How to Invent a 1990s Action Masterpiece with a Square-Jawed Randolph Scott, Bright Red Coats, and Bruce Cabot in Red-Face
It’s 3:15 AM. My eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed with coarse sandpaper, the cold pizza on my desk is starting to look back at me, and I am currently watching Randolph Scott, wearing pristine, fringed buckskins and holding a flintlock rifle longer than he is tall, casually taking down Huron warriors while a British Major in a bright red coat insists on marching in a straight line through a dense forest.
Welcome, my friends, to the high-stakes, arrow-dodging, and surprisingly influential world of George B. Seitz.
If you’ve never heard of the 1936 version of The Last of the Mohicans, congratulations: you’ve only watched the 1992 Daniel Day-Lewis masterpiece and missed out on the movie that actually wrote its blueprint. For the uninitiated, this black-and-white adventure was a massive hit in the mid-1930s. The director, George B. Seitz—who spent his career directing fast-paced silent action serials—had a simple, relentless, and highly effective strategy:
- Take James Fenimore Cooper’s incredibly dense, slow, and wordy 1826 novel and strip away all the boring bits.
- Inject the screenplay with the breathless, high-speed energy of a Saturday afternoon movie serial, packing it with canoe chases, cliffside brawls, and dramatic rescues.
- Cast Randolph Scott as Hawkeye because his jawline is so rugged and square it could be used as a blunt-force weapon.
The result? The Last of the Mohicans (1936).
The “Plot” (If we can even call it that)
Set during the French and Indian War in 1757, the movie follows the colonial scout Hawkeye (Randolph Scott) and his two Mohican companions, Chingachgook and his son Uncas. They are tasked with escorting Alice and Cora, the daughters of a British Colonel, through the wilderness of upstate New York to the besieged Fort William Henry.
Hunting them through the trees is Magua (Bruce Cabot), a vengeful Huron scout who wants to capture the daughters to settle a score with their father. Along the way, they are accompanied by Major Duncan Heyward (Henry Wilcoxon), a British officer who is very brave, very polite, and completely incapable of understanding why marching in a bright red coat through a thick forest is a terrible idea.
It is a non-stop, 90-minute chase through the woods where muskets take thirty seconds to reload and everyone is constantly falling off cliffs.
Why You Need to Watch This Tonight
- The Blueprint for the 1992 Masterpiece: Here is a mind-blowing piece of cinema trivia: when director Michael Mann made his legendary 1992 film starring Daniel Day-Lewis, he didn’t actually adapt the original book. Instead, he basically remade this 1936 movie. The narrative structure, the romantic subplots, and even some of the most iconic lines of dialogue were copy-pasted directly from this 1936 screenplay.
- Bruce Cabot’s “Gangster” Magua: Bruce Cabot (the guy who saved Fay Wray from the giant ape in 1933’s King Kong) plays the villainous Magua in heavy red-face makeup. His performance is spectacular because he doesn’t play Magua as a historical tribal warrior—he plays him like a 1930s Chicago mobster who accidentally tripped, fell through a time portal, and ended up in a 1750s forest. He snarls, he plots, and he is wonderfully campy.
- The Incompetence of the British Army: Watching Major Heyward and his redcoat soldiers refuse to take cover behind trees because “British soldiers do not hide” is comedy gold. It is a miracle the British Empire managed to conquer anything in the 18th century when their primary military tactic was standing in a neat, colorful row in front of guys with rifles.
- Randolph Scott’s Peak Rugged Heroics: Randolph Scott was the ultimate, clean-cut American Western hero. Here, at his physical peak, he looks like he was chiseled out of a block of solid pine. He shoots muskets with perfect accuracy, climbs cliffs with ease, and delivers his lines with a stoic, heavy-lidded coolness that would make Clint Eastwood proud.
The Verdict
Is it a good movie? It is an incredibly fast-paced, exciting, and highly influential 1930s action film. Unlike many dramas of the era, it doesn’t waste time on long, boring speeches—it moves like a rocket, featuring fantastic stunt work, great cinematography, and a surprisingly dark and tragic final act that still pack a punch.
My Rating: 4 out of 5 musket balls shot from behind a very thin, non-bulletproof pine tree.
Wanna see the movie that paved the way for modern historical action cinema?
Turn off your phone, dim the lights, and search for this classic 1930s frontier adventure on your favorite retro cinema platform. Because it has slipped into the public domain, you can watch Randolph Scott defend the frontier completely free and legally.
[WATCH “THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1936)” ON YOUTUBE (Opens in a new window)]
