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The Last Wagon (1956)

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17 comments in total

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13 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
One the most exciting Westerns!, 25 July 1999

Author: ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

After he is tracked, caught and chained to a wagon train for killing, in cold blood, three brothers in revenge for the murder of three people closest to him, his wife and his two boys, Comanche Todd (Richard Widmark), leads a wagon to safety through Apache country...

It is an intense drama because Col. Normand's train was massacred by the savages and six young survivors were left on his hands, putting their trust in a renegade murderer to bring them out of the wilderness…

Delmer Daves tries to paint the West as a perfect artist proving himself as a talented director of the Western movies... As in "Broken Arrow," "Drum Beat," "3:l0 to Yuma," and "The Hanging Tree," this great director gives us, in his exciting Western, a study of several characters as individuals and as representatives of virtues, vices, and other abstract qualities...

Richard Widmark gives a great performance as a man who took the Comanche law to avenge his people… For him there was no "white man's law" for hundreds of miles!

Felicia Farr gives a sweet performance as the girl in love... For her Widmark could have saved himself… He could have gone and she urged him to go…

Susan Kohner tells her sister Valinda (Stephanie Griffin) that she acts so clean but she thinks so dirty… And when she says "Indian-lover" and she makes it sound so filthy…

Tommy Rettig—a lot more man than a boy— is the most effective member of the cast, sincere in his emotional feelings and highly amusing...

Nick Adams saw those falls this morning but refuses to notice that the kid could get swept over them…

George Mathews plays Sheriff Bull Harper with a killer he's bringing to justice… He explained to the Christians 'not to be fooled by the color of his eyes and his skin. He may be white, but inside he's all Comanche.'

Col. William Normand (Douglas Kennedy) asks the Sheriff to secure the prisoner but to stop his brutality…

Filmed in Technicolor and CinemaScope, the picture has plenty of action, good exterior photography including splendid picturesque shots of the "Canyon of death", the rocks, plains and rivers...

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14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
The film that made a movie fan out of me, 9 March 2002
Author: Jeff Hill (jeffhill1) from Sapporo, Japan

"The Last Wagon" is the very first movie I ever went nuts over; and I've been a movie fan ever since. I was nine and I didn't even want to go to the movies that Saturday night. But my parents wanted to see "Bus Stop" and they didn't want to get a baby sitter for me and my three year old brother, so they dragged us along. But they had made a mistake when reading the starting times of the films and when we got to the theater, "The Last Wagon", not "Bus Stop" was starting. From the moment Richard Widmark shot the first bad guy even before the opening credits and the enveloping overture, I was hooked on him, the western scenery, the action, the anthropological dramatization of Comanche vs. Apache tribal hostilities at the same time that all Native American cultures were being wiped out by encroaching white "civilization", and the enthralling background music. When the co-feature of "Bus Stop" concluded, I wanted to stay to see "The Last Wagon" again. My parents had to drag me out.

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
A renegade half-Indian saves the day in the Old West., 9 August 2005
Author: (paulmoran99@aol.com) from Chippenham,England

The Last Wagon is not in the Premier League of great westerns; but it should be. Delmer Davis has fashioned an exciting, pacey film, which has all the finest ingredients of the American West.The story is never less than interesting and absorbing,and sometimes superlative. Richard Widmark plays Commanche Todd perfectly, displaying ruthlessness, kindness, charm and craggy reliability, in equal measure.The Widmark easy grin trademark is evident, which only he can switch on, lending light relief to a grim story.

But for me the film is notable for a love scene that compares easily with that of the famous train meeting between Cary Grant and Eve Marie Saint in North by Northwest. Felicia Farr as Jenny, and Todd, fetch up in the rocks of the wild prairie, and Todd makes his move. Then follows a curiously compelling verbal exchange that is achingly romantic,full of blossoming love and yearning, and charged with heady excitement.You can almost hear Farr's rapid heart beating. For one brief moment Felica Farr makes herself the most desirable women on the planet.When the kiss comes it makes your heart sigh. Then it's back to the action, and the film pulses along to a satisfying conclusion. But it will be Farr's breathlessness, sensuality and desirability that lingers in the mind.There have been countless Screen Goddess's;but only a few like Felicia Farr and Eve Marie Saint, have been able to effortlessly radiate true sex appeal

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9 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Widmark was Attached To A Wagon Wheel !, 13 February 2005

Author: whpratt1 from United States

It was great viewing this 1956 film and enjoying the great acting of a very young Richard Widmark,(Comanchi Todd), "Garden of Evil",'54, where he plays a very well experienced man who can deal with almost any situation and understands the Native Americans like a book. The film has great photography through out the entire picture and brings you back to the Old West and the troubles that men and women had to face in the wilderness. Susan Kohner,(Jolie Normand), gave a great supporting role along with Nick Adams,(Ridge), both these characters had their own feels toward Comanchi Todd and some doubted if he was man enough to get them out of many death threatening situations. Comanchi Todd had his problems with a Wagon Wheel and I thought he was never going to get himself away from its burden of weight. If you are a fan of Richard Widmark, you will greatly enjoy this film which he made into a great Western Classic.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A colorful, edgy western, 15 August 2003

