Escort West

Made during the height of the western film genre's popularity, "Escort West" overall isn't terribly exceptional, but it does provide an easygoing hour and a quarter of entertainment if you are not in a terribly fussy mood. Even under those circumstances, some minor flaws do arise. It was obviously shot quickly and fairly cheaply - there's nothing really in the way of eye candy on display here. The character of Victor Mature's daughter could easily have been edited out without having to rewrite the rest of the movie. And Victor Mature himself only gives an adequate performance. But the movie does move along fairly swiftly and does not overstay its welcome, and there are a few fairly tense moments here and there. This movie won't make western haters into converts, but if you are a fan of the genre it's an okay way to kill some time.

An ex-Confederate captain heads west with his young daughter and is caught up in the skirmishes between soldiers and Indians. Victor Mature is the hero of the proceedings as he rescues two women, fights off Indian attacks and saves an army payroll from the hands of renegade soldiers. The two sisters are at odds over the resolution of the Civil War and snipe at each other through the picture. The film has very little pace and spotty action and an awkward romantic plot is thrown in for good measure. Faith Domergue, a B actress who never quite made it to the first rank, is Mature's love interest. Leo Gordon appears as a bad soldier and contributes his talents as a screenwriter for this film.

An ex-Confederate officer and his young daughter, traveling West, rescue two women survivors of an Indian attack in a familiar yet taut and exciting little western. The typical hero escorts survivor through Indian territory story is given a shot in the arm by Victor Mature as the confederate officer, some good characters especially Faith Domergue's character who is a pretty horribly bitter person, some nifty action scenes and superb location of boulders, all set in stark black and white photography. These things lift it from its ordinariness. The end shootout is exciting and the hero's use of the rattler to overcome his enemy is well realised.

Escort West finds Victor Mature as a former Confederate escorting his young daughter out to Oregon territory. They meet up with a troop of cavalry at a stagecoach station, some of whom are hostile. Not nearly as hostile as Faith Domergue who lost a fiancé during the Civil War who is accompanying her sister Elaine Stewart out west to marry cavalry captain William Ching.

After Mature and daughter Reba Waters meet some hostile Modocs and find what they did to part of the cavalry troop they go back to the station where all they find alive are the two women and the sutler, Rex Ingram. Ingram's been wounded and left for dead with a broken leg.

At this point the group sets out to find help and safety, whichever comes first.

Escort West bares a similarity to the Richard Widmark western of the previous year, The Last Wagon. If you've seen that you might figure out how it all turns out. Or just if you've watched a whole lot of westerns.

Escort West barely runs 75 minutes, it played at the bottom of double features in the Fifties. It was produced by John Wayne and folks like Ken Curtis, Leo Gordon, and Noah Beery, Jr., all of whom worked with the Duke before are in the cast. Best in the cast is Leo Gordon who also wrote the script and is one nasty deserting cavalry trooper.

It's a nice action western with some adult themes mixed in with enough action for the kids.

Escort West is an unpretentious little Western starring that unpretentious actor Victor Mature. Vic was the original muscle man. Before there was an Arnold Schwarzeneger, even before there was a Steve Reeves, there was Victor Mature. Yet unlike those two aforementioned massive hulks, Vic was graceful and athletic enough to look good in a suit, at least the loose fitting types worn in the 'forties and 'fifties, which constituted his flourishing period. In My Darling Clementine they even managed to pass him off as a consumptive Doc Holliday by keeping him in a grossly over-sized coat and using extra shadow under his eyes. Vic apparently never took himself very seriously as an actor, nor did most film critics. One wag quipped that in a certain movie Victor Mature used all of his muscles except the ones in his face. Okay, he wasn't an Olivier, but in Escort West he turned in a solid, sensitive, charming and effective lead performance.

And he did it with out letting the dreaded presence of a child actress steal the show. Vic plays an ex-Confederate Captain, recently widowed and on his way to start a new life in Oregon with his young daughter (Reba Waters) soon after the Civil War. I must confess that as a life-long old grouch, I usually don't like movies where a cutesy kid plays a major part, but little Reba charmed the socks off of me in the first scene and continued to do it for 75 minutes. Seldom does a child actor or actress turn in such an understated and dignified, yet charming performance. The tender yet never syrupy relationship between the father and daughter amidst the adversity of war, losing their wife/mother and their home, and now hostile Indian attack is one of the elements that gives this story a slight edge over the average B oater.

Not that Escort West doesn't have other good points. The script, co-authored by Bruce Gordon, who also plays one of his typical brutish heavy parts in the movie, is conventional but lucid and entertaining. Francis D. Lyon's direction and smooth editing keeps the action-packed story tense and exciting. Good use is made of the black and white Cinemascope format in both action sequences and panoramic views of the scenery. Characterization is a strong point helped along by a platoon of veteran western character actors the like of Noah Beery, Jr., Slim Pickens, Rex Ingram, and Harry Carry, Jr. The female lead and second lead Elaine Stewart and Faith Domegue also make competent contributions.

This little B programmer displays an unusual authenticity for a western of this era. It was particularly impressive that the cavalry uniforms were true to the Civil War era and not the usual stock 1870's Indian Wars uniforms, which are quite different. The Sharps breech loading carbines used by the cavalry and the Indians were likewise accurate to the 1860's. The Remmington revolvers, though actually later cartridge models, did good service showing profiles that look like period cap and ball revolvers. The holsters looked like Civil War types, and the gun belts were lacking cartridge loops (cap and ball revolvers used delicate paper cartridges which couldn't be carried in loops). The renegade Modoc Indians, who were the principal menace, dressed as most Indians of the period would have -- not naked savages who had only just come into contact with civilization, but wearing mostly the same clothes the whites did with a few Indian flourishes like gaudy belts and leather leggings. Like any acculturated Indian criminals, they used rifles and pistols, instead of bow and arrow and spear, and they fired from behind cover instead of throwing themselves away in dervish-like rushes as we see in so many clichéd westerns.

Admittedly not in a class with Red River or even one of Randolph Scott's better numbers, Escort West nevertheless delivers exciting family entertainment for an hour and fifteen minutes. In many ways it was better than any number of more sumptuously turned out westerns, and for this old, weathered oat-burner fancier at least, better than all but the very best of those whistling, ricocheting spaghetti-burners.