Tue 1 Sep 2009
Western Movie Review: RIO CONCHOS (1964).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[4] Comments
RIO CONCHOS. 20th Century-Fox, 1964. Richard Boone, Stuart Whitman, Tony Franciosa, Jim Brown, Wende Wagner, Edmond O’Brien. Based on the novel Guns of Rio Conchos (Gold Medal, 1958) by Clair Huffaker (also co-screenwriter). Director: Gordon Douglas.
If you were trying to track down several wagons full of stolen Army rifles, and you were the colonel of the fort in charge, who would you send on a mission to find them, using as bait another wagon filled with barrels of gunpowder?
Surely not a surly ex-Confederate officer named Lassiter (Richard Boone) and a womanizing half-breed Mexican rogue with flashing eyes and surreally white teeth and otherwise about to be hanged (Tony Franciosa)?
Along with, of course, Captain Haven (Stuart Whitman), the officer who was responsible for the rifles being stolen in the first place, and a black cavalry sergeant (Jim Brown), and you have a team made in heaven.
Or not.
Along the way, meeting both bandits and Apaches in approximately equal number the band of four, they add a fifth member to their number, a beautiful Indian woman (Wende Wagner) who at least is brunette and not blonde.
After several days of assorted misadventures, they at last meet the man who has the guns, Colonel Theron ‘Gray Fox’ Pardee (Edmond O’Brien), Lassiter’s former commanding officer, who intends to use his newly gotten arms to help the South rise again.
I have heard the phrase “chewing the scenery” many times before, but I don’t think I ever I knew what it meant until seeing Edmond O’Brien in action in this movie, not that it’s exactly what the part calls for.
Richard Boone as a hero (Paladin, say) has always rated an “A Plus” in my book, but if anything, he is always better as a villain, or in this case a man consumed with hatred toward the Apaches, who killed his wife and child well over a year ago.
Boone is a master of not-so-veiled sarcasm and an inner rage that threatens to boil over at any instant. (He is at his utter hard-boiled best villainy, by the way, in a spy film called The Kremlin Letter, 1970, an absolute must see, even if it is mostly incomprehensible in its complexity.)
This was Jim Brown’s debut film, and he is allowed to say perhaps fifteen words during the whole movie. That does not mean that his presence goes unnoticed, nor does that of Wende Wagner, later well-known for playing Miss Case on The Green Hornet TV series. (She has several lines of dialogue in Rio Conchos, but not one in English. I would someday like to know what language — Apache? — she does speak.)
And why no one has put the The Green Hornet TV series out on DVD is a question for which I have no answer. But I digress.
Rio Conchos is a movie that is entertaining all the way through, and while it reaches no heights of glory, if you are a western movie fan, it is well worth your undivided attention.
And if you do watch this moving picture all the way through, there is an added bonus.
You get to make up your own ending.
It ends a bit abruptly, it does.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:43 am
In addition to being based on Huffaker’s book this is very close to a remake of Michael Curtiz The Comancheros, which also featured Stuart Whitman, and was based on Paul I. Wellman’s novel. There are differences, of course, and Boone’s character is closer to Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, but save for time period and Comanches vrs Apaches it is very much the same general story.
I suspect by this time the Apache was genuine. Apache sounds a bit like a more gutteral Spanish. A few directors always tried to use actual Native languages when they could in films, especially when the gibberish they sometimes used got complaints. That dates back at least to the silent film when lip readers complained about the profanity being used instead of the actual dialogue.
In any case at this time period finding someone in Hollywood who actually spoke Apache was fairly easy. Back then there were no small number of linguists making a good living supplying Native American dialogue for westerns. There were enough real Apache’s working as extras in films that finding someone who actually spoke the language was a simple task.
While I agree Boone is simply evil in The Kremlin Letter I think his best villainous turns may be the kidnappers in Night of the Following Day, Big Jake, and The Tall T. Don’t know why he was always so good as a kidnapper, but it seemed to bring out his best/worst qualities.
September 2nd, 2009 at 6:10 am
David you’re right about Boone’s best performances.
As for RIO CONCHOS, it’s a big, sprawling, gaudy comic-book western, with the action scenes very capably handled by director Douglas, a master of the form. And Edmond O’Brien chewing scenery? Maybe that’s why his mansion has no walls.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:27 am
Richard Burton once called Edmond O’Brien the finest Shakesperian actor he had ever seen, which doesn’t preclude scenery chewing or a tendency to ham.
Loved that Southern mansion under construction — not only did it save money, but it was a great touch in fun movie, as Dan says, a comic book movie.
Oddly enough I have known a few Apache women with facial structure not unlike Wagner’s, though I doubt she was cast for that reason.
And if it counts for anything here is another vote for the Green Hornet television series to be realease on DVD. Considering it came from the people doing Batman it has a nice feel and look, and was faithful to the radio series. Just a shame that copyright got in the way of a portrait of Britt Reid’s great uncle hanging in his home — cue the William Tell Overture.
September 23rd, 2017 at 6:57 am
The novel by Huffaker, basis for the movie, is a little bit different.
I think that every western fan must read some of his novels.
Richard Boone was a convincing, evil villain in Hombre directed by Martin Ritt.
As for the most impressive scene in Rio Conchos I remember that immense reddish saloon, that reminds me of a southern villa, located near the river and with only the false front, burning to nothing in a towering inferno at the end of the movie.