Duel au Colorado

Gunfight at Comanche Creek is directed by Frank McDonald and written by Edward Bernds. It stars Audie Murphy, Ben Cooper, Colleen Miller, DeForest Kelley and Jan Merlin. A Panavision/De Luxe Color production with cinematography by Joseph Biroc and music by Marlin Skiles.

Murphy stars as an agent for the National Detective Agency who goes undercover to find the outlaw gang that has been breaking convicts out of jail to help them to commit more crimes. The resulting crimes cause the bounties upon the fugitives' heads to rise, thus the outlaws then kill the convicts and claim the rewards.

Apparently a remake of 1957 film The Last of the Badmen, Gunfight at Comanche Creek is a suspenseful and entertaining blend of detective shenanigans with Western staples. It's an interesting role for Murphy, playing Bob Gifford (AKA: Judd Tanner) as a fearless ladies man having to just use his wits instead of guns just to survive the undercover operation. It's not exactly what you would call a high energy action movie, since we don't really get the pulse raised until the finale, but there's enough twists and intelligence in the plotting to keep the story intriguing.

Negatives? There's a continuous narration by an uncredited Reed Hadley which is most intrusive. Instead of letting us be involved fully with the unfolding story, the makers felt the need to have Reed fill us in on what is happening at every turn in the plot! Clearly they were going for a hard-boiled detective angle, but it's misplaced. While Miller is saddled with one of those token female roles. But the support cast do what is required to make the film work, Murphy delivers a good one for his fans and Biroc's colour photography is very easy on the eye. 7/10

The National Detective Agency sends investigators Bob Gifford (Audie Murphy) and fellow agent (Jan Merlin) to Comanche Creek to infiltrate a ruthless gang of outlaws who have devised a clever scheme to break criminals out of jail and force them to be easily recognizable participants in a string of robberies. As the wanted dead or alive bounty on their heads escalates with each robbery, the gang eventually murders them and turns them in for the reward. Gifford posing as criminal Judd Tanner places a target on his own back after intentionally passing stolen bills in a Comanche Creek saloon in order to get himself arrested. In short order he is busted out of jail and finds himself on the inside of the gang, a disagreeable lot of scoundrels headed by chief bad guy Amos Troop (DeForest Kelley) and his henchmen (Ben Cooper, Adam Williams, Mort Mills). Instead of taking down the crime ring then and there, Gifford reckons none of these gang members are smart enough to run an operation like this themselves and that there must the brains of the enterprise lurking in the shadows back in town. The rest of the movie consists of Gifford finding the unknown 'Mr. Big' behind the operation before he is the next wanted dead or alive casualty.

This Allied Artists Picture directed by longtime B-Western veteran Frank McDonald is largely a workaday affair. Audie Murphy is cast a bit off-type as a urbane, womanizing frontier detective. Maybe this was an attempt to appeal to changing audience tastes or to capitalize off of the "shaken not stirred" secret agent mania popular at the time. Possibly just a way to update this late in the cycle, traditional horse opera which was a remake of the another mediocre film, 'Last Of The Badmen' starring George Montgomery. There is also a romantic side story line introduced between Ben Cooper and Susan Seaforth of which little is made. Production values are pretty typical of Allied Artists releases of the era, which is at best, average quality. For some bewildering reason it was decided to include a grating and unnecessary voice-over narration explaining plot movements that most viewers would find obvious.

Despite it's modest roots and aspirations 'Gunfight at Comanche Creek' is watchable Western fare made so by Murphy's presence as well as Director Frank McDonald and the rest of the cast who do about as much as could be expected given the cards they were dealt.

