They Died with Their Boots On, 1941’s Errol Flynn-headlined epic about the life of General George C. Custer, a group of dastardly businessmen—intent on breaking a treaty between the Union and the Sioux by enticing hordes of white men to settle on land earmarked for the Native Americans—promulgate a false rumor that gold is plentiful in South Dakota’s Black Hills. As aficionados of HBO’s superb Deadwood know, such a lie was wholly unnecessary, since the Black Hills were literally teeming with gold during the prospecting-crazy late-19th century. Yet this historical speciousness is emblematic of Raoul Walsh’s loosely-based-on-real-events film, which charts Custer’s colorful career, from his youthful rebelliousness at West Point to his downfall at Little Big Horn, with what can only be described as a relentless interest in lying. Warping Custer’s (and his contemporaries’) motivations and actions to the point of insanity, They Died with Their Boots On delivers revisionist romantic fantasy masquerading as history.