ARROWHEAD (1953) * Charlton Heston has been raised by Indians, which makes him a Tarzan-like character in the minds of the apparently racist scriptwriters. How dare those sullen redskins object to being treated like second class livestock in their homeland!? What do they think they are, Palestinians or something? Heston spends most of the film desperately trying to say Apache (uh-PATch-shee) the way he figures that John Wayne would say it, baring his teeth in a challenge to the absent Burt Lancaster, and enunciating his lines in the monosyllabic manner better affected by Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. Meanwhile Jack Palance is dressed up like an Indian and making efforts to invent the job description of wartime DJ. Of virtually no interest whatsoever, though it does exhibit the homoerotic overtones so often found in the periphery of racist or overtly militaristic propaganda; as in the fact that Heston is wearing "rebel pants" (after the Civil War, so the cavalry wants him to take them off), and that he grabs Palance's ass just before passionately breaking his neck. Enough to make you suspect that Heston opposes gun control solely on the grounds that he believes that he deserves a violent death for making films like this.
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