The Last Wagon

Widmark plays the anti-hero who comes to the aid of teenagers who survived an Indian attack. As usual widmark is great and i esp loved the hateful sheriff played by george matthews who is gonna turn criminal widmark in for the reward . He treats widdy just awful and eventually widmark cleaves him open with a hatchet!!! You don't get to see the hatchet land, but it's still a great scene cause the slimeball had it comin'. Three teenage girls in the film are very attractive and the scenery is spectacular. I won't tell the ending of course, but lets just say it's pretty sappy and didn't jibe with the rest of the movie which was quite cynical. All in all, surprisingly good for a 50 year old western. I'll give it a B+.

Twentieth Century Fox often gave us excellent westerns pulled by terrific scripts, involving more than action sequences, but psychology and deep character study. Hank Hathaway, Ed Dmytryck and Delmer Daves are the true examples of what I say. Big juicy grade A stuff; maybe Richard Fleischer made too intellectual westerns. For my taste anyway. In this one, Richard Widmark is at his best, in a very interesting character, a White raised by the Indians. In many westerns, we could see the contrary. The Indians Whites relationship and social analysis is deeply evoked in this western, one of the best of the period, made by a specialist.

It was great viewing this 1956 film and enjoying the great acting of a very young Richard Widmark,(Comanchi Todd), "Garden of Evil",'54, where he plays a very well experienced man who can deal with almost any situation and understands the Native Americans like a book. The film has great photography through out the entire picture and brings you back to the Old West and the troubles that men and women had to face in the wilderness. Susan Kohner,(Jolie Normand), gave a great supporting role along with Nick Adams,(Ridge), both these characters had their own feels toward Comanchi Todd and some doubted if he was man enough to get them out of many death threatening situations. Comanchi Todd had his problems with a Wagon Wheel and I thought he was never going to get himself away from its burden of weight. If you are a fan of Richard Widmark, you will greatly enjoy this film which he made into a great Western Classic.

The Last Wagon is a film with some good intentions and some very good moments, but it could have been a whole lot better. A really brutal sheriff played by George Matthews brings a prisoner in to a small wagon train. By his manner he puts off a whole lot of the wagon train member. They start having some sympathy with prisoner Richard Widmark. When some of the young people of the train go off and frolic in a midnight swim, they return and find the Apaches have massacred the train except for one survivor. Widmark survived by a fluke I won't reveal. Widmark's a white man who lived with the Comanches and he's the only one who might insure the survival of the rest. Reluctantly they trust him and the adventure begins. Widmark's is the only really developed character in The Last Wagon, the rest have some strange motivations and attitudes that are not fully explained. Still their are some exciting sequences in the film and it can be enjoyed on that level.

As with the same year's BACKLASH, star Richard Widmark puts his stamp of authority on what otherwise might have been a routine Western. He ends up guiding what's left of a wagon train family to safety from the Apaches. Most of the survivors are not exactly thrilled with this wild and wooly frontiersman leading them anywhere, and it is all Widmark can do to keep them from painting big red targets on each other's chests and backs for the Indians to shoot at. LASSIE's Tommy Rettig is the juvenile in the group. The female leads are great to look at in a 1956 kind of way. With the exception of Nick "Johnny Yuma" Adams, none of the rest of this cast is particularly well known, but veteran director Delmer Daves keeps them in line and believable as a group of frightened tenderfeet. James Drury, who would go on to fame as THE VIRGINIAN on TV, is in the film for bit.