‘Arrow’ Misses the Point

Over the years, the multiple working titles of the obscure 1952 shoot ‘em up Flaming Feather have been a source of confusion to a bunch of well-meaning but misguided Sedona filmographers. At various times during its planning and production, the film ultimately released by Paramount Pictures as Flaming Feather was known as Canyon Diablo, Devil’s Canyon, and Fort Savage. Almost 60 years later, those temporary names still haunt, and distort, Sedona movie history.

A contributor to the Internet Movie Database picked up on a connection between the title Devil’s Canyon and Sedona, but wrongly assumed it meant the 1953 Howard Hughes-produced 3-D Western with that name was filmed here. Not so – it was almost entirely shot on a Hollywood soundstage. Similarly, the Sedona Heritage Museum’s error-riddled filmography wrongly lists the 1947 Red Ryder series “B” western Rustlers of Devil’s Canyon, which was filmed entirely in California, as a local product.

At least two online filmographies compiled by amateur Sedona movie buffs list Fort Savage and Flaming Feather as two different movies made in the area (one also mistakenly lists The Bowie Knife, the working title of 1950’s Comanche Territory, as a separate film). The simple fact is, no Hollywood sound film has ever been released by the name Fort Savage; the closest match is the 1951 Durango Kid “B” western Fort Savage Raiders – which has no Sedona connection.

But the most lasting, glaring misrepresentation of Flaming Feather dates back to its erroneous listing as “Flaming Arrow” in a May 1959 Arizona Highways story about Sedona’s movie history. This mistake was formalized with the naming of the street “Flaming Arrow Way” in the Sedona West subdivision, where roads such as Johnny Guitar St., Pony Soldier Rd., and Last Wagon Dr. honor Westerns made in the vicinity. For the record, no movie filmed in Sedona – or anywhere else in the talkie era – was ever released with the name “Flaming Arrow.”––Joe McNeill

G’Day…Now Go Away

In November 1995, the Australian Film Censorship Board banned screenings of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, which was shot a year earlier in the Coconino National Forest, Sedona and Peaks Ranger District. The restriction, Australia’s first ban of an English language film since 1986’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, was pinned on a four-second scene that the Australian Senate Select Com­mittee on Community Stan­dards, a self-appointed body of representatives, tastefully described as “implicitly coerced” sex. The film, which starred Johnny Depp, had no such problems elsewhere, showing uncut all over the world and receiving an R rating in the U.S. Australia’s Classification Review Board subsequently overturned the ban, finding that the scene “was necessary to the narrative” and “not exploitative.” This was not the first time a Sedona-made film ran afoul of censors abroad. Both Gun Fury, a 1953 3-D western starring Rock Hudson and Donna Reed, and Shotgun, a 1955 cowboy potboiler starring Sterling Hayden and Yvonne DeCarlo, were banned in Finland for violent content.––Joe McNeill