The Deerslayer (1957)

A frontiersman (Lex Barker) and his Mohican companion (Carlos Rivas) come to the aid of an old man (Jay C. Flippen) and his two daughters (Rita Moreno, Cathy O'Donnell) who live in a floating fort moored in the middle of a lake when Hurons go on the attack. Based on the novel by James Fenimore Cooper and directed by Kurt Neumann (THE FLY). A bland loosely adapted version of the Cooper novel. It's handsomely shot by Karl Struss in CinemaScope which makes the most of the Bass Lake (in the Sierra Nevada mountains) location. Other than that, it's uneven and often crude film making. The continuous slaughter of its indigenous people gets unpleasant after awhile. The action scenes are poorly staged and the film's characters aren't fleshed out enough to make them really interesting. With Forrest Tucker and Joseph Vitale.