Hero, Hero: Audie Murphy, Kenneth Tobey, and 40 GUNS TO APACHE PASS

40 GUNS TO APACHE PASS (1967)

D. William Witney. Stars: Audie Murphy, Kenneth Tobey, and Laraine Stephens. 

A fifth grade dropout from an extremely poor American family, Audie Murphy enrolled in the U.S. Army at the outbreak of World War II, a career choice that saw him become the most decorated American soldier of all time.

After the war, a TIME magazine cover celebrating his service caught the eye of James Cagney, who recognized his charisma and brought the handsome Texan to Hollywood. The result was a film career launched by Jesse Hibbs' TO HELL AND BACK, an adaptation of Murphy's 1949 autobiography that found initially reluctant actor portraying himself in a riveting account of his Army experiences.

Of his 43 theatrical releases, over thirty would be westerns, an impressive track record that would nevertheless become problematic as the genre began to fall out of favor in the latter 1960s. A thoroughly traditional and conventional B-western, 40 GUNS TO APACHE PASS looked positively archaic as it trailed Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy into theaters.

Filmed in Red Rock Hills and Agoura Hills California and released by Columbia Pictures, 40 GUNS TO APACHE PASS (1967) was the one of the final westerns for both Murphy and director William Witney, who earlier shot the war hero-turned actor in 1964's well-received APACHE RIFLES. Regrettably, lightning failed to strike twice, and this promising second collaboration was undermined by a by-the-numbers screenplay that nearly ruined the action with self-conscious narration.

As Witney's prettily-photographed story begins, a rag-tag Arizona cavalry division, under siege from all sides by the Apache nation, is expecting a shipment of repeating rifles desperately needed to defend the tiny outpost of Apache Wells, home to both the military and a hardy group of homesteaders.

For reasons that are never quite clear (despite reams of dialogue and narration that needlessly repeats what we've already witnessed) the impending shipment of weapons drives a wedge between different factions within the calvary. As conflicts boil over, Murphy steps up as Captain Coburn, a man's man whose romance with a settler's daughter (soft-spoken, plush-bodied Laraine Stephens) leads him to mentor her inexperienced younger brothers (Michael Burns and Michael Blodgett) after the family patriarch is unexpectedly killed.

But the internal strife within the Apache Wells community continues to rise as Corporal Bodine (portrayed by the film's other "name" star, Kenneth Tobey of Howard Hawk's THE THING), decides he has other plans for the guns and begins fomenting a spirit of mutiny among his beleaguered fellow officers. A vengeance minded  ex-Confederate warrior with no love in his heart for the straight-laced Coburn, Bodine double-crosses the captain and leaves him for dead.

As the film approaches the third act, Witney wisely moves the action to California's picaresque Red Rock Canyon (a scenic, remote location and an accurate double for the imposing Arizona desert) as a heroic Murphy guards the pass to Apache Wells alone, with just a cache of powerful repeating rifles by his side. Witney's enormous experience in crafting well-orchestrated action is on display throughout this sequence, and composer Richard LaSalle offers able sonic support.

Widely distributed on VHS, 40 GUNS TO APACHE PASS hasn't enjoyed a high-profile release on DVD, although Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has made Witney's full, 96 minute director's cut available for viewing through Amazon Instant Video http://www.amazon.com/40-Guns-to-Apache-Pass/dp/B001NANKO4/ref=cm_cr_pr_orig_subj. It can also be purchased for download http://xfinitytvstore.comcast.net/movies/956373760;jsessionid=5uovep5kj1pa.

In addition to the film's rousing third act, other assets on display include the scenic, 1:85 photography by Witney and and talented cinematographer Richard Marquette, and a deliciously over-the-top performance by screen vet Tobey, who really seemed to light up at the chance to play a villain. But by 1967 the handwriting was on the wall - the traditional American B-western was dead, thanks to the explosion of operatically violent Spaghetti Westerns being imported from Europe.

 
It was a change in public taste that wouldn't be lost on the undefatigable Witney, who though already well into his fifties, would reinvent himself as director of entertaining blaxploitation and prison pictures in the 1970s before returning to the genre one last time for his heavy-hearted 1982 swan song QUELL & CO.

Tragically, Audie Murphy would grace the screen just one more time (in 1969's A TIME FOR DYING) before losing his life in a plane crash at the age of 46. In recognition of his astonishing career in combat, Mr. Murphy's remains were buried, with full U.S. military honors, at Virginia's Arlington National Cemetery.