The Searchers/YMMV

• Adaptation Displacement: There was a novel?
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Look (Martin's homely Comanche trophy wife) is cringe-inducing in her Modern Minstrelsy....but you will feel bad when you see her corpse after she's massacred during a cavalry raid.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: " "C'mon, Debbie. Let's go home."
• Crowning Moment of Funny: "So he married a Comanche squaw. Hawh! Hawh! Hawh!"
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The song The Searchers, by the Sons of the Pioneers (it starts at 0:19).
• Darker and Edgier: Arguably this is Wayne's bleakest role: it's easy to forget Edwards is a bitter, angry racist and borderline sociopath.
• Harsher in Hindsight: While the racism is meant to make the viewer uncomfortable, modern viewers are still going to be put off far more than the 1950s audience.
• Mood Whiplash: There are several moments of broad comedy obviously shoved in to lighten the mood.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ethan attempts to cross it when he almost kills his niece for marrying a Comanche; he doesn't follow through when he's hit with an arrow.
• Narm: Oh, Lord. Let us count the ways....
  • The atrocious way Lucy Edwards sets her jaw before screaming bloody murder when she realizes that Comanches are approaching the homestead (when a simple Oh Crap expression would have been much more effective).
  • The first time we see Henry Brandon as Scar. He is obviously wearing makeup.
  • The actor playing the Indian corpse early on picked a quite unfortunate moment to take a deep breath.
• Special Effects Failure: A bunch, but most prominently, the "dead" Comanches who are clearly breathing.
• Vindicated by History