zardoz-13 Gordon Douglas' "Fort Dobbs" is a sturdy, black & white, Warner Brothers' western that provided Clint Walker with his first starring role. Previously, Walker had appeared in several movies in supporting roles and starred in the television series "Cheyenne." Walker plays a rugged westerner who killed another man for beating up his girlfriend. Gar Davis doesn't know his way around women and he pays the price when he latches onto a no-good dame who plays him for a fool. When our hero is out of town, his darling is loving it up with any man she can attract with her wiles. She is badly beaten up by one man, and Gar goes after him to give him similar treatment. Things get a little out of hand for Gar and he has to kill his adversary after the ruffian tries to kill him with a shotgun. At this point, our hero lights out with a posse pursuing him straight into the desert where the Comanches have decided to hit the war path. The pugnacious Native Americans have killed one man with an arrow in the back. Gar swaps coats and dumps the corpse over a cliff with his coat on so that Largo Sheriff (Russ Conway) and his men initially believe that they have found Gar's corpse. To throw the posse off her trial, Gar lets them take his horse after they find his body. Later that evening, Gar tries to steal a horse from a nearby ranch, but Chad Gray (Richard Eyer of "The Desperate Hours") wounds him with his breechloader. When he recovers, Gar admits to Celia Gray (Virginia Mayo of "Colorado Territory") that he was indeed trying to steal a horse. He has seen the Comanches on the war path and persuades Celia and her son Chad to accompany him to the nearest cavalry fort: Fort Dobbs.Douglas doesn't waste time in this lean 90-minute sagebrusher, and he has a good script by future director Burt Kennedy of "Return of the Seven" and "Red Mountain" scribe George W. George. This represented Kennedy's fifth oater. He penned it between writing assignments for Budd Boetticher. Kennedy wrote "The Tall T" before he inked this screenplay and followed it up with an uncredited rewrite on "Buchanan Rides Alone." The screenplay is as lean and mean as this 90 western. Ace lenser William Clothier captures the west in all of its savage beauty and often relies on perspective shots. Brian Keith plays a sleazy cowboy named Clett who is heading to Santa Fe to sell a bunch of Henry repeating rifles. When he intervenes on Gar's behalf, Clett (Keith) demonstrates the ferocity of the 15 shot repeating rifle. Later, when the townspeople flee Largo, they head to Fort Dobbs, and they are in for a surprise. The last man that Gar expected to see at the outpost was none other than the sheriff of Largo. The ending is interesting. Composer Max Steiner of "King Kong" fame furnishes a robust orchestral score that highlight the dramatic revelations. "Fort Dobbs" is a good western, and Douglas borrows from an earlier western "Only the Valiant."

dougdoepke Fugitive Gar Davis (Walker) flees from posse across hostile Comanche territory with woman and small boy (Mayo & Eyer), and encounters old foe, the gun-running Clett (Keith).Fine eyeful of parched southwestern scenery—I counted only one interior (the "hospital" scene) for the entire movie. Sure, Big Clint (not Eastwood) has only one "Yes, ma'm, No, ma'm" demeanor for every scene, but that's okay, even if he didn't get to be the next Gary Cooper. Putting old-pro Gordon Douglas in charge was a shrewd move. Note the stages the awakening Mayo goes through in discovering that, yes, Walker has stripped off her wet clothes. Note too how Douglas gets that infernal glint in Mayo's eyes when she first suspects Clint of murdering her husband—it's almost scary. I also like the way the Indians are credited with some military sense when overturning the wagons to make shooters' barricades. Most important, Douglas knows how to integrate the picturesque terrain into the storyline—catch that great framing of the Walker-Keith shoot-out.Fortunately, Warners got Burt Kennedy to do the script— and on the eve of his outstanding work with the Boetticher-Scott ,(Ranown), cycle of Westerns. I suspect Bryan Keith's charming villain was Kennedy's inspiration since likable baddies was a standard Ranown feature. Yes indeed, Keith steals the show with his easy-going charm—a real contrast to the uptight Walker. At this early stage, Keith was an interesting actor, best at squinty-eyed cowpokes as Sam Peckinpah knew when casting him as lead in Peckinpah's brilliant but short-lived TV series The Westerner (1960).The movie itself may have been a hurry-up job—probably that's why there's no Technicolor despite the great scenery, and probably why we get a recycled plot line from Hondo (1953). I guess the hurry-up was to take advantage of Walker's TV popularity. Still, the movie's a very watchable action-filled adventure. What's more, I don't care if the luscious Mayo was pushing 40, she could put her saddle on my horse any day.

Keith Kjornes In the late 1950's, Warner Brothers was the studio responsible for more westerns on television than any other production company in town (the town being Hollywood, of course!) They made stars out Clint Walker, Ty Hardin, James Garner, Jack Kelly and a host of others who appeared in their half hour and then one hour western dramas, which later became parodies of themselves, as the long running Maverick will prove.Here, they rework the "Hondo" plot (lone gunman rescues a woman and her son after finding her husband dead) and spend two thirds of the movie getting themselves to Fort Dobbs. I'll stop there, because actually, under the considered hand of director Gordon Douglas, this is actually an okay film. Walker gives a very quiet performance but it's his character, so you buy it. Virginia Mayo and Richard Eyer give better performances, one scene with the kid especially cool-- and the standard cowboys vs. Indians plot is made a bit more edgy by the presence of Brian Keith as the bad guy. He doesn't show up until the 30 minute mark, but he steals the show and has a great time playing the bad guy.The final scene is laughable ( not in a good way, sorry to say) but prior to that, the action is okay, inter cut with some out takes from "The Searchers", which don't match the Fort Dobbs footage at all.Contains all the usual Warner Brothers sound effects, gun shots and bodies hitting the ground you've heard hundreds of times. Also, the music was by Max Steiner, which notched it up to a 7 for me.If you get a chance, give it a look. VERY LITTLE studio work, a whole lot out OUT DOOR SHOOTING, another high point.

NewEnglandPat This western follows a familiar genre theme of a loner who comes to the aid of a woman and her son and guides them to safety through Indian country. The plot is spare with a twist of mistaken identity thrown in as an innocent man on the run scrambles to escape a hanging posse hot on his trail. Clint Walker is the reformed gunfighter whose reputation places him on the sheriff's wanted poster as fate takes him to a woman's ranch in the midst of an Indian uprising. Virginia Mayo is the widow and reluctant trail companion of Walker along with her son as they make their way to Fort Dobbs. Brian Keith steals the film as an unsavory gun runner whose rifles play a large part in the Indian attack on the fort. The film is not a polished feature but is a straightforward, no-frills drama and is worth watching.