Claude Akins, admittedly, is no barrel of laughs. "It wasn't MY fault." Scott: "It wasn't?" But the humor is in the acting as well. He has a tendency to answer a declaratory sentence with a doubtful question. Maybe too gentle." "A man can break with the wild life." And Kennedy gives us a Scott who is a man of few words and doesn't use them over and over again. "Ma'am, if you was mine, I'd of come for you even if I'd of died in the doin' of it." "He rides a little on the gentle side. He's given to phrases that enjoy a colorful twist. The other stares at him open-mouthed and exclaims in genuine wonder, "Why, I didn't know you could READ." In fact a lot of the humor comes from Kennedy's script, wittingly or otherwise. The two stand before a couple of posters nailed on a wall and one of them reads aloud an announcement about the stagecoach route, stumbling over the words. The two youngsters provide a good deal of the humor. In this case it's Claude Akins, accompanied by two younger men who have known each other for a long time. There is always an interesting villain, not entirely unsympathetic, who has a code of his own. ![]() ![]() This is a story about a journey, not too different from the one Scott took in "Ride Lonesome," I think it was. The scripts seemed to fall into two general types - town stories and journeys. I think this may have been their last joint effort and it's one of the better examples. Something seemed to come together on the half dozen or so cheap Westerns that Oscar "Bud" Boetticher made with Randolph Scott and writer Burt Kennedy, and shot mostly among the stucco crags at Movie Flats, California. Had Scott not come back to do Ride the High Country, Comanche Station would have been a good film to go out on. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a medieval origin to the plot of Comanche Territory. His behavior towards Nancy Gates is at all times chivalrous. But in this film he's poaching on McCrea's territory in gallantry. Randolph Scott's western heroes usually have an edge to them, they are not pure heroes as Joel McCrea's are. Unfortunately the two have need of each other in hostile Indian territory. Akins is a truly malevolent figure, a scalphunter who kills Indians and sells their scalps for bounty. It seems as though Nancy's husband has put up a ten thousand dollar reward for her. Later on he runs into an old enemy Claude Akins traveling with two young guns, Richard Rust and Skip Homeier. On this trip he ransoms Nancy Gates away from the Comanches. Whenever he hears of a white woman being put up for trade by the Indians he heads out with trade goods and buys her in the hopes of finding his beloved. Scott is a man with one obsession, to get his wife back from the Comanches who kidnapped here ten years earlier. The film combines elements of The Naked Spur and Two Rode Together and blends them successfully. This would have been his last film, but for being lured to do just one more, the immortal Ride the High Country. While this isn't their best, it certainly is quite good.Ĭomanche Station is the last of several films Randolph Scott made for Budd Boetticher with Columbia pictures. You can't do a lot better than a Scott/Boetticher western. Third, the film had a really nice ending-quite the twist. Second, as usual, Boetticher deliberately underplays the action-producing a muted but also quite believable film. Scott is much more like a very capable 'everyman' character. I loved Wayne's films, but he was always too tough and too in command. Plus, he's much more believable than the bigger than life characters John Wayne usually played. He plays the perfect cowboy hero-tough, slow to speak and anger but also a decent man through and through. It seems that the woman's husband has offered a reward for her-and it can be collected dead or alive! So what did I like about the film? First, as usual, Randolph Scott is amazing. ![]() It seems that the leader of this group (Claude Akins) is a real rogue and plans with his men to kill Scott and the woman. However, trouble is in store when three drifters come upon Scott and the woman. ![]() He's brave enough to come into a Comanche stronghold in order to negotiate for the release of a White woman kidnapped by the tribe. Randolph Scott, as usual, plays a nice but tough guy. In this film, a fairly typical plot idea is executed very well-with a grace and style that make the film well worth seeing. Like their previous collaborations, they both work together to produce Westerns that manage to rise above the mediocre norm. This is the final film that was directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott.
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