Comanche Station

Plot synopsis:
Jefferson Cody (Randolph Scott), whose wife was captured by Comanches, frees another man's wife and is taking her home. Three outlaws, led by the charming but malevolent Ben Lane (Claude Akins), reveal that the woman's husband has offered a $5,000 reward, making the woman, Lordsburg resident Mrs. Lowe (Nancy Gates), suspicious of Cody's motives in coming to her rescue.
Lane is known to Cody, who helped court-martial him from the army for killing "tame" Indians. The Comanche in the area, on the warpath due to recent Comanche scalpings, kill Frank (Skip Homeier), one of Lane's men, and make repeated attempts to kill the rest of the party. Lane attaches himself to Cody, intending to make it look like the Comanches killed Cody and to take the reward for himself.
Although her husband did not try to find her himself, the reward for the return of Mrs. Lowe is "dead or alive," so Lane prefers dead so she won't be able to testify against him. He tries to ambush her and Cody, and when partner Dobie (Richard Rust) refuses to help, Lane shoots him.
In a showdown in the hills, Cody gets the better of Lane. He escorts the woman back home, discovering that her husband is blind. Before he can be paid the $5,000, Cody rides away.
The town of Lordsburg is mentioned some 20 times in the movie, but not visited once.

Tags: violence

Review:
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.
The last of the seven Scott/Boetticher collaborations and although it's not one of my favorites {THE TALL T (1957) and RIDE LONESOME (1959) come out ahead}, it's still worth owning on DVD if Columbia/Tristar ever sees fit to release it.Randolph Scott plays a rancher named Jefferson Cody who's wife was kidnapped by the Comanches a few years before.
When he hears that the Comanches are holding a white woman, he goes to them for a trade and winds up with another man's wife named Mrs. Lowe (Nancy Gates).As they head back, they stop at Comanche Station in order to water their horses and get fresh supplies.
Comanche Station is the last of several films Randolph Scott made for Budd Boetticher with Columbia pictures.
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.
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..
Comanche Station is produced and directed by Budd Boetticher and stars Randolph Scott, Claude Akins, Nancy Gates, Skip Homeier & Richard Rust.
Stating that the Comanches are on their trail and speaking about a reward being offered for Nancy, relations start to disintegrate by the hour.This was to be the last of seven collaborations between director Budd Boetticher and Western legend Randolph Scott, and it's a most fitting sign off from the duo.
Here in this fine picture we find Scott's Cody in a complete state of loneliness, but outside of the pain the character clearly carries with him, Cody is a classic Western hero, courage and integrity are fortitude's by which he lives his life.As this tale unfolds it's evident that Boetticher isn't prepared to offer up conventional Western standards, this, like many of Boetticher's other Westerns, is not a standard Oater, a good versus evil fable, it's a cunningly intelligent picture that's both sad in texture, and also in heart.
The film is boosted by Charles Lawton Jr's camera work as he captures some stunning outdoor scenery, the rugged rocks and dusky land creates some striking compositions around the troubled characters.See this if you are one of those people who thinks Westerns were merely an excuse for Cowboys and Indians high jinx.
He doesn't talk much (I bet there also was not much talk needed between Boettcher and Scott, since this was unfortunately their last collaboration and each one must have known the other inside out), he does acting minimal style (perfect for the role), he IS the American western loner in search for his wife (like Wayne in THE SEACHERS, which is admittedly the better of the 2, but THE SEARCHES is more existentialistic, at which COMANCHE STATION is not aiming).
Comanche Station is the story of a man, Randolph Scott obsessed with the idea of finding his missing wife, captured by the Indians.
To him money does not matter at all, he is the opposite of Claude Akins who will do anything to get the 5000 dollars offered to deliver the woman Scott rescued from the Comanches to her husband.
An excellent story, which is a quality of every "Ranown" film, Randolph Scott at his best and the unique direction of Boetticher make "Comanche Station" a film not to be missed..
