Sam Peckinpah's debut feature film has more than a touch of the John Fords about it. A feisty heroine played by Maureen O'Hara, great vistas of the west, and a political backdrop of the war between the North and South - all very familiar Western ground. It does though relate to the later films that Peckinpah would make in terms of its underlying violence, theme of vengeance and sense of duality, and if the story seems rather conservative and formulaic there are moments which suggest much more than a Ford copy.

Brian Keith plays the Yankee soldier looking for the former rebel who tried to scalp him. Nameless he is dubbed "Yellowlegs" by the southern outlaws he befriends to be part of a robbery. Unknown to his new friends, he has recognised one of them as the rebel he is looking for. The three head into a local town with a plan of robbing the local bank but before they can, someone gets there ahead of them and they become involved in a shootout where Keith accidentally kills a single mother's son. Grief stricken but wanting to hold onto his revenge, Keith follows the woman(O'Hara) as she tries to transport her dead son through Apache territory to be buried with his father. His comrades go along with him but try to rape her and Keith is forced to choose between his obligation to her and the revenge he has waited for for five long years.

Deadly Companions reunited Peckinpah with Brian Keith after their work together on the TV series, The Westerner. It features a screenplay adapted from the novel by the original author and a strong cast, but what makes the film an interesting debut is how it tries to avoid the clichés that its unoriginal premise and elements sets the film up for. The film doesn't completely avoid the traps of weak female characterisation, hackneyed dialogue and Keith as a John Wayne substitute, but it tries hard to throw some new light on familiar ideas. For instance, the Apaches in the film are portrayed with more character than was usual for the genre and the lead in the film is a vengeful man who can only kill by mistake. The unusual screenplay makes great play of the position of the single mother and the bourgeois whispering against her and O'Hara's nobility and assertiveness is at times rather impressive compared with the impotent and useless men around her. Still, the film eventually can only place O'Hara back as a love interest rather than a strong woman whose example shames the intensely masculine Keith.

The set-up of the story is another intriguing twist on the genre with both the conventional handsome gunman forsaken for a scarred impotent avenger, and the idea of scalping taken away from its usual Indian hosts and made a symbol of emasculation between white cowboys. Other twists in genre pre-conceptions involve the nobility of O'Hara as the saloon room whore, her role in ending the siege of the Apaches and the less than impressive religious customs of the town such as church services held in the saloon and a re-categorised Sabbath. This quirkiness is  very palatable and a real sign of how Peckinpah would more extensively re-invigorate the genre and Peckinpah creates a real mood of nastiness in the threat of the violence even with keeping the visual portrayals rather conservative. But this temperance is also a problem and an irony as Peckinpah creates an anti-violent Western which under emphasises the consequences of the carnage in its attempts to stick to propriety. Peckinpah was later to solve this issue with his stylised approach to action and excess, and particularly masculinity.

Deadly Companions is rather good and any loss of effectiveness is because of the lack of maturity of the director and the genre serving elements of the project. When it is at its best, it is formidable and intriguing, and when it is merely ok it is generic. The former thankfully outweighs the latter and this is well worth seeking out.