Le Passage de Santa Fé

A strikingly photographed but also strikingly ordinary western. Payne leads a cattle drive through 'Injun' territory. Do you reckon they're going to let him through peacefully? It's admittedly never short on action, but such trifle now seems more than a bit outré considering the contemporarily modish spate of 'be nice to Indians' Westerns. Fair to say though, that even though 'Broken Arrow' had set such a trend 5 year back, traditional Western audiences regarded the concept with less-than macromolecular significance. With Faith Domergue being typically insipid (This Island Earth was still one year off), but looking as if she thinks she deserves to be paid like Barbara Stanwyck.

A scout with a questionable reputation guides a wagon train through hostile Indian country in an okay but predictable western. John Payne and Rod Cameron are the top cast names and their main interest here is a half-breed girl as the train makes its way to Santa Fe. Good support is given by Slim Pickens, Anthony Caruso and Leo Gordon, old hands in the western genre, and Faith Domergue does what she can with a one-dimensional role. The action is decent and a wild horse stampede adds excitement to the film but otherwise there's nothing about the movie that separates it from dozens of others of its type. The picture has beautiful camera work and displays pretty Utah landscapes to good advantage. The film was based on a novel by Clay Fisher who had some of his other works made into excellent westerns.

Along with Silver Lode and Rails into Laramie, this is another enjoyable western that keeps one engaged all throughout. A good wagon train story with plenty of good action - such as the horse stampede - and great location. John Payne plays scout who hates Indians due to a previous incident. Things get complicated when he falls for the ravishing Faith Domergue who, unknown to him, is half-injun.

Some rather questionable character motivations make this particular Republic western something of a mixed bag for me. John Payne's dislike of Indians and his distrust of mixed blood people make it a rough road in courting Faith Domergue who is half Indian.

Santa Fe Passage casts John Payne as a frontier scout who lost his last wagon train going to Santa Fe because of some bad judgment he made about the Kiowas and their chief. Now he and sidekick Slim Pickens can't get a job in their profession and have a lot of people ready to shoot them on sight.

That is until Domergue and her partner Rod Cameron hire them over the objections of Leo Gordon their trail boss. They're taking a shipment of rifles to Mexico for sale and of course that perks up interest among the Kiowas.

There was a little too much doublecrossing and all the males of the cast Payne, Cameron, and Gordon are thinking with their male members and truly beyond reason. Even Slim Pickens gives Domergue more than a second glance. The plot made little sense to me, but the action was pretty good.

While leading a wagon-train through Indian territory, "Kirby Randolph" (John Payne) attempts to prevent an attack upon his people by negotiating with the Kiowa chief named "Satank" (George Keymas). What he doesn't know is that Satank has already sent his braves to attack the wagon-train and is essentially stringing Kirby along. Not long afterward Kirby is told that all but a very few people on the wagon-train were murdered. To make matters worse Kirby's reputation is completely destroyed and nobody wants to hire him any more. Fortunately, his luck changes for the better when he comes across a wagon-train in desperate need of a scout. What he doesn't know is that this particular wagon-train is carrying rifles to the Mexican Army and that the Kiowas know about it and want them very badly. Complicating matters even further is an attractive woman named "Aurelie St. Clair" (Faith Domergue) in this wagon-train who the wagon master "Jess Griswold" (Rod Cameron) is in love with and begins to get jealous of Kirby the longer the trip to Santa Fe lasts. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that, although there was an obvious "anti-racism message" in this film, it was still enjoyable for the most part. The sad fact is that the 50's had its share of problems and racial injustice was just beginning to become recognized. Be that as it may, I liked this film overall and rate it as slightly above average.