Perhaps GUNFIGHT AT COMANCHE CREEK is a reprise of other Westerns, and by 1963 having a Reed Hadley voiceover narrate events as happened in 1950s FBI-related docunoir movies came somewhat late in the day, but that does not detract from the solidity of the script by Edward Bernds, or the detail-attentive direction by Frank MacDonald, formerly a railroad worker who climbed to directing Gene Autry and Roy Rogers Westerns in the late 1930s through the 1940s.
Effective photography and a script premise that is as interesting as it is credible: a gang keeps springing criminals from jail, and forcing them to commit holdups, robberies and other crimes so as to pump up their "wanted dead or alive" reward money, and rendering them the fall guys in the eyes of the law before handing them over to the law - dead, naturally. So, guess what, lady charmer Audie Murphy is jailed and given a "wanted" poster so he can slip into the gang as an undercover agent, thereby exposing himself to great dangers... well, nothing that the real Audie had not experienced before.
Adam Williams plays the usual heavy with a temper, Deforest Kelly similarly brutal but more cerebral, Ben Cooper a credible baby-faced criminal with a conscience, all part of the vicious gang which, Audie soon suspects, must have a mastermind in high places...
I liked it. 8/10.
Effective photography and a script premise that is as interesting as it is credible: a gang keeps springing criminals from jail, and forcing them to commit holdups, robberies and other crimes so as to pump up their "wanted dead or alive" reward money, and rendering them the fall guys in the eyes of the law before handing them over to the law - dead, naturally. So, guess what, lady charmer Audie Murphy is jailed and given a "wanted" poster so he can slip into the gang as an undercover agent, thereby exposing himself to great dangers... well, nothing that the real Audie had not experienced before.
Adam Williams plays the usual heavy with a temper, Deforest Kelly similarly brutal but more cerebral, Ben Cooper a credible baby-faced criminal with a conscience, all part of the vicious gang which, Audie soon suspects, must have a mastermind in high places...
I liked it. 8/10.