Mjeteconer Just perfect...

MonsterPerfect Good idea lost in the noise

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

weezeralfalfa Presumably, the title relates to the Red Feather Saloon, and flaming-haired Arleen Whelan, who sometimes sings there. Arleen's character: Carolina, is your iconic 'bad' girl, as opposed to Barbara Rush's 'good' girl, Nora. They both have occasional incidents with the lead male: Sterling Hayden, as Tex. Tex saves Nora from great harm on several occasions. Thus, naturally, she is friendly with him. But, she also feels gratitude toward wealthy local, Lucky Lee, who looked after her, after her parents were killed and their house ransacked and burned by The Sidewinder and his band of renegade Utes, who have been the terror of Arizona Territory for 20 years! Now, Lucky has asked her to marry him, and she has accepted. However, Nora has also developed an obvious attraction to Tex, and worries about his safety. Meanwhile, Lucky has a beautiful Ute mistress in Turquoise(Carol Thurston), which doesn't seem to bother Nora. Turquoise thinks Lucky should marry her, but he says a man in his (exalted) position should marry his own kind..... Caroline has an attraction/repulsion relationship with Tex. Sometimes, she tries to have him killed. Other times, she saves him from being killed. Sometimes she's angry at him. Other times, she proposes that they run off together. Caroline also has a thing going with cowboy Showdown((Richard Arlen). Most of these romantic conflicts will be resolved in the spectacular climax battle between The Sidewinder plus his Ute vs. most of those characters I've talked about, plus the US cavalry. This battle takes place in and around the Montezuma Castle Pueblo cliff dwellings, with a number of successive ladders to climb to the top......The main point of the story is the search for the identity of The Sidewinder, and eliminating him and his Utes......Some of the other characters include: Tombstone(Ian MacDonald): a shady gunslinger type, Forrest Tucker as Lt. Blaine, and his sidekick: Edgar Buchanan, as Sgt. O'Rourke. Another easily identified character actor is George Cleveland, who plays the aged Dr. Fallon: horse and people doctor, dentist, lawyer, justice of the peace, and no doubt a few other odd skills.......The location shooting takes place in various scenic areas of Arizona, and complements the 3 beautiful women included. You can see it all free, at YouTube

MartinHafer Often I wish we could give scores like 6.5, as "Flaming Feather" isn't quite good enough to merit a 7 but better than a 6. I also notice that the other reviewers really liked this one. Well, I did too--just not quite as much.The film begins with a rancher (Sterling Hayden) having his homestead attacked by an Indian bandit named 'The Sidewinder'. In the attack, Hayden loses everything but his life and is naturally determined to watch this bandit and punish him. Along the way, he meets up with the Cavalry--and Hayden isn't particularly nice to them. After all, they should have stopped the Sidewinder, as he and his gang have been at it for years and no one STILL has any idea who he is. He and the Commander (Forrest Tucker) make a bet as to who will get the Sidewinder.In town, Sterling meets up with two interesting ladies--a crazy red-head who seems like poison and a gorgeous and nice dark-haired lady (Barbara Rush) who is headed west to marry some guy named 'Lucky'. However, twice folks try to either kill or kidnap her--and both times the hero, Sterling, rescues her. What's next and what the fiancé (Victor Jory) has to do with all this is something you'll need to see for yourself.I think the film's biggest strength is that the plot is unusual--something pretty rare with a western. And, it never hurts to have Sterling Hayden starring in a film. But the film also has a few problems--such as wasting Edgar Buchanan in a support role, a ridiculous fighting scene where tiny little Jory is a match for the hulking Hayden as well as a final scene where the Indian lady runs up and grabs a gun and shoots someone--as Forrest Tucker just sits there and lets her do this. This final complaint is just sloppy and with a better finale, I might have scored this one a bit higher. Worth seeing--just not brilliant.

Marlburian At one time the IMDb cast list did rather spoil things by telling us who the Sidewinder is, but since I wrote this review some years ago it seems to have been amended. So I'm altering what I wrote then.There are several possibilities about who the Sidewinder is, and I had my own suspicions (which eventually proved to be correct) as soon as he appeared. Sterling Hayden was his usual wooden self in the lead role, Forrest Tucker was sufficiently rugged as the army officer, but Edgar Buchanan made an unconvincing sergeant - almost as much so as Andy Devine in "Two Rode Together".In the opening shoot-out at his ranch, Tex seems to have a revolver that never needs reloading; I counted 17 successive shots, though six of these were fired when he was sheltering in the cattle pen; arguably he could have reloaded out of camera, but he then gallops off, firing another 11! And when the stagecoach leaves town it's picturesquely filmed from under a distinctive tree - which features again later in the coach journey after Tex has done his rescue act.The film is redeemed by a good closing fight between the whites and the Utes, with an unusual setting for the inevitable concluding fisticuffs.

tedg This is strange and enjoyable, an odd mix of straight genre and novel plot.Superficially, it is a genre western in all its component parts:Army, including a rough and tumble, betting, chewing sarge. A redheaded owner of a bar, essentially that abstraction of a whore that only exists in movieland. A more beautiful "innocent" woman, goodhearted. A lone rancher on a mission of revenge. A gang of thieving, murdering Indians, led by an evil mastermind. A solidly honest gambler. Color. Traditional score.And most of the action is of the ordinary kind: barroom fights, barroom singing (in the Red Feather, where our redhead works -- guess that's where the title comes from). And there's the cowboy rescuing the pert damsel again and again. He ends up with her after thwarting her wedding to the unrecognized bad guy. (who she doesn't know killed her parents).But this has some twists that actually make it interesting, enough unpredictable that you may find it interesting.The shootout at the end involves ladders and dimension, rare for a picture of this era. But the big deal for me: the setup for the first three quarters of the movie is that the redhead and the guy who turns out to be the mysterious "sidewinder" have a big quarrel. We expect to learn that she is his wife or sister. Or that she is the sidewinder. We expect that the bad guy will die, but that the tart with a heart will survive. That's the west, right?No. The whole thing leads up to a massive shootout which just happens to involve her and a group of men who mysteriously would follow her into such a thing. No problem, we think, her hidden power and role will be uncovered in some way.Nope. An errant bullet in the shootout -- not even from anyone important -- fells her. She dies. We never learn the puzzle that has captured us throughout. We've been tricked by the shape of the thing, which so clearly is a genre movie, but at the end, no genre ending?What a thrill.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching