fredcdobbs5 Disgraced Indian scout and his sidekick lead a wagon train carrying freight through Kiowa country to Mexico. John Payne is the scout, Slim Pickens is his sidekick and Rod Cameron and Faith Domergue are the wagon train "bosses". Director William Witney was an expert at making tight, fast-moving westerns, but he had a bad day here. Except for a well-handled wild-horse stampede and a couple of slightly less well-handled Indian attacks, this picture moves like molasses, with performances ranging from enjoyable (Pickens) to stiff (Cameron) to indifferent (Domergue) to awful (Irene Tedrow as a Kiowa "squaw" accompanying Domergue on the train). Payne looks like he'd rather be somewhere else and doesn't connect at all with Domergue, his ostensible love interest. Only Pickens and Leo Gordon as a villainous (what else?) trail boss manage to breathe any life into their characters, and the script holds no surprises for anyone (especially the "twist" ending). An OK time-waster, that's about all.

bkoganbing Some rather questionable character motivations make this particular Republic western something of a mixed bag for me. John Payne's dislike of Indians and his distrust of mixed blood people make it a rough road in courting Faith Domergue who is half Indian. Santa Fe Passage casts John Payne as a frontier scout who lost his last wagon train going to Santa Fe because of some bad judgment he made about the Kiowas and their chief. Now he and sidekick Slim Pickens can't get a job in their profession and have a lot of people ready to shoot them on sight. That is until Domergue and her partner Rod Cameron hire them over the objections of Leo Gordon their trail boss. They're taking a shipment of rifles to Mexico for sale and of course that perks up interest among the Kiowas.There was a little too much doublecrossing and all the males of the cast Payne, Cameron, and Gordon are thinking with their male members and truly beyond reason. Even Slim Pickens gives Domergue more than a second glance. The plot made little sense to me, but the action was pretty good.

Spikeopath John Payne plays Kirby Randolph, a disgraced Indian scout who along with his trusty side-kick Sam Beekman (Slim Pickens) finally gets hired by Aurelie St. Clair (Faith Domergue) & Jess Griswold (Rod Cameron) to escort a wagon load of guns through Indian territory. With the past hanging over him like a bad smell and the Indians on their trail, the last thing Kirby needs is Aurelie catching his eye. Especially since she's Griswold's girl. This is sure to be one perilous and life changing journey.There's a lot of common words been used in reviews for this William Witney directed film. Routine, different, exciting, boring & unusual, all of which proves just how divisive cinema can be. Adapted by Lillie Hayward from an Esquire Magazine story written by Heck Allen, Santa Fe Passage is out of Republic Pictures and is shot in the Trucolor process on location at St. George, Utah {Bud Thackery photographs}. Personally speaking I found the film something of a chore to get thru, which in a Western that has a high action quota is some what surprising to me. A lot of it can be put down to the wooden acting from the principals and the rather bland screenplay.Payne never convinced in Western's, and here he is showed up by the reliable Pickens. In fact ex-convict Leo Gordon who is also in the piece would probably have been a better choice for the lead role of Kirby! Domergue is a picture of doe eyed sexuality, her engaging features benefiting from one of Republic's better color prints, but she struggles with the meandering script and looks bored in love scenes with old stiff Payne. Worst of the bunch tho is Irene Tedrow as squaw Ptewaquin, if you manage not to laugh then you deserve a medal.The failings in the cast are a shame because Witney manfully does a good job with the action. A horse stampede and two Indian attacks are real entertaining highlights fit to be in some other higher budgeted Western. But then the focus has to revert back to uninteresting characters being given uninteresting portrayals. It's clear what the makers were trying to do. The old Anti-Western/Anti-Racist core to be mixed with action and a potential complex love triangle, looks good on paper. But when you come out of the film only remembering Domergue's green eyes and an unintentional comedy squaw character, well you got problems. A creaky 4/10 from me.

dougbrode Perhaps most interesting about this memorable B+ western is that it's the only Republic color western that doesn't look like a Republic color western - meaning that their usual color film stock, which makes everything appear to be a bizarre blend of soft blues and hot pinks, is not what we see. Rather, this looks (and feels) like one of oaters that Columbia Studios churned out at that time, particularly in terms of the color stock that was employed, and the only dead give away that this is indeed from Republic is the presence of Rod Cameron, one of their stock company members, as the second male lead who veers back and forth between being an okay fellow and a total villain, adding a patina of interest to the characterization. The plot itself is quite fascinating: John Payne plays a frontier scout who, along with his gruff sidekick (Slim Pickens), was disgraced when he tried to trick some Indians into letting his wagon train through hostile territory and inadvertently got the pioneers massacred. No one will hire him until he gets a job with a 'questionable' train run by Cameron and a gorgeous woman (Faith Domergue). Cameron wants to marry her, and doesn't care one whit that she's a halfbreed. But Payne, who has developed a fierce and vicious prejudice against all Indians owing to the despoiling of his reputation, fumes at her racial background - even as he too falls in love with her, creating an intriguing romantic triangle. Ultra PC types might mistake this for a racist western, though in truth its anti-western, as the hero arcs away from his own absurd prejudices and comes to accept her as a person. Slim Pickens is, as always, a joy to watch, particularly when high atop his bucking mule that would also be used in Walt Disney's THE SAGA OF ANDY BURNETT two years later. Terrific skirmishes with the Indian warriors, all of them well staged by William Witney, an old hand at above average B westerns.