Apache War Smoke (1952)

When the latest stage reaches a remote weigh station in the New Mexico territory for a fresh set of horses, the manager won't let them move on from there and asks all the passengers to unload and make themselves comfortable for a while. Seems the Apaches have been stirred up and all the smoke signals indicate a war party will be attacking soon.

And to add even more fuel to this already volatile situation, another traveler suddenly shows up seeking refuge; a notorious bandit by the name of Peso Herrera (Roland). But Tom (Horton), the wary manager, knowing full well Herrera is probably more interested in the army payroll locked-up in the stage's strong box than protecting his own scalp, won't let him enter the fortified compound unless he surrenders his guns first.

From there, we don't have long to meet and greet all of our other trapped players before the Apaches start probing the outpost’s defenses. Then, another rider barely makes it in, who reveals the natives are on the prod because some no-goodnik killed several tribal elders and then ran off with their prized valuables (-- and, hey, didn't a schmoozing Herrera just give one of the female passengers a turquoise Indian bracelet?). Also, says the battered traveler, the offended war party has tracked the culprit to this very station but are willing to let the others go if they turn the killer over to them.

And as all eyes turn on Herrera, circumstantial evidence or not, survival instincts soon start to get the better of everybody with each renewed attack. Thus, as things fragment further, Tom calls for a vote on whether to kick Herrera out of the adobe fortification, a certain death-sentence, or hold out in hope of some promised cavalry reinforcements to break the siege. Now, you'd think this decision would be a landslide under these dire circumstances, but when the hands are counted it's up to our hero to cast the deciding vote...

From the early 1920s to the mid-'50s author Ernest Haycox had a pretty fruitful career writing Two-Fisted Oaters, whether it be a self-contained novel or a serialized novella in the likes of Colliers or The Saturday Evening Post.

Eventually, several of these frontier fables were adapted to the big screen; most famously when Haycox's Stage to Lordsburg became John Ford's seminal sagebrush standard, Stagecoach (1939), where a cast of disparate and desperate characters face a tempest without (hostile Indians) and a crisis within (class prejudice, which Ford gleefully tore the hide off of and exposed its hypocrisy). That same year, Trouble Shooter begat Cecill B. DeMille's all-star epic Union Pacific (1939); and later, more stories were turned into vehicles for the likes of Randolph Scott -- Abilene Town (1946), Man in the Saddle (1951), and Errol Flynn -- Montana (1950).

Apache War Smoke (1952) was also based on a Haycox story, Stage Station, which had already been adapted once before by Richard Thorpe as Apache Trail (1942) ten years prior. Both films cover a lot of similar thematic ground as Stagecoach, only more stationary, but add a familial element to the proceedings.

But while Thorpe's film centers on two feuding brothers, one the station manager (William Lundigan), the other a notorious outlaw (Llyod Nolan), for Apache War Smoke screenwriter Jerry Davis and director Harold Kress tweak the dynamic a bit, making the station manager the estranged, illegitimate son of the Mexican bandit, Herrera, who may or may not be the root cause of all that Indian trouble, adding another dynamic element as Tom must decide on what to do next. For Tom really doesn't like his father, and it would've been easy enough to just chuck him over the wall.

This was a rare directorial outing for Kress, who would go on to much acclaim as an Oscar-winning film editor for many a Hollywood epic -- King of Kings (1961), How the West Was Won (1962), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and as Irwin Allen's go-to-guy to patch-up his disaster flicks -- The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), and The Swarm (1978).

Here, Kress puts in a steady enough effort, a solid B-western, action-wise, that is ably kept afloat by his cast, which is rounded out with many familiar sagebrush stalwarts in supporting roles -- Henry Morgan, Hank Warden and Emmett Lynn; and it took me half the movie to realize little Luis was played by Robert "Bobbie" Blake.

Apache War Smoke was also Robert Horton's big screen debut as Tom Herrara; and though he always appeared to have a cob up his ass over something in every role I've seen him in -- from this to The Green Slime (1968), to the actor's credit, he pulls this constant obstruction off really, really well and almost makes this assholishness an asset.

Meanwhile, Gilbert Roland remains an enigma to me. For only Roland could get away with the swinging-cocksure machismo of Peso Herrara and make all that swaggering and posturing endearingly roguish when anyone else would have every handy projectile in your house flying at the screen -- followed by some industrial strength Pine Sol to disinfect your entire entertainment system to remove the musky stench.

And I knew my gal-pal Glenda Farrell had to be more than just some old pioneer-marm, who, as Fanny Webson, has plenty of saloon hall secrets of her own. As for filling out the corners of the prerequisite love-triangle for our besieged station manager, we have Barbara Ruick as Nancy Dekker, a tom-boy army brat with an inferiority complex, and Patricia Tiernan as Lorainne Sayburn, an old flame of the prim and proper lady variety, who basically disappears whenever the shit hits the fan only to reappear to drive a wedge between the other two whenever Nancy, the obviously right choice for Tom, makes any headway during the lulls.

Again, Kress does better in the aggressive action set-pieces than the passive melodrama. The battle sequences are the true highlights, and the scene where Roland deftly gets the drop on Lynn and Morgan and the silent stare-down / war of nerves that follows as Herrara makes his play for the gold shipment is worth the price of a spin alone.

Now, despite its passive / aggressive nature, Apache War Smoke also deserves some props for its forward thinking in some aspects. There easily could've been a derogatory racial element involved that could've horribly dated the picture, but ethnicity is just a mere coincidence in the territories and Kress wisely ignores it -- though some could argue that Roland comes off too clownish and stereotypical but I still insist he has the chutzpah to pull it off.

No one raises a stink when young Luis, who is half-Mexican and half-Indian, makes known his crush on Nancy. Sure, the others rib him over this, but no one is frothingly aghast over it. And I love how all the women, especially Ruick and Farrell and the station cook, pitch in during the fighting, and how Ruick proves Horton's perfect fit for frontier life and gets both the last word and puts her man in his place when he tries to re-establish proper gender roles once the shooting stops.

And once again, the "bad guy" proves infinitely more charismatic than the hero. Notions that both Budd Boetticher and Sergio Leone would pick up and run away with a few years later in films ranging from The Tall T (1957) to A Fistful of Dollars (1964).

I also appreciated how the true culprit behind the massacre wasn't any of the usual suspects (-- the bandit or the overly-worried about what's in the strong-box stage-line manager); and while the final reveal may seem a bit of a cheat it makes perfect sense if you take a step back and think about it. One of the many reasons why Apache War Smoke is well worth your time. 

Originally posted on November 27, 2012 at Micro-Brewed Reviews. 

Apache War Smoke (1952) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / P: Hayes Goetz / D: Harold Kress / W: Jerry Davis, Ernest Haycox / C: John Alton / E: Newell P. Kimlin / M: Alberto Colombo / S: Gilbert Roland, Glenda Farrell, Robert Horton, Barbara Ruick, Patricia Tiernan, Harry Morgan, Robert Blake