Comanche Station

Howard Hawks was once asked about his recipe for making a great film. His reply: "Three good scenes, no bad scenes". I would humbly add two other rules: A great film is one where no additional scene is needed, and no existing scene could have been cut. Few competent directors violate the first rule. The mark of a great director is the ability to follow the second. Many inferior directors are too shallow or too vain to understand this - they constantly strive to include superfluous or redundant scenes - Just To Make Sure You Got The Point - when it is wiser to let the audience decide what is important. John Ford was the master at this. Hawks, Wilder, Eastwood, also come to mind. With Commanche Station, Budd Boetticher showed that he knew how to distill a great story (with many elements of a Greek tragedy) to its most basic human elements - Obsession, Greed, Loyalty, Irony, and above all, Honor.

Not only did Boetticher direct a great film, Burt Kennedy (later to become a fair director himself) constructed a great script.

Some good scenes: A conversation between a woman who was taken captive by Commanches (and held for a time) and the stranger who has just paid her ransom... Nancy Lowe: If-if you had a woman taken by the Comanche and-and you got her back... how would you feel knowing? Jefferson Cody: If I loved her, it wouldn't matter. Nancy Lowe: Wouldn't it? Jefferson Cody: No ma'am, it wouldn't matter at all.

Or two friends, hired guns both, contemplating the need to commit a horrible crime for money: Frank: You want to go to work, do you? Dobie: Work? Frank: Making an honest living? Dobie: Oh, no, I don't think I could do that. I could cowboy some. Frank: Well, what will that get you? You work yourself to death for somebody and likely they will have to take up a collection to bury you.

Or a conversation between an honorable man and a young man trying to decide whether he will try to become one: Dobie: A saddle and a shirt, that's all Frank had. It sure ain't much. Jefferson Cody: Sure ain't. Dobie: It wasn't his fault, though. Jefferson Cody: No? Dobie: No, he never knew anything but the wild side. Jefferson Cody: A man can cross over anytime he has the mind.

As for the performances, they are uniformly good. Nancy Gates, Skip Homier, Richard Rust, and Claude Akins hit the right tone - never going too far for a laugh or a tear.

And Randolph Scott was perfect - A word I do not use lightly. Roger Ebert once said that Marlon Brando and Paul Newman started out on the same path: Both came on the scene in the early 1950s, both studied the Method, both looked good in an undershirt. But Brando went on to see what else he could throw in to his performances while Newman went on to see what he could leave out (Newman once said that he was dissatisfied with many of his early performances because "you could see the acting"). In Commanche Station, Randolph Scott provided the inspiration for such an approach. This is what makes a performance (indeed, a film) memorable - by distilling your performance to only that which is necessary, you allow the viewer to remember what is important to them, not what they are told should be important to them.

If I were held to only half a dozen westerns to be labeled as essential, this would be one of them (The others: My Darling Clementine (1946), Shane (1953), The Searchers (1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Unforgiven (1992)).

Saw this film again tonite via the DVD, mainly because it's Scott's penultimate film. Immediately thought of similarity to Scott's The Tall T, later to Ride Lonesome and Seven Men from Now. Difference is I'd give that Elmore Leonard story a few notches on this. Claude Akins is better than just Movin On but doesn't have the menace of Richard Boone or Lee Marvin. Scenery is favored over dialogue. Lots of cutting from scene to scene to indicate time has passed. Skip Hoemeier reprises his role as number 2 gun hand to the villain (Billy Jack to Boone ). Scott is great trading with the Comanche or getting the drop on the bad guys. Lots of good but familiar dialogue- "Seemed like a good idea". He is the archetype noble cowboy true to his values and keeping his dignity, yet always practical. I like this film very much and will watch it again; I'm sure.

After Comanches took his wife away years ago, Randolph Scott's character spends his time tracking down stories of white women abducted by Comanches in hopes of rescuing his wife from captivity. How many white women under Comanche captivity he has come across is unknown, but the one he barters for in Comanche Station (Nancy Gates) also turns out not to be his wife. Even though he strikes out again in his own search, the fact that he is going to return Gates to her family forms a compelling storyline. Scott and Gates travel to a stage coach stop known as Comanche Station where Claude Akins and two young associates, Richard Rust and Skip Homier, await the stage coach's arrival to rob it. Needless to say the coach doesn't get there, but Akins knows Gates's husband has promised to pay $5,000 for her return, a detail of which Scott apparently was unaware. Thus the five ride off on the journey to return Gates, Akins intent on killing Scott, whom he knew before, in order to collect the reward for Gates, who is very beautiful. There is excellent acting along the journey, thanks to a stand out script by Burt Kennedy and direction by Scott's famous partner in westerns Budd Boetticher.

