Thanks for the memories!

A Disappointing Continuation

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

"Deadly Companions" is an early western directed by the legendary Sam Peckinpah. Brian Keith plays a former Union soldier who has taken up with a grizzled old Reb (Chill Wills) and a young gunsel (Steve Cochran), ostensibly to rob a bank. A shootout occurs when someone else hits the bank, during which Keith's character misses his target and kills a young boy. When the boy's mother (Maureen O'Hara) announces that she is going to transport the body to a cemetery in an abandoned town in the middle of Apache country, Keith's character decides to accompany her as a form of atonement. The movie starts out strongly, establishing Keith's and O'Hara's characters and setting up the 'road trip' to the cemetery, but falters somewhat as the group trek through the desert. The conclusion is good, albeit it somewhat predictable, and more 'realistic' than the typical Westerns climax. Although far from Peckinpah's best work, the film presages his masterpiece "The Wild Bunch", particularly in Keith's partially disabled veteran, the realistic gunplay, the suddenness of death, and the general melancholy of the story. All in all, a bit uneven but the good outweighs the bad (IMO), making this a watchable film from the man who, over the next decade, would direct some of the best Westerns ever made.

I wonder if anyone would come to watch The Deadly Companions as just "another" western, or, I should say, coming to it simply for the genre or because it stars Maureen O'Hara (I'm not sure how many would come from Brian Keith or Steve Cochran though, not exactly household names, if O'Hara even is today). I mention this because I know why I and many others have come around to check out what was a little-released film at the time by an independent studio - it's the debut feature of Sam Peckinpah. This is 1961, however, years before he would get the moniker of "Bloody Sam", and it's not that the movie is without violence but it's a film that is more concerned about how the characters relate to one another - or really the two leads, as some of the others drift away at times through the story.It follows three guys who decide to rob a bank - in the opening scene Keith plays a guy named Yellowleg (I feel like he had a different name in the movie but oh well, it's not bad) and he saves a guy hanging from a noose during a card game. They hook up with a bandit and go to a small town on Sunday to pull this heist (one of the amusing things is that the town is so rural that they don't really know if it's Sunday or Monday - some in town are in church, some definitely not). But another heist is taking place at the same time (I think, it was maybe unclear) and during this a woman played by Maureen O'Hara witnesses as her son gets accidentally shot in the crossfire between the two sides. She resigns herself to go bury her son at the plot Kit has for her late husband in a small deserted town far away, and Yellowleg, whether from guilt or some other reasoning, goes along with her (against her wishes, at first, strongly).One may come to this movie and the first thing to do is to read into the movie to see where this or that comes into play in the rest of Peckinpah's career. There are certain little things one may find - the way that the scumbag Billy hits on Kit (Cochran plays a great heel, who isn't one all the time but mostly is) reminded me a little of Straw Dogs and other Peckinpah movies where a woman is often forced into a total lack of agency, that is until someone else may or may not help her out of it - but it's really a director-for-hire thing. Peckinpah was working in television, and this was clearly a good way for him to break in to the industry and do things like show he could make a compelling western with a big star and get an equally compelling performance from her.Is it a GREAT movie? No, it certainly isn't, though there are some moments where it brushes with it, or the way that the supporting character Turk is such a loud-mouth but kind of a sweet, lumbering criminal underneath it (also a deserter from the war, which Yellowleg fought in by the way), and O'Hara is a delight to watch even as she, for the first half, has to only play the "Get away from me!" face or emotions to varying degrees until she can play other things. There are also other things like the Apaches following the group and being a menace, and that feels sort of generic (though the scalping is a nice-brutal touch, perhaps another allusion to future Peckinpah nastiness), and the scar on Yellowleg's forehead that he always hides with his hat.It's mostly a good script though due to how it's more concerned with the characters and how they are on this trek whether they like it or not to bury this boy, and how things like losing a horse (or horses plural) becomes a consistent nuisance. I'm sure that must have appealed to the director, and he pulls it off admirably. But ultimately there's nothing here that screams this as being some lost classic or underrated gem; the ending is fairly predictable, despite some nifty and unexpected action choreography between the actors, and of all things to criticize the music is just weird and distracting at times. Certainly watch it if you plan on seeing a lot of this director's whole oeuvre or simply want a Western with some varying degrees of bad-asses and a hard-driving, tragic story at its core and some alright cinematography (though hard to tell with bad prints floating around - even at revival screenings in theaters).

This 1961 Western has a lot going for it: It stars Brian Keith and the beautiful Maureen O'Hara, who had such great chemistry in "The Parent Trap," released the very same year. It's Sam Peckinpah's directorial debut in motion pictures; most people reading this know that Peckinpah went on to become a highly acclaimed director with such notable efforts as 1969's "The Wild Bunch." In addition, "The Deadly Companions" was filmed on location in Arizona (including Old Tucson); you can't beat Arizona for fine, authentic Western locations. Lastly, the picture only runs 90 minutes, so it won't likely wear out its welcome.THE STORY: Keith's character vengefully searches for a scumbag who tried to scalp him alive 5 years earlier and accidentally kills a beautiful saloon girl's son. Feeling guilty, he offers to escort her to the ghost town where the boy's father was buried so she can bury the son as well. There are a couple problems: They have to go through injun territory and two lowlifes accompany them most of the way.BOTTOM LINE: On paper this sounds like it would be a worthwhile Western, unfortunately it never rises above mediocre, and dangerously verges on being deadly dull. Plus the viewer can hardly see what's going on during the numerous (brief) night sequences. Moreover, two of the main characters are incredibly unlikable (which can be defended on the grounds that they're the real villains of the story). Hence, I can only recommend "The Deadly Companions" to uber-fans of Keith and O'Hara or Peckinpah completists.With all that said, there are some worthwhile aspects, like the church service in the saloon and the depiction of O'Hara as a social outcast amongst the church folk (for legitimate reasons).NOTE: There are numerous editions of this film by different DVD companies; my DVD is from PDC Home Entertainment and the picture quality is great for such an old film; the main menu is kind of cheap, but who cares about that? A 5/10 rating is generous. GRADE: C

After accidentally killing the son of a dance-hall woman named "Kit Tildon" (Maureen O'Hara) a former union soldier known only as "Yellowleg" (Brian Keith) decides to escort Kit (along with the body of the young boy) to another small town in Arizona so that the boy can be buried next to the grave of his father. Unfortunately, this small town happens to lie in the path of warring Apaches. To further complicate matters Kit doesn't want Yellowleg coming along and Yellowleg insists that his two companions named "Billy Keplinger" (Steve Cochran) and "Turk" (Chill Wills) accompany him. Billy complies because he wants Kit in the worst possible way and Turk simply agrees to go because of Billy. What Turk doesn't realize is that Yellowleg wants to enact vengeance upon him for something that happened 5 years earlier. Anyway, rather than reveal the rest of the story and risk spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was an interesting western with an equally interesting plot. Certainly not great by any means but interesting just the same. As far as the acting was concerned I thought everyone did an adequate job with the rather odd scripts they were given. Slightly above average.