New Mexico

Peckinpah is getting to what he later mastered in movies such as Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; outlaws with deep emotional scars who live in the past and wander around like the Flying Dutchman. The scar is made physical as Yellowleg is unable to raise his arm when shooting, which leads to a tragic accident. In Deadly Companions we also see similar character as Bob Dylan played in Pat Garrett; the little boy playing his harmonica. Deadly Companions is a bit clumsy a movie, sometimes it is difficult to see what is actually going on, but the story is good and the characters are real. It's a must see for Peckinpah fans.

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.

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.

Sam Peckinpah - according to Maureen O'Hara (who had survived five films with that cantankerous old cuss John Ford) "one of the strangest and most objectionable people I had ever worked with" - got his break in feature films at the behest of Brian Keith, with whom he had just worked on five episodes of the TV series 'The Westerner' (and like Dean Martin in 'Some Came Running' always keeps his hat on).

Set in 1867 and shot on a twenty day schedule on location in Arizona with the camera safely in the hands of veteran cameraman William Clothier, Sam's inexperience with the big screen (and the choppy cutting that resulted) and that O'Hara was in reality having such a miserable time probably enhanced the bleak and sardonic quality of the rambling film that emerged; while Marlin Skiles' relentless guitar, accordion & harmonica score - for good or ill - stays with you (as does Miss O'Hara's full-throated rendering of the song that accompanies the opening & closing credits).

A small, interesting cast includes jug-eared veteran Will Wright in one of his last films, and future Peckinpah regular Strother Martin.

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")