Duel au Colorado

The plot, irritating narration, and lack of originality have been covered at length. Not Murphy's worst, not his best. Biggest problem I saw was its absolutely miserable sound. Remember the standard jet-fighter sound used in every jet movie of the '50s? It is omnipresent here... even revolver shots are truncated clips of the same noise. Otherwise, it has a relatively solid cast, and you won't feel like you wasted two hours of your life.

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.

I liked this film a lot, but then I love westerns. It's got Audie, Ben Cooper, Jan Merlin, and scores of others, so how can it go wrong? Well, for one thing, it's a blatant remake of the earlier western, Last Of The Badmen (1957). How the writers of that film could let writer Edward Bernds get by with taking full credit for writing this film is beyond me. Sure, the setting is different, the characters have different names, but the basic story is almost identical. Both films even feature an annoying narrator, who details facts that none of us need to hear voiced....all the way through the film. If you've seen both films, you'll know what I mean.

Which is the better version? It's hard to say. They are bot very good, with excellent casts and fine direction. Both would have benefited from losing the narrator.

Johnboy

Audie Murphy goes undercover to break up a gang who have come up with a gimmick: break an outlaw out of jail, put him in front of their raids while the rest of them are masked, drive up the price on his head, then shoot him and turn in the corpse for a reward.

It's directed by Frank McDonald, a prolific director who spent a lot of his career in the upper ranks of the Bs, mostly because of his speed and cheapness. Most of his movies were westerns. His actual strength lay in comedy, and like many a B director, he wound up in TV, where he directed several episodes of GET SMART.

This late Audie Murphy oater is marred by Hadley Reed's narration, explaining what is going on, as if it's an episode of DRAGNET and the producers are afraid to either trust the audience to figure out what is going on or allow the actors to indulge in exposition. Joseph Biroc's color camerawork is efficient and not particularly distinguished. All in all, a mediocre example of the vanishing western.

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.