Very Cool!!!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

A bounty hunter (Glenn Ford) takes in the son (Michael Burns) of a man he killed.I have never been a huge fan of the western genre. Some are incredible, but most seem to be rather blah. One could say that about any genre, I suppose. I mean, heck, I love horror and I would be the first to admit that most of it is garbage. But it is garbage that still generally entertains me. The western, for the most part, is not something I understand.This one is alright. Adopting a kid (who is really more of a young adult) in the west is a good story, and Glenn Ford is a decent actor. As far as the genre goes, this is very much middle ground.

Nothing spectacular about this movie. An aging Glenn Ford carried it as well as any other he's done.Michael Burns did very well in his role. Just a shame that he gave it all away a few years later.An older Jay Silverheels was good to see, after starring in the Lone Ranger, a few decades before this movie was made. Not sure I've ever heard him speak so many lines. :-)The ending was nonsensical and unnecessary. Life could have gone on just as Santee and his wife wished, however, for some reason, the screenwriter and/or director decided to disappoint the viewer.Worth a look, if you enjoy Ford's work, but that's about it.

Watching "Santee" on the Encore Western Channel wound up leaving a lot more questions than answers for me on a number of different levels. The most troublesome aspect of the story was young Jody Deakes' (Michael Burns) willing team up with Santee (Glenn Ford) following the confrontation and killing of his father. That seemed like just a little too much of a stretch from both sides of the coin. Putting myself in Jody's shoes, and even if my old man was an outlaw, I think at the very least I'd be looking to ride off and be glad I didn't catch a bullet myself. From Santee's perspective, there was always the distinct possibility that Jody could turn on him at a moment's notice, particularly after Jody made it an obvious threat.So there's that. But even before the showdown that took out the elder Deakes (Robert J. Wilke), I was left wondering how much of a bad a-- Santee could possibly be that Deakes preferred to take it on the lam rather than have his gang mount a stand against him. There was ample time and distance to set up an ambush, even if Santee could have taken out a couple of them which would have seemed likely. I don't know, the whole story didn't seem to be set on a firm foundation, and I found myself scratching my head more than once.But it was cool to see Jay Silverheels in a non-Tonto characterization as Santee's friend and hired hand. He showed a much greater range of acting ability than we ever got a chance to see as Lone Ranger's sidekick. When he got misty eyed at the thought of Santee riding off to face the Banner's, I was reminded of that memorable anti-pollution commercial of the era in which Iron Eyes Cody shed a tear for a troubled environment; seems to me that Silverheels might have been just as effective. And speaking of Silverheels/Tonto, I was intrigued by the appearance of John Hart's name in the opening credits. Though I couldn't pick him out in the picture as the character Cobbles, I was hoping to catch a glimpse of him and Silverheels in a scene together. Not many fans know that Hart appeared in a little over fifty episodes as The Lone Ranger when Clayton Moore sat out a season in a contract dispute.Another puzzling aspect of the picture had to do with the cinematography. As gorgeous and bright as the the daytime landscape scenes appeared to be, they were offset by the murky, almost muddy night time and darkened interior photography. I think a few other reviewers on this board might have offered an insight into that, as this was an early attempt to film with videotape. It wasn't enough to distract from the picture too much, but it did leave another one of those question marks.And for the biggest question mark of all - what was with that song 'Jody' ??? It sounded so out of place in a Western drama that I had trouble containing a compulsion to laugh out loud. Performed by Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders no less, not the creative association I would have come up with if I were producing this picture. But I didn't, so that's that.Anyway, Glenn Ford fans will want to catch him in one of his final leading roles, but that might be the single reason to recommend watching "Santee". Even so, I had to wince a few times, that is, whenever he got up on his horse - I didn't think he'd make it. In addition to his arsenal, he was packing on quite a few pounds at this stage of his career. He may have had a feared reputation as a bounty hunter, but he sure was no Josh Randall.

Few people remember that SANTEE was one of the very first feature films (and almost definitely the first Western) shot on videotape. Noted character actor Ed Platt, famous for his role as "The Chief" in the TV series GET SMART, reportedly invested his own money in this film, intending to champion the concept of shooting movies economically on videotape.The process used portable Philips (aka Norelco) video cameras and primitive Ampex 2" videotape recorders, which they powered via batteries while shooting on-location the desert and in and around California and Nevada. A 1973 issue of AMERICANCINEMATOGRAPHER covered the work done by director of photography Don Morgan and his crew, and went in-depth on the differences between shooting on film and shooting on video. Sadly, SANTEE was a flop in theaters, and Ed Platt lost his money and died less than a year after the movie was released.Three decades later, innovative filmmakers like Robert Rodriguez and George Lucas are using digital video gear to shoot movies. Ed Platt was definitely ahead of his time on SANTEE; sadly, he never lived to see the technology get to the point where it would work.