clay Clayburn (James Craig) and Will Denning (Guy Madison) for dinner.
Will is off to serve the Union, Clay and Braxton will fight for the South.Fast forward - literally - to 1864 and Kathy lives alone at the mansion with her uncle and an occupying Union outfit looking for her husband while also protecting a threatened rail line needed by GEN Sherman for his advance through the Peach State.
The federal soldiers are shown as crude, even cruel, but Kathy knows how to deal with them.Then Clay arrives with orders to destroy Union rolling stock at a critical point called "Snake Gap."  Interestingly, Union forces did take a  Georgia pass named Snake Gap during Sherman's offensive but the story that follows has nothing to do with the Civil War reality.Clay, a major, has to get cannon to the top of a prominence from which he can blow up the Yankee trains.
Why Will, of course (Guy Madison was a stock "B" film staple.)Clay also finds time to renew his acquaintance with Kathy who'll do anything for her beloved Confederacy.
The film is a rushed muddle of stereotyped roles and predictable outcomes.And, on top of that, the DVD transfer is very poor with washed out color, blurred dialog and text that doesn't fit the TV screen.Dimitri Tiomkin's score is good but nowhere near his best.Skip this one-"The Horse Soldiers" with John Wayne and William Holden is infinitely better, a fine example of this genre.4/10..
"Drums in the Deep South" is a very boring Civil War film that does absolutely nothing to explain the war and features a romance that is about as sizzling as one between siblings!
During the US Civil War, Confederate Major James Craig (as Clay Clayburn) finds himself fighting Union Major Guy Madison (as Will Denning).
As is the case in most Civil War stories, the opposing soldiers once had a close relationship; in this case, they were West Point buddies.
**** Drums in the Deep South (9/51) William Cameron Menzies ~ James Craig, Barbara Payton, Guy Madison.
Although he designed and directed a number of notable films, today William Cameron Menzies is best recalled as the director of the "so bad it's good" 1953 INVADERS FROM MARS.
Throw in a love triangle and some of the most uninspired acting you can obtain and you have DRUMS IN THE DEEP SOUTH.Today the film is best recalled for the presence of actress Barbara Payton (1927-1967), a performer who trembled on the brink of stardom in the late 1940s and early 1950s before she self-destructed in a hog-wallow of sex, booze, drugs, and front page scandal.
Unfortunately, none of these qualities have much to do with either film or role, and even her cult-status can't make up for what is basically a remarkably shallow, incredibly silly, and deadly dull film.Unless you are desperate to see what Payton looked like on the screen before she ended up as a five dollar hooker working the Sunset Strip, DRUMS ALONG THE DEEP SOUTH is a film to avoid at all costs.
The plot caoud have been great - Cofederates staying on Devil's Mountain and hindering Union train supply to General Sherman attacking Atlanta in 1864.
There is a pleasant visit from two West Point graduates, Good Old Boy James Craig, Payton's former lover, and handsome young Yankee Guy Madison.
Craig is now a Confederate Major and Madison a Bluebelly officer, and that damned Yankee Sherman is beginning his march through Georgia with the aim of destroying the crops that are feeding the Confederate Army.Sherman's only link to his supplies is a single railroad line that passes near Payton's Place and an unassailable mountain that looks like Devil's Tower in Wyoming.
Directed by William Cameron Menzies & based on a story by Civil War author Hollister Noble, this movie has nothing to do with drums.
Instead, the movie tells the story of a small group of Confederate soldiers leaded by Maj. Clay Clayburn (James Craig) trying to mount, cannons onto a mountain, before a Union railroad convey comes to help burn the city of Atlanta, down.
Without spoiling the movie, too much, I have to say, the original titled of this film, 'The Confederate Story' suite it better.
Another thing, so jarring about this movie, is how similar, the main characters are, to 1939's film, 'Gone with the Wind'.
First off, Guy Madison is not the main lead in this film, he's more like a supporting character, and second off; his character doesn't arrive at the battle site, until the end of the 3rd act.
I guess, the now new producers of this film, really wanted to target modern audiences, by making it seem that the movie is about Union forces, when it's not.
It resulted, with the film, falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of 'Drums of the Deep South'.
Despite that, you can still, mostly see the wonderful recycle production design that William Cameron Menzies, use for this film, as well as producer, David O' Selznick's 1938's 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' & 'Gone with the Wind", here.
Another thing that William Cameron Menzies did well, and pioneered, was the use of color in film for dramatic effect.
It doesn't help the fact that the author of the source material, was making things up as he goes, like when he said that Union General Sherman was having train being sent to him.
Although the South lost the war, the Confederates win the battle in "Drums in the Deep South!" Oscar-winning art designer William Cameron Menzies helmed this Civil War yarn based on a screenplay by "Whistle Stop" scribe Philip Yordan and Sidney Harmon from a story by Hollister Noble.
Kathy refuses to see Clay Clayburn (James Craig of "Flying G-Men") who has never stopped loving her.
Johnston indicates Devil's Mountain dominates the railway where it swings through Snake Gap. The General believes this constitutes "the weak link in Sherman's supply line." Johnston wants Clayburn to blast the railroad until the Confederate Army can regroup and counter-attack.
The year is 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War. In Georgia, Atlanta, cotton plantation owner Braxton Summers invites two of his former West Point classmates, Clay Clayburn & Will Denning, to dinner with him & his new wife Kathy (who was formerly in love with Clay).
It doesn't have the same resources as something like Gone with the Wind but Menzies makes it feel about as large with his resourcefulness.The story is a passably moving tale of a woman caught between two best friends fighting on opposite sides in a war that will end with one side losing badly.
James Craig & Barbara Payton both make a good couple & Payton's willingness to spy on her captors in order to help her old flame sabotage the enemy's supply train is both brave & ultimately reckless.
The film has one flaw & that is the lack of funds to make the battles look anything but cramped, but Menzies does his best with the limited budget.
The obvious connection between GONE WITH THE WIND and DRUMS IN THE DEEP SOUTH (and there are many connections) is its subject matter about Sherman's advance through Georgia, and the reign of terror that occurs for southerners who come into direct contact with the northern general and his men.
And there's an incredible shot where leading lady Barbara Payton watches her husband see his West Point buddies off (now on opposite sides), and she closes the door to everything simple and sweet and innocent they've ever known.At this point the story follows James Craig, one of the husband's buddies fighting for the south.
But the mansion is fraught with tension, because while her husband is off in battle, Payton's home has been taken over by Sherman's men and one of them has developed a strange attachment to her.What happens next is something you've never seen before, not even in GONE WITH THE WIND.
Also, the other West Point buddy (Guy Madison) who takes orders from Sherman returns to the area and is reunited with Payton at the mansion.
You'll have to be patient for this film to get going, the early set up involves former West Point classmates reuniting at the Georgia home of Colonel Braxton Summers (Craig Stevens) and his wife Kathy (Barbara Payton).
Union forces led by Denning are assigned to blow up a mountain fortress from which the Rebs, commanded by his buddy Clay, are tasked with the job of destroying the rail line below, preventing supplies from reaching General Sheridan's army.
"Drums in the Deep South" looks like a good movie, but it lacks something a good movie must have: characters the audience can care about.