This box set features Rock Hudson from early in his career when he was a newly-minted leading man cranking out five pictures a year. He was still finding his footing as a movie star and is often stiff in the three Technicolor adventures featured here, which are far from his best.
The most interesting of the three is Seminole (1953), a western set in pre-Civil War Florida Territory. Hudson plays a recent West Point graduate who grew up in the territory and reports to a by-the-book Major (Richard Carlson) with plans to wipe out the local Seminole tribe to claim the land for American settlers. There's a romantic triangle involving a local woman (Barbara Hale) and the tribal chief (Anthony Quinn), who is also Hudson's boyhood friend. It's a modest production, with Florida swamps recreated on sets and studio backlots, but the themes are progressive for the time. The Seminole are simply fighting for their homeland while the American cavalry, led by an arrogant, racist, Custer-like Major, are clearly the aggressors, and director Budd Boetticher shows the military men as invaders in a country they do not understand.
The next two films are, by all measure, routine and unremarkable features starring Hudson as a stiff leading man. The Golden Blade (1953) is an exotic African adventure set in the Middle East with Hudson as the son of an Arab Chieftain on a mission of vengeance. There's a magic sword, an adventurous, beautiful young Princess (Piper Laurie in harem outfits), a scheming Jafar (George Macready), and lots of swashbuckling action, all playing out on the second-hand sets and backlot bazaars. It's rather silly and stiff, with starchy dialog and clichés galore, not without its charms but hardly the best of the exotic "sword and sandal" pictures that had become so popular at the time.
In Bengal Brigade (1954), Hudson is a British military officer in India who is court-martialed for defying orders to save a platoon of his soldiers and loses his girl (Arlene Dahl), the beautiful daughter of his Colonel, to a rival (Dan O'Herlihy) whose lie seals his fate trial. As a private man traveling to India, he uncovers a plot against the occupying British army and must overcome their distrust to save them from the uprising. It's a routine adventure, shot cheaply on the Universal Studios backlot standing in for India, with the colonial British army presented as the heroes fighting the heathen tribal tyrants that would enslave the population, a blithely racist attitude of western supremacy that is common to films of the era.
Seminole features an audio commentary by film critic Nick Pinkerton and The Golden Blade features commentary by film historian Phillipa Berry. All three discs include trailers. Not a necessary purchase.