Apache Territory

Skilled Harmonica playing, Joshua Trees, outdoor scenery, great story line.

Apache Territory is directed by Ray Nazarro and collectively adapted to screenplay by George W. George, Charles R. Marion and Frank L. Moss from the novel Last Stand at Papago Wells written by Louis L'Amour. It stars Rory Calhoun, Barbara Bates, John Dehner, Carolyn Craig, Tom Pittman, Frank DeKova and Leo Gordon. Music is by Mischa Bakaleinikoff and cinematography by Irving Lippman.

Saddle Tramp Logan Cates (Calhoun) takes control of an assorted group of civilians and cavalrymen when they are thrust together by fate and come under siege from marauding Apache Indians. With inner conflict threatening the group and the Apache attacking like ghosts of the desert, their chance of survival is slim. But why does Calhoun keep looking at the sky?

Canteen Bombs of the Apocalpyse.

Routine and of standard siege formula stock, Apache Territory is however brisk and enjoyable if willing to forgive the cliche's and stereotypes. Plot unfolds as a group dynamic cracking under the strain whilst the nasty old Indians attack at intervals and use psychological warfare in the process. Within the group there's a double dose of love interest, with one of them featuring Calhoun and Bates as old lovers now thrust together under trying circumstance. Into the mix are a coward, an aloof racist, a cavalry Sergeant struggling to control his group, a hero in waiting and a Prima Indian who hates the Apache and also has some gold in his possession. So with no food and the water running dry, it's shaping up to be a hopeless situation.

Gila monster up the trouser leg?

Clocking in at just over 70 minutes the film never outstays its welcome, and in spite of the standard characterisations on the page, the cast do well to keep things pleasingly watchable. Calhoun (Powder River/The Hired Gun) makes for a good rugged hero, leading off the film with some telling gusto, New Yorker DeKovo (Run of the Arrow/Arrowhead) once again doesn't embarrass himself in another Native American role, while Dehner (Apache/The Fastest Gun Alive) and Gordon (Hondo/7th Cavalry) show why they were much used character actors. Filmed in Eastman Color, the budget just about stretched to feature some views of Red Rock Canyon, but mostly the action is based on a sound stage set. 6/10

There is sad trivia attached to the film. Within 12 years of this film's release three of the principal cast members would be dead. Bates in 1969 and Craig in 1970 died at their own hands and young Tom Pittman was killed in a car accident just a couple of months after Apache Territory was released to theatres, he was 26 years old.

Since he co-produced this movie for his own company (from Louis L'Amour's 1957 novel 'Last Stand at Papagos Wells') Rory Calhoun gets to enjoy himself enormously as the rock upon whom all the other characters depend in this strongly-cast reprise of the basic situation of 'The Lost Patrol'.

Obviously shot mainly on one set, which makes it resemble an episode of 'Star Trek', but also gives it a certain claustrophobic tension; it has two interesting and highly contrasting female characters, the handsome and seemingly capable Barbara Bates (whose last film this was), and fragile Carolyn Craig, both of them played by actresses who later committed suicide.

Rory Calhoun is a loner named "Logan Cates" who rides upon an Apache war party in the middle of the desert. Hampering his ability to escape is the fact that there are three other groups of whites (arriving at different times) who are also in trouble and need his help. So, all of them seek refuge in a waterhole and take up as good a defensive posture as possible. Now, not wanting to spoil the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this is not a bad western movie. Most of the actors did a decent job but Rory Calhoun basically carried this film with a very creditable performance. On the flip side though, the cavalry soldiers were some of the most undisciplined and inept bunch I've ever seen and seemed out-of-character. Be that as it may, in my opinion any western film that has a Gila monster and the quote, "It's just a flesh wound" can't be that bad. Worth a watch for fans of this genre.

Sometimes tense B-western stars brawny silent-type Rory Calhoun as a drifter who holds up with an assortment of characters (most reluctant to heed his sage advice) at a waterhole after Apache raids kill a number of their companions. After first rescuing an orphaned young woman (Craig) and wounded young pioneer (Pittman), he's joined by old flame (Bates) and her cowardly fiancé (Dehner), a quartet of Confederate soldiers and a wily gold-prospecting Indian (DeKova) a tribal enemy of the Apaches. As food and water become scarce, tensions within the group cause hysteria and various characters lose their cool leading to fatally poor decisions as cabin fever spreads.

Calhoun gets good support from Bates as his scorned former lover, while Myron Healey has a reasonable role as an initially resilient Confederate, who succumbs to panic at the thought of never seeing his family again. Leo Gordon is imposing as the principal agitator among the group, spurred on by greed and selfish motivations to survive at any expense.

It's economical and typical of Columbia Pictures westerns at the time, with director Nazarro keeping the melodrama to a minimum and the tension palpable. Apache sympathisers might be offended, with the tribe depicted simply as marauding scalpers, while Craig's nubile wife-to-be would surely irk the feminists as she fusses over domestic duties trying to impress Pittman and clumsily convince him to take her as his wife and mother to his future progeny. But despite the chauvinism, I still found the movie a reasonably taut, formula western worthy of a 70 minute pause while channel surfing.