Harold Kress was primarily an editor, Apache War Smoke being one of the only three films he directed, in 1951 and 1952. Not surprisingly the film is well edited, especially in the more active scenes of Apache attacks on a stagecoach station in the Southwest, with the staff and stagecoach passengers fighting off the attackers. The enclosed spaces of the station are beautifully photographed in black-and-white by the estimable John Alton, whose brilliant cinematography was most effectively used in the films of Anthony Mann, such as Raw Deal (1948). The script was written by Jerry Davis, who worked mostly in television, based on a story by Ernest Haycox, who also wrote the story that was the basis for John Ford's Stagecoach (1939).
The cast includes Hank Worden, a member of John Ford's stock company, and stars Gilbert Roland, an outlaw known as Peso, and Robert Horton as Peso's estranged son Tom. who manages the stage station. Relations between the passengers become complicated and tense, with Apaches attacking the station in search of a murderer; gold from the stagecoach locked in box in a storeroom; a triangle of Tom, Nancy (stagecoach passenger and Tom's former lover, played by Barbara Ruick), and Lorraine (Patricia Tiernan), passing through with her soldier father. Fanny Wilson (a vibrant Glenda Farrell), another stagecoach passenger, is a former lover of Peso's. Also present is Cyril Snowden (Gene Lockhart), a rather pompous employee of the stagecoach company who turns out to be pretty handy with a rifle.
The film effectively demonstrates the tensions between the pioneering stagecoach routes and the Native Americans in a part of the country where there is no official law yet, as well as the tensions between those who follow the law and those who choose not to do so. Kress's biggest achievement is not so much the effective battle scenes as creating individuals beneath the surface of the somewhat stereotyped characters, especially considering that the film is only 67 minutes long.
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