Comanche Station

Comanche Station is the last of several films Randolph Scott made for Budd Boetticher with Columbia pictures. This would have been his last film, but for being lured to do just one more, the immortal Ride the High Country.

The film combines elements of The Naked Spur and Two Rode Together and blends them successfully. Scott is a man with one obsession, to get his wife back from the Comanches who kidnapped here ten years earlier. 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.

On this trip he ransoms Nancy Gates away from the Comanches. Later on he runs into an old enemy Claude Akins traveling with two young guns, Richard Rust and Skip Homeier. It seems as though Nancy's husband has put up a ten thousand dollar reward for her.

Akins is a truly malevolent figure, a scalphunter who kills Indians and sells their scalps for bounty. Unfortunately the two have need of each other in hostile Indian territory.

Randolph Scott's western heroes usually have an edge to them, they are not pure heroes as Joel McCrea's are. But in this film he's poaching on McCrea's territory in gallantry. His behavior towards Nancy Gates is at all times chivalrous. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a medieval origin to the plot of Comanche Territory.

Had Scott not come back to do Ride the High Country, Comanche Station would have been a good film to go out on.

A magazine article recently cited this movie as an underrated western. I certainly agree. Randolph Scott made his best westerns in the latter part of his career, and this is one of those. The movie examines the old west moral code of right v. wrong and raps up with a surprising twist ending that gives cynicism a kick in the rear end. Not a big splashy western, but a solid little one.

While the western genre is not my favourite one of all film genres (not sure which one is my favourite due to trying to appreciate them all the same), there is a lot of appreciation for it by me. There are a lot of very good to great films, with the best work of John Ford being notable examples.

'Comanche Station' is the final collaboration of the seven films director Budd Boetticher and lead actor Randolph Scott did together in the late 50s. By all means 'Comanche Station' is not their best pairing (perhaps towards the lesser end, which is not a knock as this merely means it's only because the best of them are so great), but one can totally see the appeal of their collaborations and both Boetticher and Scott are well served, the film being a good representation of both. It is a very good note to go out on and of their films it is perhaps the most overlooked. Which is a shame because it's a very good film with many excellent elements.

By all means not perfect. Nancy Gates is rather bland in a role that is rather underwritten. The film loses momentum on occasions.

However, Scott is as stoic and charismatic as ever with an appealingly craggy edge, being both likeable and tough. Every bit as good is a truly menacing Claude Akins, relishing his quite meaty villainous character. The two work very effectively together and their final confrontation is one of 'Comanche Station's' high points. Boetticher's direction is efficient and lean.

A big shout has to go to the production values. While there is grandeur and atmosphere to the settings it's the photography that's the star, especially in the unforgettable wordless opening sequence, one of my favourite openings of Boetticher's/Scott's films together. The music is rousing yet never intrusive and the more eventful parts blister.

There is thankfully no fat or ramble to the thought-probing, tight and sharply focused script and the storytelling is brutally bleak and movingly elegiac, mostly nicely paced too. 'Comanche Station' may not have the same depth of characterisation as other Boetticher/Scott outings or character complexity, but the two lead characters are interesting and the character interaction is a major plus point numerous times. Notably with Scott and Akins in their final confrontation, which positively blisters.

On the whole, very good. 8/10 Bethany Cox

After Comanches took his wife away years ago, Randolph Scott's character spends his time tracking down stories of white women abducted by Comanches in hopes of rescuing his wife from captivity. How many white women under Comanche captivity he has come across is unknown, but the one he barters for in Comanche Station (Nancy Gates) also turns out not to be his wife. Even though he strikes out again in his own search, the fact that he is going to return Gates to her family forms a compelling storyline. Scott and Gates travel to a stage coach stop known as Comanche Station where Claude Akins and two young associates, Richard Rust and Skip Homier, await the stage coach's arrival to rob it. Needless to say the coach doesn't get there, but Akins knows Gates's husband has promised to pay $5,000 for her return, a detail of which Scott apparently was unaware. Thus the five ride off on the journey to return Gates, Akins intent on killing Scott, whom he knew before, in order to collect the reward for Gates, who is very beautiful. There is excellent acting along the journey, thanks to a stand out script by Burt Kennedy and direction by Scott's famous partner in westerns Budd Boetticher.

Howard Hawks was once asked about his recipe for making a great film. His reply: "Three good scenes, no bad scenes". I would humbly add two other rules: A great film is one where no additional scene is needed, and no existing scene could have been cut. Few competent directors violate the first rule. The mark of a great director is the ability to follow the second. Many inferior directors are too shallow or too vain to understand this - they constantly strive to include superfluous or redundant scenes - Just To Make Sure You Got The Point - when it is wiser to let the audience decide what is important. John Ford was the master at this. Hawks, Wilder, Eastwood, also come to mind. With Commanche Station, Budd Boetticher showed that he knew how to distill a great story (with many elements of a Greek tragedy) to its most basic human elements - Obsession, Greed, Loyalty, Irony, and above all, Honor.

Not only did Boetticher direct a great film, Burt Kennedy (later to become a fair director himself) constructed a great script.

Some good scenes: A conversation between a woman who was taken captive by Commanches (and held for a time) and the stranger who has just paid her ransom... Nancy Lowe: If-if you had a woman taken by the Comanche and-and you got her back... how would you feel knowing? Jefferson Cody: If I loved her, it wouldn't matter. Nancy Lowe: Wouldn't it? Jefferson Cody: No ma'am, it wouldn't matter at all.

Or two friends, hired guns both, contemplating the need to commit a horrible crime for money: Frank: You want to go to work, do you? Dobie: Work? Frank: Making an honest living? Dobie: Oh, no, I don't think I could do that. I could cowboy some. Frank: Well, what will that get you? You work yourself to death for somebody and likely they will have to take up a collection to bury you.

Or a conversation between an honorable man and a young man trying to decide whether he will try to become one: Dobie: A saddle and a shirt, that's all Frank had. It sure ain't much. Jefferson Cody: Sure ain't. Dobie: It wasn't his fault, though. Jefferson Cody: No? Dobie: No, he never knew anything but the wild side. Jefferson Cody: A man can cross over anytime he has the mind.

As for the performances, they are uniformly good. Nancy Gates, Skip Homier, Richard Rust, and Claude Akins hit the right tone - never going too far for a laugh or a tear.

And Randolph Scott was perfect - A word I do not use lightly. Roger Ebert once said that Marlon Brando and Paul Newman started out on the same path: Both came on the scene in the early 1950s, both studied the Method, both looked good in an undershirt. But Brando went on to see what else he could throw in to his performances while Newman went on to see what he could leave out (Newman once said that he was dissatisfied with many of his early performances because "you could see the acting"). In Commanche Station, Randolph Scott provided the inspiration for such an approach. This is what makes a performance (indeed, a film) memorable - by distilling your performance to only that which is necessary, you allow the viewer to remember what is important to them, not what they are told should be important to them.

If I were held to only half a dozen westerns to be labeled as essential, this would be one of them (The others: My Darling Clementine (1946), Shane (1953), The Searchers (1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Unforgiven (1992)).