Rawhide: Incident of Iron Bull (VHS)

Christian Nyby (The Thing) directed this thoughtful, eloquent, and superbly acted Rawhide episode. Michael Ansara guest stars as Joseph, a Comanche who a short-handed Rowdy Yates (Clint Eastwood) hires for the cattle drive. Racial tensions within the camp ("Once a Comanche, always a Comanche") are heightened with the arrival of Colonel Macklin (James Whitmore), who led a massacre of the Comanche and is in defiance of a recently signed treaty. The paranoid and increasingly unstable Macklin is gunning for Chief Iron Bull, who he has never seen but is convinced that he "is out to get me." Trail boss Gil Favor (Eric Fleming) warns Macklin that "our business is driving cattle, not fighting Indians." But Macklin's taunts ("Maybe Chief Iron Bull is hiding with the women," he challenges tribal elders) and the tragic shooting of an Indian boy sets the stage for a showdown, unless Gil turns over to the Comanche "a gift": Macklin. Whitmore gives an Emmy-worthy performance. His climactic recounting of the massacre he led is chilling. Another standout is veteran character Richard X. Slattery as the camp's most venal racist. --Donald Liebenson