William Shatner plays a dual role as half-breed twin brothers in Spanish helmer José Briz Méndez’s hell-bent-for-leather sagebrusher, “White Comanche,” co-starring Joseph Cotton and Rosanna Yanni. Shatner made this low-budget oater while on hiatus from “Star Trek.” Although neither Méndez nor co-scripter Manuel Gómez Rivera earned any writing credit as scribes, they must have retooled the original screenplay by longtime Hollywood writers Robert I. Holt and Frank Gruber. These two Yanks boasted far more writing credits than Mendez and Rivera together. Indeed, apart from writing with Méndez, Rivera had only one earlier script credit, and it was for a short subject! Comparably, Holt had penned teleplays for many popular, prime-time television series, including “Hunter,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Cannon,” and “S.W.A.T.” Comparably, not only was Frank Gruber a published author with several western novels to his credit, but he also inked scripts for several episodic western television shows, among them “Shotgun Slade,” “Tales of Wells Fargo,” “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp,” and Rory Calhoun’s “The Texan.” Presumably, since he was a specialist in the field of frontier western fiction, Gruber may have polished this horse opera.
Neither brother backs down from their inevitable clash in “White Comanche,” and the conflict ends efficiently with a showdown about a half-hour into the action. Basically, a Native American chieftain who craves Peyote with a passion, Notah (William Shatner of “The Outrage”), wants to wipe out all whites! Incidentally, for those who know little about it, peyote is a hallucinogenic substance containing mescaline. Moreover, apart from a renegade or two, Notah’s tribe stands behind him. Unlike his bad-tempered brother, Johnny Moon (William Shatner) remains the level-headed one of the twins. Nevertheless, he realizes with grim fortitude he must kill the bloodthirsty Notah before his unhinged sibling incites a frontier holocaust.
Mendez introduces us to Notah as he waylays a stagecoach. The chieftain orders his braves to kill the passengers in the coach as well as the driver and the shotgun guard. Just before he is about to depart from the scene of this cold-blooded carnage, Notah catches a whiff of perfume and discovers a lady, Kelly (Rosanna Yanni of “Sonny and Jed”), hidden in the coach. Predictably, after he chases her down in the rocks, Notah rapes this frightened dame but then surprisingly turns her loose! Afterward, she manages to make it back to the town of Rio Hondo on her own where she works in a saloon. She swears the town lawman, Sheriff Logan (Joseph Cotton of “Citizen Kane”), to silence about her ordeal. Clearly, Kelly doesn’t want her boss to know about the unfortunate circumstances of her encounter with the renegade Comanche who defiled her.
Meanwhile, Johnny Moon is tracking down his nefarious twin brother when a group of vigilantes jump him. Mind you, this constitutes a case of mistaken identity since these owlhoots plan to string up Johnny because they believe is Notah. In their struggle to slip a noose around his neck, Johnny manages to escape his fumbling captors. The hangmen catch up their mounts, but they fail to capture our hero. Later, Johnny rides into Notah’s village and challenges to him to a duel in Rio Hondo.
Shatner does an adequate job as both hero and villain. Literally, he turns in a performance reminiscent of Robert Lewis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." When he is decked out in cowboy duds, his Johnny Moon is "Dr. Jekyll." Johnny is the good guy, while Notah is "Mr. Hyde." Hollywood had not perfected the technology to place an actor facing himself in the same shot when “White Comanche” came out, or the producers couldn't afford it, so we never see the faces of both brothers eyeballing each other in the same shot. The writers do furnish some expository information about their lives. Eventually, Johnny Moon reveals his eyes are blue, while Notah has black eyes. Essentially, Shatner appears to have performed all his stunts. Watch the saloon brawl. During one moment in this fracas, Shatner and his opponent swap blows with each other in real time, and the camera follows them without cutting away from them as they demolish saloon. Shatner’s face is always visible during this white-knuckled donnybrook. He spends quite a bit of time also in the saddle. At one point, Notah hurls himself from the horse he is riding to one of the team pulling the stagecoach. He brings those horses to a halt, while his braves start slaughtering passengers.
The final showdown in this nimble, 94-minute opus resembles a Medieval jousting tournament. The twins charge each other on horseback down the main street of Rio Hondo, slinging lead at each other. To heighten the suspense, the filmmakers have Shatner riding bare-chested, so it isn’t immediately clear who dies until the moment of revelation. Nevertheless, Johnny Moon does kill his blood brother. “White Comanche” boasts solid production values. The rugged Spanish scenery substituted suitably for the old West, but some goofs are apparent in the frantic production schedule of his western. Meantime, Joseph Cotton is still spry enough to indulge in a shootout or two and intervene on Johnny’s behalf when everybody in town believes Johnny is Notah.
Altogether, the formulaic “While Comanche” is hardly Oscar winning material, but at least it isn’t an embarrassing oater. Since this low-budget film was shot quickly to accommodate Shatner, he doesn’t adopt the traditional, fright wigs worn by his braves. Instead, Shatner maintains his “Star Trek” haircut as Notah, with the mere addition of a tribal headband. The only concession is Notah wears war paint smeared. Veteran lenser Francisco Fraile’s cinematography is flawless. Between Fraile and Méndez, the camera is always in the appropriate place to cover the action. Unfortunately, composer Jean Ledrut’s mundane orchestral score consists of somebody thumping monotonous cords on a base fiddle. Otherwise, production values stand up to scrutiny for a movie that amounts to a curiosity piece in Shatner’s resume.
