Wonderful character development!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The acting in this movie is really good.

1958 and the screens, both big and little, are filled with six-guns. Small wonder this oater got lost in the mix. There's nothing much to distinguish it. Instead clichés abound, from blood-thirsty Apaches, to handsome hero (Calhoun), to young love even in the midst of battle. I did like that imaginative early version of a hand grenade. Good thing the Apaches oblige by bunching up so that a couple grenades finishes them off. Note that Calhoun is a co-producer, so I guess it's not surprising that his character Logan would dominate everything in sight. Calhoun certainly looks the part, but I'm inclined to think that even by cowboy standards his prowess is a bit much. All that self-assurance tends to drain the film of needed tension. I'd like to have seen more of that great tough guy Leo Gordon (Zimmerman). More rivalry between him and Logan would have added needed suspense. One lasting aspect, as others point out, is tragically premature deaths of three cast principals (Pittman, Craig, and Bates), making this something of a star-crossed film. Anyway, I wish there were something to distinguish this oater from the pack, but there really isn't. You've likely seen it all before, including the musical score.

Apache Territory is directed by Ray Nazarro and collectively adapted to screenplay by George W. George, Charles R. Marion and Frank L. Moss from the novel Last Stand at Papago Wells written by Louis L'Amour. It stars Rory Calhoun, Barbara Bates, John Dehner, Carolyn Craig, Tom Pittman, Frank DeKova and Leo Gordon. Music is by Mischa Bakaleinikoff and cinematography by Irving Lippman.Saddle Tramp Logan Cates (Calhoun) takes control of an assorted group of civilians and cavalrymen when they are thrust together by fate and come under siege from marauding Apache Indians. With inner conflict threatening the group and the Apache attacking like ghosts of the desert, their chance of survival is slim. But why does Calhoun keep looking at the sky?Canteen Bombs of the Apocalpyse.Routine and of standard siege formula stock, Apache Territory is however brisk and enjoyable if willing to forgive the cliche's and stereotypes. Plot unfolds as a group dynamic cracking under the strain whilst the nasty old Indians attack at intervals and use psychological warfare in the process. Within the group there's a double dose of love interest, with one of them featuring Calhoun and Bates as old lovers now thrust together under trying circumstance. Into the mix are a coward, an aloof racist, a cavalry Sergeant struggling to control his group, a hero in waiting and a Prima Indian who hates the Apache and also has some gold in his possession. So with no food and the water running dry, it's shaping up to be a hopeless situation.Gila monster up the trouser leg?Clocking in at just over 70 minutes the film never outstays its welcome, and in spite of the standard characterisations on the page, the cast do well to keep things pleasingly watchable. Calhoun (Powder River/The Hired Gun) makes for a good rugged hero, leading off the film with some telling gusto, New Yorker DeKovo (Run of the Arrow/Arrowhead) once again doesn't embarrass himself in another Native American role, while Dehner (Apache/The Fastest Gun Alive) and Gordon (Hondo/7th Cavalry) show why they were much used character actors. Filmed in Eastman Color, the budget just about stretched to feature some views of Red Rock Canyon, but mostly the action is based on a sound stage set. 6/10There is sad trivia attached to the film. Within 12 years of this film's release three of the principal cast members would be dead. Bates in 1969 and Craig in 1970 died at their own hands and young Tom Pittman was killed in a car accident just a couple of months after Apache Territory was released to theatres, he was 26 years old.

In a very tightly constructed and entertaining B Western that he produced as well as starred in, Rory Calhoun collects a motley crew of people to stand off hostile Apaches in Apache Territory. The title speaks for itself, but it begs the question as to what all these people were doing there?Circumstance bring Calhoun together with a former flame and her new fiancé, Barbara Bates and John Dehner, a young girl played by Carolyn Craig whom Calhoun rescues on the trail, Tom Pittman an amiable young drifting cowboy, Indian prospector Frank DeKova and a patrol of cavalry who are led by a sergeant from the adjutant general's office with no field experience in Frank DeSales. DeSales gladly cedes leadership to Calhoun who knows far more about Indian fighting than he does.DeSales has some malcontents among his troops, a homesick Myron Healey and a former sergeant in Leo Gordon who thinks he ought to be running things. I think you can see all the inherent conflicts and in the 70 minute running time they're all brought out.Actually Calhoun does have a plan to get them all out and it depends on the weather. The trick is to see how many of them survive. What it is you'll have to see Apache Territory for.If you didn't recognize it, Apache Territory is yet another reworking of John Ford's The Lost Patrol which was remade into Sahara and remade again as Last Of The Comanches. The last stand theme is enduringly popular and Columbia Pictures sure got a lot of use out of it.Two tragedies were in this cast. Both Tom Pittman and Carolyn Craig died way too young and too violently. Pittman in a car crash after this film was completed and Craig several years later by gunshot. In John Mitchum's book Them Ornery Mitchum Boys about he and brother Bob he became friends with Pittman and described him as a nice kid and promising young actor. Pittman was missing for several days before police found the car he had been driving at the bottom of a ravine with Pittman's body. Apache Territory is a good classic B western the kind that sadly Hollywood does not turn out any more.

Sometimes tense B-western stars brawny silent-type Rory Calhoun as a drifter who holds up with an assortment of characters (most reluctant to heed his sage advice) at a waterhole after Apache raids kill a number of their companions. After first rescuing an orphaned young woman (Craig) and wounded young pioneer (Pittman), he's joined by old flame (Bates) and her cowardly fiancé (Dehner), a quartet of Confederate soldiers and a wily gold-prospecting Indian (DeKova) a tribal enemy of the Apaches. As food and water become scarce, tensions within the group cause hysteria and various characters lose their cool leading to fatally poor decisions as cabin fever spreads.Calhoun gets good support from Bates as his scorned former lover, while Myron Healey has a reasonable role as an initially resilient Confederate, who succumbs to panic at the thought of never seeing his family again. Leo Gordon is imposing as the principal agitator among the group, spurred on by greed and selfish motivations to survive at any expense.It's economical and typical of Columbia Pictures westerns at the time, with director Nazarro keeping the melodrama to a minimum and the tension palpable. Apache sympathisers might be offended, with the tribe depicted simply as marauding scalpers, while Craig's nubile wife-to-be would surely irk the feminists as she fusses over domestic duties trying to impress Pittman and clumsily convince him to take her as his wife and mother to his future progeny. But despite the chauvinism, I still found the movie a reasonably taut, formula western worthy of a 70 minute pause while channel surfing.