Huebner, Andrew J. (2008). The Warrior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-807-83144-1.

Shaun - it's the final 20 minutes of the movie, that give the film its "18" certificate, and also the problems with censorship in most parts of the world. (Even the US still doesn't have an uncut version legally available!) The film "Soldier Blue" aired on BBC2, late at night on Friday 16th August, between 00:20 and 02:15 hours. The timeslot was kind of understandable, bearing in mind the ending, and the nature of the film itself. For the first two thirds of the running time, this is an unremarkable love story-cum-western, interspersed with some rather bloody scenes of action and death which are rather surprising for the time in which this film was released. The drama is slow-paced and takes a rather long time to unfold; most of the running time is taken up with characterisation between the two central protagonists. The first is Cresta, a woman (but definitely not a lady) with bad habits, a foul tongue, and a love of the Native American Indians, which is not shared by her companion, a young, jingoistic soldier by the name of Honus Gent. The two young actors taking the lead roles, Candice Bergen and Peter Strauss, put in strong roles and in part make the viewing experience worthwhile.

Recalling the film, star Candice Bergen commented that it was "a movie whose heart, if nothing else, was in the right place." [7] In culture [ edit ] So, does anyone know if a completely uncut DVD release is in existance, or will this be one of those films that will never be seen in full, due to its history (ala "The Last House On The Left"), and bad storage of one copy of the original uncensored negative?

As a Western, the characters are far too anachronistic. It would be little surprise to hear Cresta say to Honus, "Get with the programme, Soldier Blue. The Man has been lying to you." As an allegory, it's simplistic, patronising and wasteful. at the close of Soldier Blue. Indeed, the details are so alike – right down to a massacre in a ditch – But that just won't do. The film is too mixed up to qualify as a serious allegory about anything. And although it is pro-Indian, it is also white chauvinist. Like "A Man Called Horse," another so-called pro-Indian film, it doesn't have the courage to be about real Indians. The hero in these films somehow has a way of turning out to be white. Curious to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "After a cavalry group is massacred by the Cheyenne, only two survivors remain: Honus, a naive private devoted to his duty, and Cresta, a young woman who had lived with the Cheyenne two years and whose sympathies lie more with them than with the US government. Together, they must try to reach the cavalry's main base camp. As they travel onward, Honus is torn between his growing affection for Cresta."It's almost fifty years later now and we have seen more violence than they even thought of showing in Soldier Blue. We have read the Pentagon Papers and watched Dances with Wolves. In the BBC's defence, though, it was a good clean print, and was almost in the right ratio, as far as I could tell. (The film appears to start in a hard-masked 2.35:1 ratio, before pulling out to its proper ratio of 1.85:1, which is what the BBC version did as well.) Perhaps some of the musical score, or the paralels with the Vietnam war are now dated, but generally it remains a powerful film that also makes you think. I'm just saying that it's easy to be pro-Native sitting on the comfort of your sofa, but not so much when you and your loved ones are threatened with torture & slaughter.

UK release is the original uncut version at 114 minutes, excludes all 'toned down' material from USA "PG-rated" version and includes all director's material in climatic scene, except for 36 seconds cut from a scene showing the rape of an Indian woman during the massacre of the village."

After a cavalry charge decimates the Indian men, the soldiers enter the village and begin to rape and kill the Cheyenne women. Honus attempts to halt the atrocities, to no avail, and he is later arrested for treason by his own comrades. Cresta attempts to lead the remaining women and children to safety, but her group is discovered and massacred, though Cresta herself survives and is arrested for treason by the soldiers. Honus is dragged away chained behind an army wagon while a despairing Cresta is left with the few Cheyenne survivors.

Ulzana's Raid, a 1972 American revisionist western film directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Burt Lancaster. The central section of the film, when Honus and Cresta are wandering through the wilderness enduring trials and falling in love, is thoughtful, eventful, gentle and exciting. But the raison d'etre of this movie - stated, if obliquely, in Buffy St Marie's opening theme song - is the massacre at the end, which is genuinely horrific (if rather dated in terms of special effects). When it was released in 1970, the film's title and the original 'nude squaw' poster made this look like it was going to be softcore porno. In addition, the fuss in the press at the time made it sound like a violent atrocity of bad taste.From accounts I'd read about the stuntwork and particularly the gruesome prosthetic make-up effects (like in John Brosnan's book Movie Magic), it sounded like the British censors had made many extensive cuts. A couple hiking in the great outdoors being kidnapped by a sadistic thug and having to run for their lives liberating, the most honest American films ever made.” I hope that my book does justice to – inI recall sometime in the late 1970s a film called SOLDIER BLUE being broadcast on ITV . It was on past my bedtime so unfortunately I never saw it but I distinctly remember my parents discussing it the next day and how shaken they were by the amount of violence the movie used in showing a massacre against the Indians at the end . As years passed I have heard how this movie has become a cult classic and how it was an allegory on American involvement in South East Asia and being something of a fan of this type of movie I looked forward to seeing it . Unfortunately it's not a film that appears on the TV schedules and when the BBC broadcast it tonight I think this was the first time it'd been broadcast since my parents saw it nearly 30 years ago caught up with Soldier Blue on home video, I was disappointed. Although much of the material excised for the Veering from powerful to ridiculous, this little western continues the trend of telling "Indian stories" from the point of view of "white men" who enter the tribe. Like "A Man Called Horse", "Amistad", "Dances With Wolves", even the recent "Avatar", these films are really just exercises in white guilt. I am at a loss to explain why there would be cuts. Three incidents of "animal mistreatment" have been erased from the version released to the public. These are, presumably, horses falling over during battle scenes. I simply couldn't tell you which three of the 10, or 12, horses falling over throughout the course of the film cross the line of mistreatment. Either they're all mistreating horses, or none of them are. And what of every single Western that has ever been? And what of the Grand National? They're as bad as Soldier Blue. The film provided the first motion picture account of the Sand Creek massacre, one of the most infamous incidents in the history of the American frontier, in which Colorado Territory militia under Colonel John M. Chivington massacred a defenseless village of Cheyenne and Arapaho on the Colorado Eastern Plains.