Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Theo Robertson This has all the hallmarks of being what later became known as a revisionary Western . By this I mean Hollywood woke up to the fact that the indigenous Native Americans had a raw deal from history and Hollywood movies featuring whooping injuns portrayed as violent savages weren't helping matters much hence in the late 1960s and early 70s you'd get movies like SOLDIER BLUE and LITTLE BIG MAN and later still we had DANCES WITH WOLVES that showed the wild west through the eyes of the Indians . This 1956 film called COMANCHE pre-dates these revisionary Westerns where the poor noble misunderstood savage is set upon by the white man Actually it doesn't because from the outset we're shown it's the Mexican/Hispanic community who are all to blame . We're given a short history lesson that when Spain conquered Mexico the Spanish held the Comanches at gunpoint and made them work down the mines gathering silver . Understandably the native population were a bit angry about this and revolted leading to the Spanish to stamp upon them . After Mexico gained its independence the slaughter continued with Mexicans putting a bounty on Indian scalps 100 dollars for a warrior , 50 dollars for a squaw and 25 dollars for a child" Wow Theo that is so cruel and if anyone did that today they'd be getting arrested and tried for crimes against humanity at The Hague " Undoubtedly and rightly but you have to ask yourself a rhetorical question that would the native population of the United States be getting a better deal ? No they wouldn't this film tends to ignore this and seems to portray the United States White Anglo-Saxon Protestant as being morally superior to that of their Hispanic neighbours who are portrayed as being as untrustworthy but are very good guitar players and it's left to an American WASP to save the day This cultural arrogance is not so much offensive but a great pity because COMANCHE did have some potential to be a good Western that would have appealed to people who don't like the Western genre . It does try to push the boat out against the Hays Code by having a slightly sadistic streak but then sabotages it by including a couple of songs over the soundtrack

ianlouisiana ....but that has no more relevance to its merit than the fact that human beings share 30% of their DNA with the humble earthworm. Released 6 months before John Ford's magnum opus,"Comanche" also features the same actor as the renegade Indian - Mr H.Brandon - and several scenes that are strangely similar.Whether this was happenstance,coincidence or enemy action is a matter known only to God now presumably. Standing on its own it is a passable post - bellum Western with a bored - looking Mr D.Andrews as a Scout (kissing - cousin of a Comanche chief who is trying to wind in the more independently minded young men of his tribe led by the aforesaid Mr Brandon)and make a treaty with the U.S.Government. Made in the days when it never occurred to most people that the Indians had every right to defend their lands against the White Eyes,the film makes a creditable attempt to present Native Americans with some dignity and humanity rather than portray them merely as howling savages as had been Hollywood's wont for the previous 40 years. Having said that,it is packed with clichéd characters and situations that director Mr G.Sherman lacks the will or the imagination to invest with a fresh eye. Mr Andrews and his comic sidekick ("Puffer" by name,poltroon by nature) with the help of the Cavalry eventually win through against the renegades and a Pax Americana is imposed on the Indians who will meekly buckle under to the forces of democracy thus proving once again to 1950s movie audiences that Might is Right. Mr M.Mazurki is particularly embarrassing as an Indian brave. Watching this in the cinema then going home to watch "The Lone Ranger" on TV made me wonder if the Trusty Indian Companion of the Mysterious Masked Stranger didn't need a kick up the backside.

MartinHafer Had this movie starred a lesser name than Dana Andrews, I probably never would have watched it or else turned it off after a while, as this was a rather dull but competently made picture. Aside from more modern sensibilities about the American Indians (they aren't savage or bad and there is an attempt to understand their motivations), there really isn't anything different to set this apart from hundreds, if not thousands of mediocre Westerns from the 40s and 50s.Part of the problem was in casting Kent Smith as the Indian chief. He was a good journeyman actor, but here he was all wrong. While his character was supposed to have SOME White blood, Smith looked and sounded about as much like an Indian as Shirley Temple! It's odd that although the script is quite sensitive and "politically correct" by today's standards, they still used a lot of White actors in makeup as the Indians (if you look, you'll also notice Mike Mazurki as an Indian as well).Another part of the problem is that while I like Dana Andrews a lot, I've got to admit he was pretty bland in the part--a part which would have been more convincing had it featured Randolph Scott or Jimmy Stewart. Andrews just wasn't believable as a cavalry scout in the old West. Andrews forte was in contemporary stories--placing him in a horse and Indian film just seemed unnatural and his performance reflects this.Aside from these complaints, I am not recommending you avoid the film--it is fairly entertaining and won't rot your brain. However, it really is nothing more than a time-passer and it SHOULD have been much better given the decent script.

Michael O'Keefe COMANCHE is filmed in Durango, Mexico for a sense of authenticity. It is also one of the first Hollywood films to be sympathetic toward the Native American Indian. A Comanche attack on a Mexican village nets the capture of several woman and children including the lovely Margarita(Linda Cristal). Black Cloud(Henry Brandon)is a hotheaded brave that have no use for the white man, let alone Mexicans, whom he can also get the pleasure of scalping. Jim Read(Dana Andrews)is a strong willed frontier scout, who hopes to shield his Native American friends from a bigoted genocidal Gen. Miles(John Litel). It is Read and his friendship with Chief Quanah Parker(Kent Smith)that restores trust and peace between the Indians and the white man. This is Cristal's movie debut. Andrews, not out of the norm, is wooden. Others in the cast: Nestor Paiva, Tony Carbajal, Lowell Gilmore and Iron Eyes Cody.