Rent Eastern Trails: The Western at DEFA (1967)
3.2 of 5 from 45 ratings
6h 6min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
A close relation to the Spaghetti Western, Indianerfilme (later called Red Westerns due to their politics) were some of the most popular genre movies produced by East Germany's state-operated film studio, DEFA. Focusing on the struggles of indigenous tribes against European settlers, they disrupted the frontier myths central to the American Western and made a bonafide superstar of Gojko Miti?, whose appearances in a long line of action-packed Westerns for DEFA made him one of the most famous faces in Europe. Miti? stars in all four of the films presented here: Chingachgook the Great Serpent, Fatal Error, Apaches and Blood Brothers. Based on James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer, Chingachgook the Great Serpent sees the eponymous Mohican set out to rescue his kidnapped bride-to-be (Andrea Drahota) with the help of a hunter known as Deerslayer (Rolf Römer). In Fatal Error, Native Americans living at the foot of the Rocky Mountains come to regret doing business with the corrupt Wyoming Oil Company. Apaches follows a young warrior as he sets out to avenge the massacre of his tribe at the hands of a ruthless mercenary (Milan Beli). Finally, Blood Brothers stars Dean Reed - an actor and singer-songwriter nicknamed the Red Elvis - as an American deserter who comes to fight alongside a Native American tribe. Following the enormous success of The Sons of Great Bear in 1966, East Germany's series of Indianerfilme remained popular for the next two decades, finding enthusiastic audiences throughout Central and Eastern Europe and even as far afield as Cuba. - Actors:
- Gojko Mitic, Rolf Römer, Helmut Schreiber, Jürgen Frohriep, Lilo Grahn, Andrea Drahota, Johannes Knittel, Adolf Peter Hoffmann, Heinz Klevenow Jr., Milan Jablonský, Horst Preusker, Rudolf Ulrich, Karl Zugowski, Gisela Büttner, Günter Dornag, Hermann Gall, Leopoldine Kuhring, Hans-Peter Pieper, Günter Schaumburg, Hans-Joachim Stelzer
- Directors:
- Richard Groschopp
- Writers:
- James Fenimore Cooper, Wolfgang Ebeling, Richard Groschopp, Egon Günther
- Aka:
- Chingachgook: The Great Snake
- Genres:
- Action & Adventure, Classics, Drama, Romance
- Countries:
- Germany
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 21/09/2026
- Run Time:
- 366 minutes
- Languages:
- German
- Subtitles:
- English
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Various
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- New audio commentary on Apaches by film historian Michael Brooke
- Singing Cowboy - new interview on Dean Reed and Blood Brothers with East German cinema expert Seán Allan, co-editor of Re-Imagining DEFA
- Old West, New Perspective - new video essay on depictions of American history in DEFA's Indianerfilme by Western scholar Jenny Barrett, author of Shooting the Civil War
- Archival musical performance by Dean Reed
- Disc 1:
- Disc 2: