INDIAN TERRORISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24413, 26 September 1940, Page 9

INDIAN TERRORISM

THRILLING FILM FOR THE STATE Darryl F. Zanuck’s production of " Drums Along the Mohawk,’’ to-morrow s attraction at the State Theatre, depicts in technicolor the days when torch ana tomahawk spread their terror in New York’s beautiful Mohawk Valley, based on Walter D. Edmonds’s best-selling novel. The screen play b” Lamar Trotti and Sonya Levien gives Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda the roles of pioneer lovers who, with other colonists in the valley, have to face the fierce onslaught of the savage Iroquois. While a heart-warming romance is thus assured, the most outstanding feature of "Drums Along the Mohawk ’’ Is its action. The screen has proved itself time and again as the best medium for portraying scenes like these, but never has it shown them more powerfully. One is literally frozen to one’s seat at the tense realism of the Indian battle sequences, heightened in their effect by the technicolor. The cast is all uniformly excellent. Featured In It are Edna May Oliver. Eddie Collins. John Carrad ne, Dorris Bowdon, Jessie Ralph, Arthur Shields, Robert Lowery, and Roger Imhof. The story takes place in those days of romance and adventure when America was young. Claudette Colbert, an aristocratic city-bred girl, marries Henry Fonda, a farmer-colonist of the Mohawk Valley, as the film opens. Fonda takes his bride to the rough frontier, where her spirit is almost broken b ■ the crude life and surroundings. But, a brave girl, she per* severes, and their love is strengthened by the hardships and perils they share. Then the Indains, under the drive of the British (for this Is during the revolution), attack the peaceful valley.