Set in 1875 at the location called Comanche Creek , Colorado, it begins with prisoner Jack Mason who is broken out of prison by a band of strangers . They use him in a robbery , then when the dead-or-alive reward is high enough , they shoot him and collect the elevated reward. The National Detective Agency, now knowing the gang's methods , killing delinquents for the bounty , arranges to have the intrepid agent Bob Gifford (Audie Murphy) jailed in Comanche Creek for train robbery. The gang led by Amos Troop (De Forest Kelley) takes the bait but then things go wrong when to be aware there's a traitor in the band . A Gunslinging Detective Smashes The Most Ruthless Outlaw Gang Of All Time ! Masked marauders... rampaging raiders blasting a trail of terror and violence across the West... and the man who pledged to stop them rode at their side! Gunslinging Man-Hunter...She Was All Woman to a Man's Man

This thrilling Western has a peculiar , sui-generis plot : a murderous outlaw gang who helps escape inmmates from prison , uses them to help in crimes , when the reward goes high enough then killing them to collect money and to solve this criminal set-up , the tough detective Murphy infliltrates the gang of bandits forcing wanted men to participate in robberies . Uneven , but at times quite nice Western in which Audie gets two heroines for the price of one and here he faces off a whole gang of cutthroats . As Audie Murphy gives a nice acting in his usual style as a ruthless detective out to smash the West's most notorious outlaws . While the two girls are the lovely saloon-keeper Colleen Miller as Murphy's sweetheart with whom he catches the eye , she like Eddie was a refugee from Universal-International and Susan Seaforth , both make the performing sparks fly . And in this grim-face Western there's a great support cast with plenty of familar faces , such as : Ben Cooper , Jan Merlin , Mort Mills , Eddie Killan , John Hubbard , John Milford , William A Wellman Jr and , of course, De Forest Kelley is the best of the baddies .

It displays a spectacular and brilliant cinematography in Panavision by cameraman Joseph F. Biroc. As well as rousing and moving musical score by composer Marlin Skiles. The motion picture was professionally directed in B-style by Frank MacDonald , though it has some failures , flaws and gaps. Frank was a prolific craftsman whose career spands over forty years . At first hired as a dialogue director, McDonald turned out some scripts and in the mid-'30s began directing . Working for almost every studio in Hollywood at one time or another, he did a lot of work for Republic, grinding out Gene Autry and Roy Rogers westerns, and at the Pine/Thomas "B" unit at Paramount , churning out westerns, action dramas and war pictures. Not entirely comfortable as a director , he nevertheless turned out more than 100 pictures in his career . As he made a lot of fims with penchant for Western genre , such as : ¨Sioux City Sue, Under Nevada Skies, My Pal Trigger, Rainbow Over Texas , Song of Arizona , Sunset in El Dorado , Along the Navajo Trail , Tell It to a Star , Man from Oklahoma , The Chicago Kid , Scared Stiff , Las campanas de Rosarita, Lights of Old Santa Fe , One Body Too Many , Sing, Neighbor, Sing , Take It Big , Gambler's Choice , Timber Quee , My Darling Clementine¨, among others. Rating : 5.5/10 . Acceptable and passable Murphy western.

A gang led by Amos Troop (DeForest Kelley) has been robbing banks. They break prisoners out of jail and use them as front-men in their robberies. The front-man is the only one who gets recognized. When the reward for each front-man gets high enough, they are killed off for the money. The National Detective Agency is desperate after an undercover agent got killed. They assign Bob Gifford (Audie Murphy) to go under. Saloon owner Abbie Stevens (Colleen Miller) and Kid Carter (Ben Cooper) are taken with the newly arrived Gifford under the name Judd Tanner.

I do like the premise although this is strictly an old style western. There is nothing to show any edginess or risk to the movie. I don't like the narrations which sounds like words from a book. Audie Murphy has never been that much to me. As a Star Trek fan, Deforest Kelley holds much more interest. In the end, this is very average and limited especially for the 60's.

In this Allied Artists quickie Audie Murphy once again has to infiltrate a gang of outlaws - helpfully explained by a Dragnet-style narration - and teach them the hard way that Crime Does Not Pay.

Made with the usual bloodless competence of TV westerns of the sixties; one feature of the film that dates it pretty precisely is the presence in the cast of DeForest Kelley during the period when he was treading water playing heavies.