4 Star

Comanche’s, Captives and Cowboys

From the revered director John Ford (My Darling Clementine, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Cheyenne Autumn) and his trusted writer Frank S. Nugent (Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) comes a classic western that has the Masters of Cinema #158 upgrade, and with a new 27 page booklet and special features.

It is the 1880’s and the West is being settled as homesteaders spread out searching for a place to call home. However, it is already home to the Comanche’s and they have been kidnapping settlers for the last twenty years.

This doesn’t concern Marshal Guthrie McCabe James Stewart, (The Man From Laramie, The Flight of the Pheonix) as he is happy with his life running the town of Tascosa and taking 10% of Miss Belle Aragon’s (Annelle Hayes, Tenderfoot) Saloon and other business’s in the town. He doesn’t like gamblers and keeps the professionals ones away from Belle’s place.

But when a cavalry division rides in with First Lt. Jim Gary (Richard Widmark, The Alamo, Panic in the Streets) at the head Guthrie knows that the soldiers of Fort Grant do not ride forty miles on a whim.

His old friend Jim is under orders to take Guthrie back to Fort Grant and not to take no for an answer, but he can’t reveal the reason. Guthrie is money motivated and if he can sniff out a profit he is in.

Outside Fort Grant there are a lot of settlers gathered and when they spot Jim and Guthrie there is a stir in the camp, Guthrie thinks it is for Jim, but he points out that all the attention is for him. When he meets Army Major Fraser (John McIntire, Wagon Train, Psycho) he is told that he is to be an Army scout and track down the captives kept by Comanche chief Quanah Parker (Henry Brandon, Assault on Precinct 13) and bring them back.

To say the least he is not happy, not with the task and definitely not with the pay. After much negotiating he agrees to talking to the settlers and he soon finds that they are willing to pay for his efforts. Amongst them is a man looking for his daughter, a husband that wants to find his seventeen year old son for his deranged wife, a troublesome family looking for their mother and also a young woman Marty Purcell (Shirley Jones, Carousel, The Music Man) that blames herself for the abduction of her younger brother.

Jim is ordered to desert the army as the treaty signed by the government and the Comanche states that the army cannot set foot on the reservation. The pair set out to Indian country and it doesn’t take long for them to come across the Comanche and they are taken to meet Quanah Parker and the negotiations begin. They have guns and knives to trade but this displeases Quanah Parker’s rival Stone Calf (Woody Strode, Once Upon a Time in the West) who has a white squaw. What they didn’t expect was a Mexican woman, Elena de la Madriaga (Linda Cristal, The Alamo, The High Chaparral).

Now all they have to do is reunite them with the rightful relatives. You will have seen this Western many times but never in Hi-definition and crisp sound. This is a must for your Western collection.