Flap G

Geronimo. Sitting Bull. Crazy Horse. Flapping Eagle. Haven't heard of him? It's time you do: he's a boozed-up lay about on a Southwest reservation who stirs up quite a flap leading the Last Great Indian Uprising. Director Carol Reed (The Third Man) and a fine cast topped by Oscar winners Anthony Quinn (as Flapping Eagle) and Shelley Winters bring Clair Huffaker's riotous novel Nobody Loves a Drunken Indian to the screen. The film's profound story of a vanquished people fighting back is leavened with antic comedy, including Flap doggedly bulldogging a bulldozer, lassoing a helicopter, and trying to tame his hooch-guzzling horse H Bomb. Go on the warpath with Flap.

FLAP is marginally significant as the only Western ever directed by Britain's Sir Carol Reed. Anthony Quinn is top-billed as Flapping Eagle, a modern-day Native American stuck on a squalid reservation. Though liquored up most of the time, Flapping Eagle undergoes an eleventh-hour social awakening. Making certain that the media is notified, he hijacks a train and heads for Phoenix, demanding full restoration of rights for his people. Played uneasily for laughs, FLAP tries to make up for its shortcomings with a 1970s-style tragic ending, but by that time most of the audience has given up. The working title for FLAP was Nobody Loves Flapping Eagle, which was closer to the name of source material, Clair Huffaker's novel NOBODY LOVES A DRUNKEN INDIAN.