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SADDLE UP WESTERNS DOUBLE FEATURE: APACHE RIFLES (1964) + PANHANDLE (1948)
Saddle up for two classic Westerns -- Audie Murphy in William Witney's Apache Rifles (1964) and Rod Cameron in Lesley Selander's Panhandle (1948).
APACHE RIFLES (1964)
Label: Kit Parker Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 91 Minutes 53 Seconds
Audio: English PCM 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: William Witney
Cast: Audie Murphy, Lindsay Lawson
Apache Rifles (1964) is an American Western directed by William Witney (Master of the World) and starring Western icon Audie Murphy (Destry), in it Murphy plays
Capt. Jeff Stanton, who commands an Arizona Territory cavalry outpost, and it's established that he is a fierce Indian fighter, who has no love for the Apache people. He is tasked with reigning in some Apache warriors who have fled the reservation, who are lead by Chief Victorio (Joseph Vitale, Zombies On Broadway) and his son Red Hawk (Michael Dante, The Farmer), who have left the reservation in protest of greedy white miners, led by the unscrupulous general store owner Owens (Charles Watts, Giant) and his sidekick Mike Greer (L.Q. Jones, The Brotherhoods of Satan) who continually trespass onto the reservation in search of gold. He successfully manages to wrangle them up and return them to the reservation, and in the process becomes he's smitten by the half-white and half-Comanche Christian missionary Dawn (Linda Lawson, Let's Kill Uncle), which softens his views on the Apache people just a bit.
He realizes that the white are continually trespassing onto the Apache reservation in search of gold and comes to sympathize with them, posting men around the reservation to deter the bad-faith prospectors. Eventually he s relieved of duty after turning guns on white prospectors who massacre a group of Apache, and publicly beating a man who throws racists remarks at Dawn. In his place the government sends Col. Perry (John Archer, I Saw What You Did) as his relief, which leads to Stanton seeing that a massacre is brewing between the whites and the Apache after the baddie prospectors kill a white man with an arrow and pin it on the Apache, and attempting to thwart further bloodshed. This is a pretty standard Western, it didn't do a lot for me to be honest, but it looks terrific with the Mojave and Red Rock Canyon locations, and I was a but surprised how pro-indigenous people it turned out to be, with the baddies being the white folks. It's not quite a revisionist Western nor as edgy as what we would come from Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone, but still a solid American Western in the 50's mold.
PANHANDLE (1948)
Label: Kit Parker Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 84 Minutes 10 Seconds
Audio: English PCM 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.33:1)
Director: Lesley Selander,
Cast: Rod Cameron
The b-side to this western double-feature is Panhandle (1948) directed by Lesley Selander (The Catman of Paris) and starring another Western star Rod Cameron (The Monster and the Girl). In it Cameron plays a former lawman turned gunslinger John Sands, who after tarnishing his name in the States moved down Mexico way where he has since attempted to leave his violent past behind him, opening a trading outpost. However, when he learns that his brother was murdered in the Texas Panhandle town of Sentinel he once more straps his guns and crosses the border to go after the killers, but his outlaw past proves to be a tricky workaround as there are warrant for his arrest. We get a few weak detours into the possible love interests by way of Cathy Downs (Missile To The Moon) and Anne Gwynne (The Black Cat), but nothing serious, which is a pity, I wanted more of hellcat Downs' Jean 'Dusty' Stewart, but both women are quite lovely lookers. There are also some well-directed action set-pieces including the pre-requisite saloon brawl and a shootout on the streets of Sentinel. This one is notable for several reason, for starters it's filmed in sepia tone and not black and white, which took some getting used to, and it also was co-written and co-produced by future Pink Panther director Blake Edwards as a young gunslinger who insists that Sand tell him of the time he faced down the notorious Billy the Kid!
Extras include newly produced documentaries for each film by western film historian Toby Roan; we get the 6-min The End of the Road: Audie Murphy and Apache Rifles, and the 6-min Something A Little Bigger: Monogram, Allied Artists and Panhandle. Both are wonderful value-add bonuses that I enjoyed quite a bit, they're handsomely produced and a wealth of knowledge for a western no-nothing like myself. The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork. This was my first time seeing something from Kit Parker Films, and I was suitably impressed with the quality of the scans, transfers and extras, I will be looking forward to checking out more from them in the future!
PAN HANDLE (1948)
EXTRAS:
Special Features;
- The End of the Road: Audie Murphy and Apache Rifles (6:28)
- The End of the Road: Audie Murphy and Apache Rifles (6:28)
-Something A Little Bigger: Monogram, Allied Artists and Panhandle (6:04)
Screenshots from the Kit Parker Films Blu-ray:
APACHE RIFLES (1964)
EXTRAS:
Buy it!
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