JLRVancouver "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.

Robert J. Maxwell I wonder if director Pekinpah didn't find himself in a liminal state when he directed this first feature -- somewhere between the strictures of the television Western series like "The Rifleman" and the wildly expressive feature films that were to come.A trio of would-be bank robbers ride into an uptight little Western town and the leader, Brian Keith, shoots and kills Maureen O'Hara's little boy. O'Hara, despised as a "dance hall girl", is determined to see her boy buried with his father in a crumbling and deserted adobe village on the other side of Apache country. Out of guilt, Keith decides to accompany her, dragging his two reluctant, low-life compañeros along. One of them, Steve Cochran, dressed in black and accessorized in red and white, is a cocky gunslinger. The other, Chill Wills, in a bulky, ratty buffalo robe, is completely daft.Brian Keith is the leader and the hero but he smacks of the small screen. He's taciturn, determined, grim, dignified, decent. Just like Chuck Connors in "The Rifleman" or Marshal Dillon in "Gunsmoke." That's the pattern that Pekinpah was leaving behind. Other hallmarks appear briefly -- cruel children, a community ritual interrupted by hooligans, residual Civil War resentments.The Pekinpah that was to come is represented by Cochran and Wills. Cochran is a little treacherous, but Wills, having gotten his hands on that bank money, is determined to establish his own kingdom in Apache country, just like those Texas fellers at the Alamo or the Fredonian Rebellion. "I got me this general's cap to wear and we'll have lots of gold braid." He's entirely serious, just like the the Hammond brothers, who believe in polyandrous marriages, in "Ride the High Country." Keith can be an appealing actor but he's not given much to do except play the stereotype. And he's not a convincing drunk. Cochran is as slimy as he usually is, and Wills looks positively flea ridden, a big, shaggy, cheerfully lunatic dog. Maureen O'Hara -- whose brothers appear as producer and undertaker -- was forty and mostly miscast. She's all gussied up at the beginning as a whore, and looks not so hot. And for the first hour or so, her character is angry and bitter, and that's not Maureen O'Hara's shtick. She's marvelous when she plays herself, chipper, unpretentious, and no nonsense. Later, on the trail, she's dusty and disheveled. The war paint is gone. Her mature but fresh beauty is more evident and she gets to deploy an enthralling smile.Overall, the story has a lot of loose ends and meanders all over the place. It's pretty dull until the climax finally brings about some resolutions. When the duo are alone, buggylugging that coffin across the desert, the movie looks like a dramatization of someone preparing a Swanson's frozen dinner.

MartinHafer When you watch "The Deadly Companions", you'd be hard pressed to realize it was a Sam Peckinpah directed film unless you knew it. While it does bear some similarity in style to "Ride the High Country" and "Major Dundee", it lacks the excessive violence most people associate with Peckinpah today. It is far quieter and subtle than a typical Peckinpah films, that's for sure.The film begins with three low-lifes traveling together. This is by far the weakest part of the film, as the three really are way too disparate characters to be together. While Yellowleg (Brian Keith) acts mean, he's decent down deep and why he's with two scum-bags is a perplexing thing. Soon, there is a bank robbery in town and in the the process, a fallen woman's (Maureen O'Hara) son is killed by Yellowleg. Of course, it was an accident--he was trying to stop the robbery. And, the fallen lady really is NOT bad--the townsfolk just assumed the worst about her and her son since they didn't care to know he died before the child was born and before the lady came to town. Because the town treated her so badly, the lady vows never to bury her child in this crappy town but sets off across Indian territory to a town where she and her husband married. It's an insane trip and Yellowleg vows to accompany her--even though she hates him and refuses his help. Unfortunately, his two associates follow as well and you know sooner or later, it's them or Yellowleg.This is a decent film--not great. I liked the character study and quiet moments in the film, though a few plot points simply were confusing and made little sense (such as the identity of the man Yellowleg was pursuing for all those years). Still, the good far outweighs the bad and it's worth seeing.

FightingWesterner After five years of searching, Brian Keith finally catches up with the rebel soldier that scalped him in the war (!) and entices him and his partner into teaming up for a proposed bank robbery that's really just a veiled attempt to get revenge.However, the trio end up exchanging bullets with other bank robbers, accidentally killing the young son of the town pariah, a dance-hall girl dealing with gossip suggesting her boy was a bastard.With no one else willing, Keith insists on escorting the mother and the boy's body through Apache country for burial beside his father.The Deadly Companions is a downbeat first feature by Sam Peckinpah. It's passable entertainment but pretty much standard and nowhere near as good as his (highly recommended) second feature Ride The High Country, the classic The Wild Bunch, or the underrated Ballad Of Cable Hogue.Brian Keith, Maureen O'Hara, and especially Chill Wills deliver good performances.