The Deadly Companions (1961)

As Good As It Gets

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

A film who seems have no story. in strange way, that is not a problem. first, for the well made characters. second - for the performances. and for silences. for small gestures and for inspired exploration of past. not the last, for the fine equilibrium between the pieces of drama. a man. a woman. a coffen and a film who could be defined as western. not an ordinary one. but one of the most useful. as a story. about the angles of solitude.

THE DEADLY COMPANIONS is a slow and long-winded low budget western chiefly of interest for being Sam Peckinpah's first movie. His presence is felt in the anti-hero qualities of the main characters; the hero of the piece begins the movie by shooting a kid in an accident and struggles to make amends for his misdeeds thereafter.Holding the whole thing together is old-timer Maureen O'Hara, who brings a wealth of cinematic experience to the production with her. The story follows her character as she leads her son's body through the desert in order to give him a decent burial. There are some double-crossings and macho heroism stuff en route, but the film's sense of weariness is heightened in the viewer himself, making this something of a slog at times.

The Deadly Companions is directed by Sam Peckinpah and written by Albert Sidney Fleischman. It stars Brian Keith, Maureen O'Hara, Chill Wills and Steve Cochran. Music is by Marlin Skiles and cinematography by William H. Clothier. Plot finds Keith as an ex-army officer who accidentally kills the son of Kit Tildon (O'Hara) and tries to make amends by escorting the funeral procession through dangerous Indian territory.Historic in the context that it was Peckinpah's first feature film, The Deadly Companions has interesting themes of revenge, redemption and grief, all played out in a road movie formula. It's often pretty as well, as ace cinematographer Clothier photographs out of Old Tuscon, Arizona. Yet the trouble behind the scenes does show.Peckinpah, starting where he meant to go on, argued with producer Charles FitzSimons about Fleischman's script, the director constantly offering up rewritten passages to put zest and energy into a screenplay he felt was plodding. Keith was in agreement with his director, Clothier, too, was firmly on Peckinpah's side, even branding FitzSimons an idiot, while O'Hara naturally stayed loyal to her brother, one Charles FitzSimons! The film is often lifeless and silly, even reliant on too many convenient set-ups, dialogue is hackneyed and the musical score is infuriatingly intrusive. While the performances are in keeping with the sub-standard material they worked from. The director's cut turned in was tampered with by FitzSimons, leaving the film with an ending that quite frankly is bizarre. It has the odd fleeting moment of worth, mostly when Keith is reacting to Wills and Cochran, or with the small screen time afforded Strother Martin, but ultimately it's a damp squib, very much only half a Peckinpah movie and far removed from the original vision he had for the project. 4/10

For fans of Sam Peckinpah, there's little to recognize of the legendary director in his first movie. Yes, it's a western featuring a morally compromised protagonist (Brian Keith), and Chill Wills plays the first of many bat-guano crazies in the Peckinpah canon. But there's a lot that's different.Maureen O'Hara stars as a woman who loses her son in a bank robbery gone awry. Keith plays a guy named "Yellowleg", the Union Civil War vet who shot the boy and tries to help her bury him while working in some revenge on the side. There's some shooting and horseback riding, too, but Peckinpah's hard-edged humanism and iconic visual sensibility have yet to arrive.Keith is the guy more in command of this film. "I hear they got a new bank and an old marshall over at Gila City," is the way Yellowleg frames his outlaw pitch to Turkey (Wills) and Billy (Steve Cochran) at the start of the film. Tough but sly, Yellowleg asserts his authority without the slightest sign of strain."You givin' the orders now?" Billy asks him."Looks that way, don't it?" is the reply.O'Hara is more of a problem. Her character, Kit, wants to bury her boy in a ghost town deep in Apache country, and could care less about the danger to herself or others. O'Hara frequently played stubborn characters, but few as unrelievedly serious as Kit. Her manner grates as the film goes on and she seems more put out by the idea Yellowleg might not think she was married to the boy's father than the fact her boy is dead.It's possible O'Hara's performance suffered from a lack of communication with her director. It's said that the producer, O'Hara's brother Charles B. Fitzsimons, forbade Peckinpah to talk to her on set, then fired the director before editing began. This could account for the fact her scenes never gel with the rest of the film.I'm reluctant to judge the film too much by its look and feel. The version I saw, part of the "Maureen O'Hara Collection" put out by St. Clair, seems to be a pan-and-scan lifted from a TV print and was possibly edited for commercials. Certainly the film jumps around a lot.Some blame must fall on either Peckinpah or Fitzsimons. The score is both mediocre and idiotic, soft mariachi music playing while Billy assaults Kit or a lame rendition of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" playing whenever Turkey goes off on one of his rants about creating his own republic complete with "slave Indians". At one point we are asked to believe Yellowleg walking into a camp of sleeping Apaches to steal a horse without getting caught.Keith reveals himself here as a worthy lead. He worked with Peckinpah on TV shows and would have been an excellent talent for the director on screen. His loss was Warren Oates' gain. You do get the great Strother Martin as one of Peckinpah's few-ever positive religious figures, turning a bar room into a "preach house" and telling Yellowleg and company to take their hats off to the Lord. Moments like that lift the film from being the muddy genre exercise it otherwise is.