Comanche Territory ** (1950, Maureen O’Hara, Macdonald Carey, Will Geer, Charles Drake, James Best) – Classic Movie Review 6435

‘The Wild, Wanton Fury of 1,000 Howling Savages!’ Maureen O’Hara stars in George Sherman’s interestingly unconventional 1950 Western with a conventional story by Lewis Meltzer about a battle over land ownership.

The US government has designated a silver-rich stretch of mountains as territory for the peace-loving Comanche. But unscrupulous outlaws steal the deeds of the land and prepare to attack the Native Americans, prompting the US cavalry to ride to the Indians’ aid.

An unconvincing Macdonald Carey is in the wrong territory as Jim Bowie (he of the knife and the Alamo) who helps to rescue the victimised Indians. Why did they make Carey’s character Bowie anyway, when this is a totally fabricated Bowie yarn?

On the plus side, considering this is a 1950 film, the Native Americans are well treated in Oscar Brodney and Lewis Meltzer’s screenplay and so is the main female character, Katie Howard, feistily played by the excellent O’Hara.

The support cast is also on the plus side: Will Geer, Charles Drake, James Best, Edmund Cobb, Pedro de Cordoba, Ian MacDonald, Rick Vallin, Parley Baer (in his film debut as Boozer, the Bartender), Glenn Strange, Johnny Carpenter, Iron Eyes Cody and I Stanford Jolley.

This Universal International Pictures release is shot in Technicolor by Maury Gertzman, produced by Leonard Goldstein, scored by Frank Skinner, and designed by Bernard Herzbrun and Richard H Riedel.

It was shot at Big Park, Sedona, Arizona.

James Best (1926–2015).

Character actor James Best, best known as bumbling Sheriff Rosco P Coltrane on TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard, died on 6 April 2015 from pneumonia, aged 88.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6435

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