Female Artillery (1973 TV Movie) User Reviews

A fun 70's TV Western ........

[revdrcac · 5/10 · 27 October 2006]

This 1973 television western features the kind of amiable western film-making common at that time. A fine cast is on hand, including Dennis Weaver, Ida Lupino and Albert Salmi ---- all veterans of many western roles. The story here involves a fleeing outlaw who links up with a troupe of traveling ladies , hiding his loot with them. As might be expected, all sorts of complications then take place.

Dennis Weaver was very good in this film, obviously enjoying another well-written western role. From Gunsmoke to McCloud, he was always at home in the saddle. This is a good, but rarely shown western film. Catch it if you can !

Completely ordinary and familiar....

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 8 March 2017]

"Female Artillery" is a made for TV movie that feels very, very familiar. There had already been quite a few films before this sort of thing--a group of obvious underdogs in a wagon train that take on and defeat an evil gang thanks to a guy. "Westward the Women", "The Cowboys" and many other films have plowed similar ground. Because of this and because the picture offers few surprises, I was not impressed.

When the film begins, Deke Chambers (Dennis Weaver) comes upon a group of women from a wagon train that are alone and in trouble. There is small pox or some other sort of thing and Deke stays and helps them overcome it using tricks he'd learned from the natives. He then sticks around a bit...and this is when trouble starts. It seems that Deke has some loot--and his old gang want it. They naturally say that they'll let everyone go if they just give them the money...but they all know their days are numbered unless they fight.

Ordinary and unoriginal. Not much more to say about this slight film.

Wagon Train petticoat style.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 4 November 2021]

A rather generic western comedy stars Dennis Weaver, Ida Lupino, Linda Evans, Sally Ann Howes and Nina Foch with Albert Salmi and young Lee Montgomery seems like something from the 1940's, and if it wasn't for the presence of all the veteran cast, it would certainly rank lower on my scale. Weaver's a thief hiding money, coming across the female Wagon Train and he hides his backpack on it when men looking for him come around while he hides. When he retrieves it, he sees that the money is gone and goes after the train where he finds that in order to get the money back, he needs to aide the women to safety. And that's just the beginning of his problems.

Amusing here and there but obviously cheaply made, this movie of the week is no different than a dozen or so other westerns of the same, obviously "Westward the Women" where veteran leading lady Lupino is reduced to being the Hope Emerson of the group, ironic considering the number of evil prison wardens and matrons she's played. She is very tough in a funny way, at times emulating Mary Wicked as well. Foch too has greatly aged since her 1940's and 50's glamour days, and along side Lupino, her presence seems redundant.

Howes, the beautiful Truly Scrumptious from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and a number of Broadway musicals, is oddly placed in this setting, yet even in little makeup, her beauty and grace can't be hidden. Evans, coming off four years on "The Big Valley", is more at home. A lot of the material is basically situation driven, so the plot stand still at various times during the film. If this was indeed another TV movie pilot, it has instant cancellation written all over it but as a 17-minute TV movie provides a little bit of distraction but it's quickly forgettable.