Third, the film had a really nice ending--quite the twist.You can't do a lot better than a Scott/Boetticher western.
Beautiful, crafted piece has Scott rescuing a woman abducted by Comanche -- not from the Camanche (they're willing to trade her for some rugs) but from Akins and his friends, who plan to return the woman dead to her husband to get the reward.
Not the Best Ranown, but It'll Sure Do. Comanche Station is the last of the brilliant Boetticher-Scott-Kennedy (Ranown) collaboration, and it's probably just as well.
The familiar figure of a loner (Scott) rescues a married woman (Gates) from Indians, but must get past bounty hunter (Aikens), his two youthful gunmen, and the now hostile Comanche.Again writer Kennedy gets a lot of mileage out of shades of gray.
The hard part is getting her back home with his sleazy former subordinate Claude Akins and Akins' dim-witted partners tagging along, especially since they know what the woman's husband is willing to pay for her return, or that of her body!Another great film directed by Bud Boetticher, what strikes me most about this and others by Boetticher is the wonderful use of the widescreen image.
This low-key film makes a fitting conclusion to the fine series of Boetticher-Scott westerns.
I have really enjoyed Randolph Scott's presence in films at both both bookends of his career, having previously seen him in the pre-Code 'Hot Saturday' (1932) and his last film, Sam Peckinpah's first great film, 'Ride the High Country' (1962), as well as a few in between ('Pittsburgh', 'Virginia City' and 'My Favorite Wife' most readily come to mind), so I thought it was high time to visit some of his most influential films, the Western collaborations with Budd Boetticher.Scott has a really unique presence in these films.
Though not quite as good as its predecessor, 'Ride Lonesome', I still didn't have the heart to give it a lower rating.I know the Western genre as a whole tends to get short shrift these days, but when you see the great ones, it makes you really glad somebody made them--and that Boetticher and Scott made a lot more than simply seven together..
But "Comanche Station" is quite a compelling 60s Western film that takes together all the elements you want to see: gunfights, Indian attacks, villains, and a dispute over money, a very valuable thing in the Old West.
It's all been done before and was done after "Comanche Station", but here, it works out excellently.Aside from Randolph Scott, the film stars Nancy Gates in her last screen performance before she retired from acting to spend more time with her family.
Yet, his good side isn't overpowering the other side that makes it okay for his fate to unravel as it always does to villains in Westerns."Comanche Station" is short, which is appropriate seeing as how it's not developed or characterized enough to keep the audience interested for any longer.
Solid, well done western, with an elegiac, muted, deliberately paced feel, despite the tense plot.A cowboy (Randolph Scott) 'buys back' a stolen white woman from the Comanche's.
"Comanche Station" was just one of a handful of truly great westerns that Randolph Scott made with director Budd Boetticher over a five year period between 1956 and 1960.
There was usually a journey involved and a woman, more often than not in need of Scott's protection, and several villains, so beautifully drawn in the scripts of Burt Kennedy that they usually transcended the caricatured villainy of western bad guys to emerge as altogether more complex characters.In "Comanche Station" Scott finds himself rescuing white woman Nancy Gates from the Comanches and escorting her back to her husband.
There's two ways you can look at COMANCHE STATION, the last of the Ranown westerns Boetticher did with Randolph Scott.
Scott has rescued a white woman by trade from the Indians, he meets up with Akins and his two young acolytes at Comanche Station, where they learn that scalp hunters have been at work nearby and set the Indians on the warpath.
Cowboy Jefferson Cody (Scott) trades a woman (Gates) captured by the Comanche for $5 dollars worth of trinkets and a rifle.
'Comanche Station' is the final collaboration of the seven films director Budd Boetticher and lead actor Randolph Scott did together in the late 50s.
By all means 'Comanche Station' is not their best pairing (perhaps towards the lesser end, which is not a knock as this merely means it's only because the best of them are so great), but one can totally see the appeal of their collaborations and both Boetticher and Scott are well served, the film being a good representation of both.
