Gefährten des Todes

The veteran Civil War Yankee officer Yellowleg (Brian Keith) saves the cheater Turk (Chill Wills) in a card game, and together with the gunslinger Billy Keplinger (Steve Cochran), they ride together to Gila City with the intention of heisting a bank. Yellowleg has a war scar on the head due to a man that tried to scalp him and his has been on the trail of his attacker for five years. When bandits rob a store, Yellowleg shoots against the outlaws and accidentally kills the son of the cabaret dancer Kit Tilden (Maureen O'Hara) and the grieving woman decides to bury her son in the Apache country Siringo, where her husband is also buried. Yellowleg calls Billy and Turk to escort Kitty through the dangerous land.

"The Deadly Companions" is the first feature of the great director Sam Peckinpah after six years directing Westerns for television. The credible story is a tale of revenge and redemption with flawed characters. Forty-one year old Maureen O'Hara is extremely gorgeous in the role of a widow humiliated by the locals after the death of her unknown husband and her survival as "dancer" of a cabaret with her son considered bastard by the population. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Parceiros da Morte" ("Partners of Death")

This film made by Sam Peckinpah (126-1984) , a Westerned himself from ranch-land in North Fork and it tells about an ex- North soldier (Brian Keith) from Ohio, as he meets a pair gunslingers (Steve Cochran and Chill Wills). When spontaneously a wild bunch attacks a gold purchased store he accidentally kills a woman's son . She's a dance hall's woman (Mauren O'Hara) and decides head to Siringo with her dead son , the village where was murdered her husband in an Apache raid . Brian Keith with a dark past under his hat and a guilty feeling for inadvertently killing , Chill Wills as a boozy ex-south soldier and Steve Cochran as an outlaw , escort the funeral procession along a dangerous journey into Indian territory until arriving in Siringo with adobe houses (similar sets to ¨Rio Bravo¨) where is developed the exciting final duel .

This is the Peckinpah's first feature , since years before he was soon involved in TV westerns , he wrote several episodes of ¨Gunsmoke¨and other Western television series , directing some episodes and he created ¨The Westerner¨ with Brian Keith and the successful ¨Rifleman¨ . Posteriorly , losing no opportunity , he made an enormous impression with ¨Deadly companions¨ filmed in Arizona . The movie was produced by Charles Fitzsimons (Carousel production) , Mauren O'Hara brother , who realized an excessive edition control and Peckinpah complained himself about ending result and especially on a no-sense final showdown . The producers found it very difficult to get financial backing for the picture due to subject matter : carrying a dead child in a coffin throughout the film , but they refused to change the story . Based on the success of the novel, Yellowleg , on which the film is based, Pathe America was persuaded to co-finance the film along with the Theater Owners of America and it was distributed by Pathe-America Distribution though went immediately bankrupt . Splendid cinematography -though being necessary a right remastering- by the Western expert , William H Clothier , he was usual in John Wayne films (Train robbers , Big Jake, Rio Lobo , Undefeated , El Alamo) and John Ford movies (Cheyenne Autumnm, Man who shot Libert Valance , Horse soldiers, Donovan reef). The film achieved a moderate success, although it was nothing to the stir he caused with his next work and most popular ¨Ride the high country¨ with Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott that lift him as the peak of popularity . The picture was well directed by Sam Peckinpah and its rating is better than average .

Sam Peckinpah , after beginning his career as a writer , he was soon involved in TV Westerns . Filming popular Western series as ¨Rifleman¨ , subsequently moving into pictures in 1961 giving fine impression with his first one , ¨Deadly companions¨ . After that , he did the prestigious ¨Ride the high county¨ that along with ¨Wild Bunch¨ , at the peak of his popularity , remain Sam's best films . Later on , he made ¨Major Dundee¨ that was heavily re-cutting . He subsequently filmed tougher-than-tough action movies , including gushing blood and guts with particular images in slow-moving , such as : ¨The getaway¨ , ¨the killer elite¨, the most popular ¨Straw dogs¨ , Convoy¨, and ¨The Osterman weekend¨ , until his early death .

Produced by Maureen O'Hara's brother,in order to recharge his sister's career,Sam Peckinpah did not like this film.O' Hara sings on the cast and credits and at the end of the movie.It's strange to see this par excellence Fordian heroine on Peckinpah's territory.

But you do not have to be a Peckinpah fan to enjoy this crepuscular western (Peckinpah is not my cup of tea as far as western are concerned;give me Ford,Daves,Walsh,Mann instead).If there had been problems between the director and his star,the movie did not suffer for it.

It is a good western but be warned: it's a gloomy one.The story begins with the death of a dancehall girl's child ("He was all I loved in this world" she would say later).THe movie looks like a long funeral ;it's a long way to the place where the boy must be buried in his father's grave.It's difficult to tackle a sadder subject.