Author: NewEnglandPat from Virginia

This fine western adventure has the colorful beauty of Arizona and Richard Widmark as a half-breed scout seeking redemption as he tries to guide a handful of young survivors of an Indian attack to safety. Comanche Todd is resented by some members of the party but Jenny and Billy accept him without question and trust him to lead them to safety. Todd is also dodging the law for murder and is on his way to the gallows when he and his captor happen upon the doomed wagon train. Widmark is at his best as a fierce, steely, blue-eyed white man who is more Indian than white and is believable as the renegade-on-the-run who guides the young survivors to safety.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Pretty good movie until the end, 16 September 2004
Author: laura_bush_belongs_in_prison

Widmark plays the anti-hero who comes to the aid of teenagers who survived an Indian attack. As usual widmark is great and i esp loved the hateful sheriff played by george matthews who is gonna turn criminal widmark in for the reward . He treats widdy just awful and eventually widmark cleaves him open with a hatchet!!! You don't get to see the hatchet land, but it's still a great scene cause the slimeball had it comin'. Three teenage girls in the film are very attractive and the scenery is spectacular. I won't tell the ending of course, but lets just say it's pretty sappy and didn't jibe with the rest of the movie which was quite cynical. All in all, surprisingly good for a 50 year old western. I'll give it a B+.

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
the best western ever, 8 August 2001
Author: (bopzoo@yahoo.com) from united states

to me this was the best western I have ever seen. Richard Widmark is a suberb actor and carried this movie so well. the scenery was beautiful also.All the young actors gave wonderful performances.please do yourself a favor and enjoy one of the great stories of all time.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Beautifully filmed though little known, 22 July 2007

Author: Nicholas Rhodes from Ile-de-France / Paris Region, France

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

If you watch this film with care, you will see that every shot has been perfectly crafted. The deep blue skies and reddish rock colour go perfectly with the steely blue eyes and yellowish skin of Richard Widmark. Even the colour of his tunic blends in with the rest. The cameraman here must have been a real genius as every shot is perfect.Great attention seems to have been paid to the color of the sky, the position of the sun and even the shots in "contre-jour" come out perfectly - in short, a real FEAST for the eyes. This film has only recently been made available on DVD in the USA and is of course absent from Europe, though we have plenty of other, and many inferior quality Westerns available on DVD....this should have been one of the first to come out...but this was not to be the case. Plot-wise the film is quite enthralling, and it's interesting to note the change in attitude of the people with time towards Widmark, from suspicion and hate towards gratitude and love by the end. The other actors give reasonable performances but of course in this film, Widmark steals the show, just as he did in "No Way Out". The scenes with the Indians, smoke signals etc are awesome and very colourful. Also the soundtrack is very good, I even thought it was Dimitri Tiomkin who had composed it, but I was wrong. When I saw the film initially, I was fearing some ghastly sad ending, thinking that Widmark would inevitably come a cropper, but fortunately, love rules OK and all turns out right ! Phew ! This is a film that every true Western-lover should have on the shelves of his/her DVDthèque.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
An Under-appreciated Western Gem, 30 November 2005

Author: gmcgibney from Canada

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Though he never achieved the status of John Ford, Delmer Daves was responsible for elevating many average scripts into films that became more than the sum of their parts (Dark Passage, 3:10 To Yuma). This is a film I can first recall seeing on the late show in my early teens with my nine-year-old brother. Thirty years later we still call each other when we see it listed in the TV guide.

In Commanche Todd Richard Widmark gives us one of his most likable and unforgettable characters in what could easily have become a throwaway performance in a "B" movie. The supporting cast is excellent especially Felicia Farr as Jenny. She took what could have been a potentially thankless role and turns Jenny into a strong and extremely desirable woman. Despite the sappy Hollywood ending that is somewhat at odds with the tone of the rest of the film this is a film that holds up after almost fifty years.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Widmark reigns, 10 March 2007

Author: xredgarnetx from Connecticut

As with the same year's BACKLASH, star Richard Widmark puts his stamp of authority on what otherwise might have been a routine Western. He ends up guiding what's left of a wagon train family to safety from the Apaches. Most of the survivors are not exactly thrilled with this wild and wooly frontiersman leading them anywhere, and it is all Widmark can do to keep them from painting big red targets on each other's chests and backs for the Indians to shoot at. LASSIE's Tommy Rettig is the juvenile in the group. The female leads are great to look at in a 1956 kind of way. With the exception of Nick "Johnny Yuma" Adams, none of the rest of this cast is particularly well known, but veteran director Delmer Daves keeps them in line and believable as a group of frightened tenderfeet. James Drury, who would go on to fame as THE VIRGINIAN on TV, is in the film for bit.

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