Makes no sense why anyone would film a western called Comanche Station and use Indian hairdos that
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.
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.
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..
Mysterious westerner Randolph Scott (as Jefferson Cody) arrives in Comanche Territory (in or around Texas) to exchange goods for beautiful brunette Nancy Gates (as Nancy Lowe), who was abducted and turned into a White squaw (sex partner) for someone in the tribe.
She and Mr. Scott quickly become involved in a Comanche attack on fellow bounty hunter Claude Akins (as Ben Lane) and his two young guns, Richard Rust (as Dobie) and Skip Homeier (as Frank).
However, it soon becomes clear Mr. Akins plans to violently take out Scott and collect the $5,000 reward for himself..."Comanche Territory" was the last of several fine westerns from director Budd Boetticher and his team.
Although we sometimes lose track of Scott's story, a powerful ending brings it all back home.******** Comanche Station (3/1/60) Budd Boetticher ~ Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Richard Rust, Claude Akins.
Story details by other reviewers of Commanche Station are well written; I would like to look at details of this side-lined Western.To fully understand the nature of Randolph Scott Westerns you have to think the 1950's; I can because I was there, watching every ' cowboy film ' that came out.
I remember at the age of 8-10 riding around my home town on an imaginary horse; we even formed imaginary posses!.....and Westerns were being shown at local cinemas every week.Randolph Scott played other parts in his long career but achieved a curious fame as a man-of-few-words cowboy.
It's a face that no other western hero has, making Scott a magnet on screen......in the light of this,his acting ability was not in question.Comanche Station also has a surprisingly good performance from Claude Akins; in fact, stealing a few scenes from Scott.
One long observation his character made concerning Nancy's return to her husband was loaded with cynicism and spite....perfect.In the action scenes he showed himself also to be a fine horseman.....if that really was him firing a rifle on horseback!Nancy Gates cruised thru her role with little impact; but what western girl didn't?......in the hard, troubled world of the 1950's clearly defined male cowboy, there was little room for strong females.Commanche Station is a great Western because of it's love affair with the very nature of the genre; tall enigmatic men, the outback, the wide open spaces, the tumbled rocks that threaten to hide hoards of Indians, and the ever-present but unloved horses, surely the most unsung animal of all time.You'll remember this film because of these things; but mostly because here, encapsulated in 70 minutes, are all of the elements and nuances that all great westerns have or should have.What more do you want?!.
In this picture Jefferson Cody, (Randy Scott) plays the role of a man who tries to help white women who have been captured by the Comanche Indians and barters with all kinds of goods for their release and then returns them to their respective families.
This ending will be very interesting to everyone and this is truly a great Randolph Scott Western from 1960..
Comanche Station (1960) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Randolph Scott saves a woman (Nancy Gates) who was captured by Indians.
It is perhaps appropriate that "Comanche Station" marks the end of the run of westerns Randolph Scott made with director Budd Boetticher.
Lean and pure, it embodies the overarching thematic and moral concerns that make their films so lasting.We open on Jefferson Cody (Scott) riding alone through the grim dry hills of a western landscape.
But Lane has two companions with guns, and Cody must allow Lane to ride with him and the woman, even though Lane makes clear he has a hankering for the $5,000 bounty the woman's husband put on her return, dead or alive."You got a worth," Lane tells the woman with a nasty grin.So does "Comanche Station," a worth hard to explain.
You have to view it a few times to pick up on the many subtleties, like how Cody quietly works the gaps he discovers between Lane and one of his subordinates, Dobie (Richard Rust), in order to work out a method for staying alive.Boetticher westerns often rely on the strength of its bad guys for dramatic interest; here it's Dobie that draws us in.
The deterministic quality of the plot and its characters here can be a weight when you've seen the other films, most notably "Seven Men From Now," which had a similar plot, and "Ride Lonesome," which had the same ambiguities.But taken as a variation on a theme, and its culmination, "Comanche Station" is terrific entertainment, something to be savored as well as enjoyed.
