Andre de Toth's Last of the Comanches was an above average western for its time, filled with superior acting at every level and built around a suspenseful story and premise. A cavalry patrol, commanded by the senior-ranking non-com (Broderick Crawford), and augmented by the presence of some stranded travelers, starts out across the desert with a large Comanche war party in pursuit, only to discover that they may hold the key to breaking the Comanches' hold on the territory -- if they're willing to risk everything in a gambit over water, which both the soldiers and the native Americans need desperately. If that plot sounds familiar, it should -- the script is an unacknowledged re-write of Zoltan Korda's Sahara (1943), starring Humphrey Bogart, the latter scripted by James O'Hanlon and John Howard Lawson (and, in turn, based on a 1936 Soviet film entitled The Thirteen). And, as an odd bit of trivia, Lloyd Bridges plays important roles in both Korda's movie and De Toth's picture. He, Crawford, Barbara Hale, George Mathews, Johnny Stewart, Martin Milner, Milton Parsons, and the rest of the cast all acquit themselves well in a movie where the action ought to have dominated every aspect of the film -- De Toth doesn't short-change us there, but he leaves lots of room for the cast to show off what they can do with dialogue and characterization, and the result is a surprisingly rewarding viewing experience, and one of the better remakes of its kind. And Charles Lawton's and Ray Cory's color cinematography is not to be passed over lightly, either.