Another great moment is O'Hara's and Keith's arrival in the ghost town,searching for the grave.Often filmed at dusk or in the darkest night,this film is also a story of redemption,of forgiveness.

The Deadly Companions is one of those star produced vehicles, in this case unofficially by Maureen O'Hara although her brother Charles Fitzsimmons is the nominal producer. According to her memoirs she wanted Brian Keith as her co-star, but Keith wanted Sam Peckinpah to be given his first shot at directing a feature film. O'Hara agreed much to her regret.

The film is an interesting and most adult western. Keith is a Union army veteran whose thrown in with a pair of ex-Confederates, Steve Cochran and Chill Wills. But he's also got a mission to avenge a scar given him by a former Confederate sergeant in a brawl. Still he takes his time as he believes as that revenge is a dish best served cold.

While stopping over at a town where the three are contemplating a bank robbery, some other robbers beat them to it. Keith, Cochran, and Wills shoot it out with the others, but in the process Maureen O'Hara's son is killed by Keith.

The grieving widow is determined to take her son's body back to a place that is now a ghost town and the way is through Apache territory. Keith agrees to accompany her out of obligation, Cochran has his hormones in overdrive and Wills goes along for the ride. These are not three guys I would want to be out on the trail with and they prove it soon enough.

Given all that happens to them and the characters that Peckinpah develops, they all should have died on the trail. There's violence enough in The Deadly Companions, but Peckinpah had not yet developed one of those slow motion violence ballets he would later use to great effect in The Wild Bunch.

Peckinpah didn't like the film, he preferred to think of Ride The High Country as his cinematic debut. O'Hara didn't like the film and doubly didn't like Peckinpah. In this she echoed Charlton Heston who had a similar opinion, though Heston gave Peckinpah his due insofar as talent was concerned. Both thought he had a screw loose. O'Hara also said he didn't have a clue as to how to direct a feature film his experienced crew carried him along. I would say he learned though.

But for this film I have to agree with Sam and Maureen. It really is quite mediocre.

The first theatrical feature from famed 'maverick' director Peckinpah is a very odd film. For one thing, it takes some careful reflection to recognize that it has virtually no story, simply the working out of apposite relationships between people having almost nothing in common with one another. The abortive bank robbery becomes almost forgotten, overshadowed as it is with O'Hara's journey to bury her son near her husband.

Which brings us to the first important historical point of the film. The attempt to bury the son is going to leave an impression on Peckinpah, who revamps it as black comedy for Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. (It also apparently left an impression on Tommy Lee Jones, who borrows the idea for his recent "Three Burials" film.) Peckinpah would also rework the Chill Wills character through several films. Brian Kieth's driven Civil War vet becomes the basis of Major Dundee, and of Holden's Pike Bishop in the final battle of The Wild Bunch. Another reviewer remarked that the boy playing the harmonica foreshadows the Bob Dylan character in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; but, more importantly, it clearly provided the inspiration for the Charles Bronson Harmonica character in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. The arrival of the three would-be bank robbers in the town at the beginning uses camera angles that would recur in the Wild Bunch, just as the arrival in the abandoned village at the end of the film includes camera angles used in the scenes from the Bunch that are set in Mexico. Another reviewer has rightly remarked the resonance of the barroom church service with similar scenes in later Peckinpah films. And the undeniable sexual tensions between Kieth, O'Hara and the two bank robbers would reappear in an almost unrecognizable fashion - not in the Ballad of Cable Hogue, as the reader might have expected, but in Straw Dogs, where it explodes into open violence, only achieving partial resolution in the McQueen/ McGraw relationship in the Getaway.

Whew! that's a lot of potential to discover in a low budget western. But there's more! One of the reasons why this film would leave an imprint on Tommy Lee Jones and Sergio Leone is that it is not really a "Western", i.e., a cowboy genre film. Except for the references to the Civil War, it could easily have been set somewhere in Africa, Mexico, or Australia. It could have been set in the Middle Ages. There's only one character that is pure "cowboy" movie stereotype, the black-clad gunslinger. And he is so openly a stereotype, one can't help wondering if he represents some intentional parody element to the film. At any rate, the point is that Peckinpah's decision to film a "non-Western Western" is historically crucial - If films like the Wild Bunch and Once Upon a Time in the West can be truly said to mark the end of the Western genre as a whole, the first notice of this transition is to be made in Deadly Companions.

Finally, one ought to note the performances of the actors. All of them, it should be noted are either miscast or cast against expectations. Chill Wills had never played such a nasty crud before; Maureen O'Hara playing a loser is completely antithetical to the cinema persona she had previously established for herself, and to which she would later return in films like McClintock! And Brian Keith turns in a great performance in a role that is really thanklessly unsympathetic for the audience in many subtle ways.

Really a remarkable achievement for a young director with little or no budget to work with.