Bachelors make the best soldiers, declares Capt. Stephen Maddocks (Richard Boone), who knows the West can only be tamed by men as single-minded as he is. So with renegade Indians on the warpath, he has no patience for the love triangle that erupts between greenhorn officers (George Hamilton and James Douglas) and a beauty (Luana Patten) promised to one of them ' or for the chaos he knows it will cause. Written by James Warner Bellah, whose stories were the source for John Ford's Calvary Trilogy, A Thunder of Drums thunders with Western action and human passions. The standout cast includes Richard Chamberlain (right at the time he became TV's Dr. Kildare), '50s guitar legend Duane Eddy, Slim Pickens and, a year after his breakthrough in The Magnificent Seven, Charles Bronson.