Comanche (1956) Dana Andrews, Kent Smith, Nestor Paiva, Henry Brandon, Stacy Harris Movie Review

Comanche (1956)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Dana Andrews in Comanche (1956)

Broken Feather

Lead by Black Cloud (Henry Brandon), a group of renegade Comanche attack a Mexican village before fleeing across the Rio Grande having taken Margarita Alvarez (Linda Cristal) hostage. Back on American ground Cloud and his men are on the war path and are only prevented from killing some scalp hunters by Quanah (Kent Smith), the Comanche chief of the Antelope tribe some thing which frontier scout Jim Read (Dana Andrews) learns from the fleeing scalpers. Trouble is that whilst Read tries to prevent the whites from causing trouble in Comanche territory and Quanah tries to prevent the Comanche from attacking it is difficult to restore peace.

"Comanche" is the sort of western which is incredibly hard to be enthusiastic about if you are a fans of westerns for the simple reason it seems to recycle everything from early movies. As such we have Jim Read trying to negotiate peace with Quanah that leads to a bit of romance when Jim falls for a woman who he just happens to stumble across near a watering hole. We also have trouble on either side as there are some renegade Comanche and trouble making cowboys. Heck they even delve back in to the realms of the 1940s by having jaunty little songs when ever they are trying to transition between various parts of the story.

Linda Cristal in Comanche (1956)

The thing is that I have probably watched more westerns than some people watch movies in a lifetime and I am pretty sure that if I had watched "Comanche" when I was young and yet to be acquainted with the various western storylines I would have probably enjoyed it a lot more. I say that not just because the familiarity of it all wouldn't have bothered me but poor casting, over acting and some stupid dialogue would not have phased me either. In fact I probably would have enjoyed the performance of Dana Andrews and have been taken with the attractive Linda Cristal.

What this all boils down to s that "Comanche" is just another routine western where we have the white man and a good Comanche trying to bring peace but struggling due to rogue groups who want anything but peace.


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