Evening star., 1961-11-23

could not face taking another Q
The Comancheros" turns into,
then. is an unimportant but
fairly jolly movie about a lot of
people being killed.
Even Actor Wayne who has
done some serious blank-car-
fridge shooting in his days -
decades really-is in a rompish
spirit in the film directed by
Michael Curtiz. One evidence of
this is an extension of his
drawl to a point that makes a
one-syllable word sound not un-
like one of Edmund Burke'S
speeches.
Beyond Wayne and among
several cheerfully visible 9TH
ers, there's Lee Marvin. Mar
win, who has played some of the
blackeSt-dyed villains since
Hollywood was a desert, is the
same again in THE Conan !
cheros," this time a kind of
parody of the bad men. 1t
seems rather a shame that he
has to be shot so early in the |
picture, a mishap which Wayne |
explains as due to the fact that |
he didn't have time mot to kill
him"
So long as he remains alive,
however, Marvin is good for a
laugh every time he uncorks a
bottle of whisky by giving it a
solid whack on the bottom. 1t
could be that Director Curtiz
killed him off early to keep this I
gag from wearing out.
-
THE Comancheros," which
has. some pretty scenery and
some pretty bad music (delib-
erately, the latter is based ,
upon a novel by Paul 1. Well /
man.
It's period is the era in which
Texas was thinking favorably
about joining the Union, or vice |
versa. thus robbing hot-headed |
Louisianans of a haven after |
having killed a best friend in a
duel. Wayne plays a Texas
Ranger of the time, a Ranger
who looks and talks like a Slob |
but only to conceal a ferocious !
sense of duty.
Thus he is concentrating on
two. projects, capturing an aris-
ocratic duelist who is wanted
back in Louisiana. and smear
ing a gang which is running
guns to the Comanches. These
'lardly sound like jobs to keep
a Ranger amused but the ir-
repressible Wayne invests
them with a larkish zest. Well,
rot. Wayne perhaps so much as
the screenplay and the director.
Wayne just goes along with
both.
How The ComancheroS"
comes out is not within the
',roVince of an honorable re-
viewer to reveal should there be
: moviegoer alive who cannot
anticipate its ending.
The reviewer is permitted TO
surmise. however. that the fun
NEST scene in the film is one
in which Wayne and a couple
of aides repel a great Conan
che farmhouse raid. The raid
erS, a bowling mass of redmen.
apparently misunderstood the
directions. Their assumption is
that they are riding in a horse
show while, for some unknown
reason, most of the partici-
ants seem to be falling out of
their saddles.
It's rather a jolly slaughter
Oh the whole.
=
IMPACT: One never knows
where, or to what degree, a
movie is likely to leave what
reviewers call impact"
The departments latest ex-
ample of this point has to do
with, classic film, or a filmed
classic, which recently turned
up in a theater that does not
Gpecialize in this sort of thing |
They had expected it to play
2nother house. with another
sort of audience. and could not
therefore, repress a question
about how the management ex-
rccted it to do.
Well" the management ex-
rlained, we've got some school
groups coming, including that
Catholic girls school out in
Brookland, st. Trinians."