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William Cameron Menzies was indeed one of Hollywood's great craftsmen but little of his talent as a production designer is visible in this otherwise easily forgettable Civil War drama; for that, the King Brothers' budget simply proved too skimpy. The climactic battle is well done but Drums in the Deep South suffers from an overall sense of claustrophobia and a distinct lack of scope. On a more positive note, the acting of what is essentially a typical B-movie cast remains uniformly strong, and in the case of bedeviled starlet Barbara Payton, surprisingly so. Watch for veteran Hollywood dialect coach Robert Easton in one of his earliest screen roles as a rebel lookout.