Like Howard Hawks did with Rio Bravo, El Dorado, and Rio Lobo, Budd Boetticher and Burt Kennedy recycled elements of The Tall T and Seven Men From Now over and over again. Some viewers take no issue with this. Some even enjoy Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station more than its ancestors. However, I believe the latter variations of their formula provide diminishing returns.
Comanche Station steals blatantly from the previous films: another dead wife backstory, an abandoned outpost, the bounty hunter buddies, and competition between two men over a bounty. The most embarrassing theft might be the scene where Claude Akins tells a story that reflects the exact situation they’re in, just as Lee Marvin did (and did better) in Seven Men From Now. The sequence even ends the same way, with a punch in the face from Randolph Scott.
It’s not that I don’t like Comanche Station; it’s a solid western but I question the worth of repeating what worked, and often times worked better, in other movies. Why not do something new? That’s the question I would ask Budd and Burt if they were sitting here. Sadly they’re not.
The one unique thing about this film is the last scene. It’s quite an ending.
Watched on YouTube
