Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

gary-444 I was brought up as a child watching Westerns. As a middle aged adult it is interesting to revisit the genre.The Command is routine and conservative in its content. A waggon train needs to reach its destination and the pesky injuns are getting restless again. Cue the US cavalry to see them there safe and sound. What sets this above the average though is a strong performance from lead Guy Madison as Captain McClaw, a surgeon elevated to command when the cavalry officer in charge is killed in a skirmish. The screenplay has the chance to examine the nature of command as his cavalry men shudder at the thought of becoming "nurses". Of course McClaw rises to the challenge and ends up using his lack of formal training to triumph using unorthodox tactics to prevail.A sub plot of smallpox amongst the waggon train, and illness amongst the Indians, adds extra drama and variety to proceedings. Director David Butler died with 89 productions , mainly for Fox, to his credit including numerous Western TV episodes. His grasp of the genre and a story are well evidenced here.The action scenes are well handled, the appearance of smoke signals and Indian scouts on the ridge of a hill are always bad news and Joan Weldon is suitably sultry as Martha Cutting, the Captain's love interest. Although short of classic status, it passes its one and a half hour running time with pace and very agreeably.

Robert J. Maxwell In this one, the Indians get slaughtered as usual but it's the infantry that rescues the cavalry. There's a novelty for you.I think I saw this when it was first released, but I only remember two scenes. In one, Guy Madison, as an Army doctor accompanying a cavalry troop must take command and he has to strip off his Captain's epaulets with the black medical background, and sew on new ones with the gold background of the cavalry. It was a learning experience. In the 1870s the US Army used a black background for medical officers and a gold background for cavalry. Later, we learned that a bluish-gray background signifies infantry. I didn't know that. Neither did anyone else in the Mayfair Theater. A kid in Newark would be hard put to recognize a horse if he saw one.None of us learned much from the second scene. The pretty young Joan Weldon -- a real-life opera singer from San Francisco -- has been exposed to a disease and must be vaccinated, so Guy Madison has her unbutton her blouse and pull it down far enough to bare one arm and a tantalizing expanse of pectoralis major. Exciting, sure, but nothing new there. Madison and Weldon fall in love all of a sudden. You can tell because every once in a while they interrupt their serious conversation to kiss before drawing apart and going about their business. That's the fault of the director, David Butler, a studio hack who rarely brought much to the party. Basically, Madison, having been forced into a leadership position by circumstances, is despised as a mere Doc by his two dozen troopers. It gets worse when they run into a wagon train that is menaced by Indians. There are many infantry accompanying the wagons and they despise the cavalry and are despised in return. Furthermore, one wagon load of immigrants from New York may have brought smallpox with them. The infantry's regimental surgeon, filthy and obdurate, dismisses the prodromal symptoms as "the grip" but the superior Doctor Guy Madison suspects it may be worse than that. At the same time, he can't reveal that he's a doctor because then all the soldiers would lose faith in his ability to lead.It's what's known as a "latent status" movie. The hero has some set of extraordinary skills that conditions prevent him from revealing. Usually he's a doctor ("The Fugitive") but sometimes a gun slinger ("The Fastest Gun In the West"). Guy Madison isn't just a secret medico. He's a crack horseman, a genius at cavalry tactics, and excels at fisticuffs. He has a ski-slope nose that ends in a point and I'm told he is handsome. He was in the Coast Guard. Handsomeness is a requirement for service in the Coast Guard. I was in the Coast Guard. In this instance, Doctor Madison hastily reads a book on cavalry tactics and then twists them around in such a way as to effect a greater slaughter of attacking Indians and save most of the wagon train and soldiers. "In medicine, we learn that sometimes you have to improvise." One improvisation involves blowing a dozen Indians' heads off with a cannon load of grape shot. The story is by the militaristic James Warner Bellah, who had little sympathy for Indians or anybody else.Bellah knew the historical setting though. I learned a little about cavalry tactics too. I forgot to mention that at the beginning because I was frankly obsessed with Joan Weldon's left deltoid. And let's not just dismiss the importance of cavalry tactics. In the American Civil War, the North stank. The Confederates bundled their cavalry into independent fighting forces instead of distributing them piecemeal as infantry reconnaissance and support. It was a hard-learned lesson and the professor was J. E. B. Stuart. Then we managed to forget all about it when tanks were introduced in World War I and used strictly as infantry support. It took Guderian and Rommel and the Blitzkrieg to teach us the same thing all over again.Where was I? Yes, that's right -- Joan Weldon's trapezius. I'll bet she had a great voice too.

bkoganbing After Captain Gregg Barton has been killed before dying he placed his troop of cavalry in the hands of the only officer left, army doctor Guy Madison. Madison is bringing them back to their fort when they meet up with a company of infantry and the wagon train they're escorting through Indian country. The short tempered Colonel Don Shelton, commandeers that same cavalry to help with the escort without knowing that Madison has no military training. The rest of the cavalrymen keep Madison's real army specialty a secret lest they spread some panic among the settlers.Of course The Command that Madison is stuck with is no milk run. He's got to learn some real military tactics and has to learn them fast. Among the settlers there is an outbreak of what could be smallpox and Madison is hamstrung in giving aid in the profession he is trained in. Out of necessity he has to tell Joan Weldon who is traveling with the wagon train in the wagon where the sickness is starting.The Command was one of the first film's done in the wide screen process with some 3D thrown in for good measure. With films on the big screen competing with the free small screen, gimmicks were thought to be needed to get the public out of their living rooms. A good solid cavalry western which The Command is was not enough at times.James Whitmore as the sergeant who by rights should have been in charge and wisecracking Harvey Lembeck stand out in this cast. With a doctor hero and a cavalry setting, I'm surprised John Ford wasn't brought in for The Command. It seems like just his kind of material.

RONSBLUE A great example of Guy Madison's talent. This movie has always been one of my favorite westerns. I only wish I could obtain it on either VHS or DVD. I always loved the fact that the success or failure of his mission depended on his mens faith in his rank, not knowing he was a surgeon and had no combat experience. I thought it hilarious that both his commanding and fellow officers had no knowledge of the lack of experience in the man they willingly submitted their destinies too.