PLOT DESCRIPTION
In this western, an idealistic and naive rookie cavalry officer is assigned to work with a cruel captain. He immediately gets on the crabby captain's bad side by trying to restart an affair with his ex-sweetheart. The woman is engaged to another who ends up getting killed by the Indians. This rookie, blaming himself for distracting the slain officer with his overtures to the officer's fiance, volunteers to act as a decoy to lure the renegade Apaches into a trap. It works, but many soldiers die. After the skirmish, the rookie has become a seasoned officer prepared to take his duties seriously. Back at the fort, he bids farewell to the woman as she begins her long journey back east.

But the sound and fury of adult amour, both profane and sacred, is louder and more confusing than the intermittent outbreaks of strife between the Army's meager minions and the Apaches.
This dichotomy lessens the impact of an otherwise professional execution of the stuff of which yesterday's unsung heroes were made.
James Warner Bellah, an old hand in chronicling the fictional annals of the Old West for Hollywood ("She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," etc.) has provided a thoroughly adult theme for the principals. 
Indian raiders have made life at Fort Canby unbearable. The commander of this 1870 outpost is a hardened veteran captain, suddenly shackled with a junior lieutenant, fresh from easy assignments in the East and the son of his former commander.
The woman who has come West to marry another officer is it becomes shockingly apparent, the newcomer's former girl friend. And, their affair was far from placid and again shows all signs of heat. The clash between the commander, his brash second in command, the enmity between the lady's two swains and the goading of the Red Men, makes, as has been noted, genuine conflicts that keep a viewer interested but not particularly excited throughout.
As Paladin, that taciturn, tough champion of the beleaguered on TV, Richard Boone comes to the role of the harried tactician, Captain Maddocks, with the ease of a tested campaigner. 
He is a grim, case-hardened type who barks an order, chews a cheroot, sits a horse well and actually looks like a larger U. S. Grant (beard and all) come to life. George Hamilton is properly sullen and determined as the lieutenant who loses his girl but gains the friendship of the stern man who forcefully illustrates the hard military tenet that "bachelors make the best soldiers. All they have to lose is their loneliness."
Luana Patten makes a pretty heartsick foil for him and the ill-fated James Douglas she has come to marry only to fall in love again with her former flame. And, Arthur O'Connell, as a wise, old topkick, and Charles Bronson as a ruffian of a trooper but an ace in battle are roughhewn examples of the post-Civil War G.I.
A young Richard Chamberlain as one of the officers and veteran Slim Pickens who was hardly seen after the opening sequence. 
Mr. Bellah has written excellent dialogue and Joseph Newman has directed this adventure, which catches the color of the lonely, arid Southwest in natural, vivid shades, with extreme diligence. 
But "A Thunder of Drums" is proof again that cavalry and Indians and the passions, both grand and base, never do mix too well.