Comanche Station is the last of several films Randolph Scott made for Budd Boetticher with Columbia pictures. This would have been his last film, but for being lured to do just one more, the immortal Ride the High Country.

The film combines elements of The Naked Spur and Two Rode Together and blends them successfully. Scott is a man with one obsession, to get his wife back from the Comanches who kidnapped here ten years earlier. Whenever he hears of a white woman being put up for trade by the Indians he heads out with trade goods and buys her in the hopes of finding his beloved.

On this trip he ransoms Nancy Gates away from the Comanches. Later on he runs into an old enemy Claude Akins traveling with two young guns, Richard Rust and Skip Homeier. It seems as though Nancy's husband has put up a ten thousand dollar reward for her.

Akins is a truly malevolent figure, a scalphunter who kills Indians and sells their scalps for bounty. Unfortunately the two have need of each other in hostile Indian territory.

Randolph Scott's western heroes usually have an edge to them, they are not pure heroes as Joel McCrea's are. But in this film he's poaching on McCrea's territory in gallantry. His behavior towards Nancy Gates is at all times chivalrous. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a medieval origin to the plot of Comanche Territory.

Had Scott not come back to do Ride the High Country, Comanche Station would have been a good film to go out on.

For the casual viewer Comanche Station will likely be appreciated as a worthwhile Randolph Scott Western that delivers adult entertainment, a solid script, and good character development. However, to those familiar with the Ranown films, this endeavor will likely come off as a derivative mishmash of previous Burt Kennedy scripts that repeats scenes, characters, and even dialogue from earlier works. When watching the film through this lens it's quite surprising how much Kennedy plagiarized from himself in this comparatively lazy effort. At least he ripped off good material.

The movie begins ominously with Cody (Randolph Scott) wandering around the barren wilderness toting a pack mule before being surrounded by Comanches (they don't look like Comanches which is another criticism that can be imposed on this film). We soon discover he is looking for a captive white woman that turns out to be Mrs. Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates). Their trek back to civilization is soon hampered by a trio of outlaws - Ben (Claude Aikens), Frank (Skip Homeier) and Doby (Richard Rust) - who may or may not have been involved in stirring up the Comanches. Cody now has two problems: evading the Comanches and thwarting Ben who wants to take Mrs. Lowe for the $5000 reward posted by her husband that Cody didn't know about.

For the uninitiated there are echoes of Seven Men From Now, The Tall T, and Ride Lonesome that resonate throughout the film. Cody has an ulterior motive for rescuing Mrs Lowe that isn't revealed until later much like in those films. Dialogue, situations, characters, and locations are recycled; perhaps the most striking copy is the appearance of the hanging tree from Ride Lonesome although this time it is surrounded by shallow water. Even the opening credits music is lifted from Ride Lonesome. Again, with no knowledge of the previous movies these things are fine but for those of us hoping for a fresh tale it is disappointing.

The performances are competent although not to the level of previous Ranown efforts. Scott almost phones it in which is good enough; he could play the strong silent type in his sleep by this point. Nancy Gates is refreshingly believable as a conflicted woman who isn't sure her husband will want her back after being violated by the Comanches during her captivity. As the villain of the piece Claude Aikens does what he can but his role isn't developed enough and he comes off more like a thug than anything else (Check out Lee Marvin in Seven Men From Now, Richard Boone in The Tall T, and Pernell Roberts in Ride Lonesome to get a better understanding of how underwritten this role is). Where it really gets interesting is with his two young sidekicks, Skip Homeier and Richard Rust, who seem to be pretty close to one another in a relationship that could be interpreted through modern eyes as borderline homosexual. It seems unlikely this was the original intention but with Rust's character alluded to as "running on the soft side" one could easily make this assumption.

In the final analysis Comanche Station is a mixed bag that is the final roundup for the Ranown series of films that achieved much critical acclaim. Perhaps the creative minds were running out of gas by this point; for Randolph Scott this is his penultimate film. While by no means a failure this movie is the runt of the Ranown litter. However, taken on its own merits and without comparisons, Comanche Station is a worthwhile use of 74 minutes.