Complaining About The Comancheros

Pandemic, death, cancer, inflation, political instability, people who won’t wear their stupid masks at the gym… of all the things happening in the world, you know what really ticks me off today?

The Comancheros, starring and ghost-directed by John Wayne.

It’s been nearly a year since I watched it and it till makes me mad for being a stupid piece of trash.  Here’s my biggest beeves with this crapfest:

• The main character, Paul Regret, starts the story in 1843 New Orleans by killing a US Army officer in a duel over a woman.  He flees the country for the then-independent Republic of Texas. Despite his name, he never shows regret over the killing.  This is our hero.  
• The main character, Paul Regret, starts the story in 1843 New Orleans by killing a US Army officer in a duel over a woman.  He flees the country for the then-independent Republic of Texas. Despite his name, he never shows regret over the killing.  This is our hero.
• The movie goes on with a range of shootouts, Indian attacks, and double crossing.  The “Comanches” look like someone’s idea of northern plains Cheyenne from central casting, and their scenes are mostly just groups riding in formation at the camera with lots of disjointed yelling and shooting in the air.  If you’ve noticed the label “Outdated Cultural Reference” on movies lately, it’s because of nonsense like this.
• By the end of the film, the entire body of Texas Rangers (led by Wayne) outright lies to United States authorities about Regret’s whereabouts and actions so he can avoid being held responsible for his actions.  Again, these are the heroes.

Why does this film still bother me, a year after I watched it?  Perhaps because it’s a little close to the “Ra! Ra! Truth, Justice, American Way! Law & Order! As long as it’s convenient and doesn’t conflict with my poorly defined sense of personal freedom!  January 6 was an FBI plot!  It was ANTIFA!  It was a peaceful protest!  F your feelings!  Own the libs!” attitude that my least favorite cable news promotes.

Qanon Shaman and Congressman Gaetz would fit right in with Wayne's Texas Rangers

(Before the flame begins, IMHO their competitor is almost as bad and I find John Stewart and Rush Limbaugh equally contemptable).

The Comancheros is also filled with a bewildering number of errors and anachronisms that a viewer with an even vague grasp of history and geography will note; the following list comes (with light editing) from the Internet Movie Database.

• The shootouts use guns that are completely anachronistic; the guns used in the movie are Colt single action revolvers model 1873, Henry lever action rifle look-alikes model 1860, and Winchester lever action rifles model 1892. The only correct period guns used were the single-shot percussion-cap dueling pistols used in the opening scene
•  John Wayne is shown wearing a Texas Ranger Badge. These badges were not introduced until the 1880s, 37 years after the year the movie story takes place (1843).
• There is a reference of guns being stolen from Fort Sill and a character having served five years in Yuma Territorial Prison. As the film is supposedly set before 1848, neither is possible. Yuma Territorial Prison was opened in 1876, while Fort Sill was first established in 1869. Both occurred after Texas voted to become a state.
• The movie takes place in 1843, but the song Red Wing (sung at various times throughout the movie) was not written until 1907.
• The White cowboy characters wear vaquero-style cowboy boots which were not commonly worn by Americans until around the time of the Civil War. Anglos did not wear vaquero style clothing as that could have resulted in their being mistaken for Mexicans or even the eponymous Comancheros, the film's antagonists.
• The majority of characters, including the lead actors, are shown to be clean-shaven which was rare at the time, especially outside of areas where clean water wasn't readily available. Additionally, most men wore at least a mustache, if not a full beard as it was the fashion at the time.
• Several characters wear pants with belts running through the available belt loops even though this was not the custom until the 1920s at the earliest.
• Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman) mentions to Melinda Marshall (Joan O'Brien} that he understands that her husband had been dead for four years. She answers that he was killed at the Battle of San Jacinto. The movie takes place in 1843 and the Battle of San Jacinto was fought in 1836, seven years earlier, not four.
• Wayne’s character is supposedly taking Regret back to New Orleans, Louisiana from Galveston, Texas after they get off the paddle wheel steamboat. The land on that route along the Gulf coast of Texas and East Texas does not have mountains, buttes or mesas.
• The Texas Rangers are presented like a squad that congregated around a headquarters and rode out like a posse. In fact, there were very few rangers and each was assigned a territory of thousands of square miles. Modern day rangers have offices in various locations around the state with a handful assigned to each office.
• The central headquarters in Austin, as depicted, is in an arid location surrounded by mesas, sand and scrub. In fact, Austin is very green, filled with rivers and lakes, and has the same relative humidity as Honolulu, Hawaii.

Watch it for the scenes with Lee Marvin, though, he’s great.