Good Boetticher/Scott Western..
Something seemed to come together on the half dozen or so cheap Westerns that Oscar "Bud" Boetticher made with Randolph Scott and writer Burt Kennedy, and shot mostly among the stucco crags at Movie Flats, California.
The blanket it again offered, this time with the Winchester rifle the man - Randolph Scott, as Jefferson Cody (how iconic is that for a western hero's name?) had put away in the first scene; and a beautiful young woman is thrown out of a tent.
This opening is justly famed - beautifully composed and strikingly photographed, with only a few words of dialogue in the first ten minutes - it feels, after you've seen the rest of the Ranown films, almost like a textbook example of the Randolph Scott character at work, doing one of the things he's there to do (saving a woman) while necessarily avoiding the other (gunfighting).
Dobie makes his choice, and pays for it; and in this case, unlike the finale of Ride Lonesome, there is no second villain behind the story who is the real reason for Scott's character's actions - Ben is the sole obstacle to be overcome, and a showdown is necessary.
Though it is closest overall to Ride Lonesome among the four Kennedy-scripted films, there are specific elements that call to mind the first two films as well - Akins' dialogue about a man losing his woman to another white man is reminiscent of Marvin's little story in Seven Men from Now; Homeier was in The Tall T - and as in that film it's clear that the outlaws value money over a woman's life..
COMANCHE STATION begins and ends with the same shot (reversed for the ending) and the trick Randolph Scott's character uses against Claude Akins (having a woman distract him by firing a six-shooter until it's empty, while Scott gets into position) is a rehash from an earlier Boetticher film, but it's the subtle and sometimes downright striking cinematography that makes this one worth watching.
"Comanche Station" rides into "The Searchers" territory, but also feels a little like the funky television westerns of the 1960's such as Steve McQueen's "Wanted Dead or Alive" or Nick Adams "The Rebel".When Jefferson Cody (Randolph Scott) rescues Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates) from the Comanche their troubles are just starting when they meet up with a trio of outlaws led by Ben Lane (Claude Atkins).
Director Bud Boetticher's westerns with Randolph Scott have been reappraised over the last couple of decades, especially this one, the last they made together.The film looks terrific.
This time, it's the woman who has a reward($5000.) for her return(dead or alive!!), rather than a man, as in "Ride Lonesome".
Cody's and Mrs. Lowes's big secrets aren't revealed until rather late in the film.As usual, the lead woman wants Scott's character to continue to show up periodically in her life, but he politely rides off into the sunset as a perpetual wandering soul, still tortured by the distant loss of his cherished wife..
It was the Randolph Scott of "Comanche Station" they were memorializing, the stoic Western cowboy trying to do the right thing in a lawless land.
Cody's (Scott) response to Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates) when she questions him about her fate with the Comanches show him to be a man of principle and integrity, well before we learn of his true quest.Even the film's outlaws maintain a certain respect for Cody, with Ben Lane (Claude Akins) sharing a tarnished past with his former military officer.
NOTES: Filmed entirely at Lone Pine, California, this is the last of the Scott-Boetticher westerns.
Budd Boetticher's "Comanche Station" isn't as entertaining as "Ride Lonesome." Randolph Scott's stalwart hero rescues the wife of a white man, Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates of "Hitler's Children"), abducted by Indians.
Later, Ben Lane (Claude Atkins of "Rio Bravo") and two younger gunslingers, Frank (Skip Homeier of "Day of the Badman") and Dobie (Richard Rust of "The Great Gundown"), ride along with Jefferson Cody (Randolph Scott) as he escorts the woman back to her husband.
This is the third Boetticher/Scott Western I've seen, "Ride Lonesome" and "The Tall T" are the others.
Upon hearing that a white woman has been captured by the Comanches, "Jefferson Cody" (Randolph Scott) rides to their camp with the hope of trading some goods for her release.