Elvis Presley's 6th feature film, Flaming Star is a 1960 western directed by Don Siegel.
Pacer Burton (Presley) is the son of the rancher Sam (John McIntire) and his Kiowa wife Neddy (Dolores del Río). Pacer also has an older half-brother, Clint (Steve Forrest), born of Sam's first wife. They lead peaceful lives until the day the Kiowas start attacking and killing their neighbors. The Burtons become shunned by the white settlers, while the Kiowas pressure them to join their side.
Tropes:
- Cerebus Syndrome: The movie seems to intentionally pull a bait-and-switch regarding the audience's expectations of an Elvis vehicle. An uplifting song plays through the opening credits, followed by Pacer cheerfully singing and playing the guitar while his family and friends dance around him. Just a few minutes later, the Howard family is brutally slaughtered by the Kiowas as they're returning home. After that, the movie's tone becomes bleak and grows increasingly more so, culminating in a Downer Ending. There are no musical numbers at all after the tone shift.
- Downer Ending: The movie ends with Pacer sustaining fatal injuries and choosing to die like a Kiowa by riding to the hills, telling an also injured Clint not to follow him and leaving him as the only survivor of the Burton family.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Pacer is half-white, half-Kiowa, which causes his white neighbors to regard him with caution at best. His older half-brother Clint, who was born of a white mother, doesn't get the same treatment.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Sam, who's white, married a second time to Neddy, a Kiowa. Their neighbors grow hostile towards them once the Kiowas start attacking, thinking they are somehow in on it. Neddy also gets insulted and nearly raped by two white travelers once she reveals to them she has a white husband.
- You Didn't Ask: Sam, Neddy and Clint debate why the Kiowas got violent and Pacer pipes up to reveal that the tribe got a new chief and that he has known this for a while. Sam asks why he never tells anyone anything, to which Pacer replies that he doesn't tell if nobody asks.
