Goofs

When Pa Schofield goes out of the house with the baby in his arms and calls his friends, the baby is completely covered. Cutter's hand is then seen uncovering the baby's face in a close-up. In the next shot, the baby is still completely covered.

As Jake and Regret are delivering their wagon-load of guns, they see a group of Indians on the hilltop. Jake removes a staff with feathers from his side of the wagon and hands it to Regret, saying 'We'll see if this passport works'. The next two quick camera cuts show the staff back on the wagon, then back again in Regret's hands.

In the bar scene: Tully Crow (Lee Marvin) asks the bartender for a bottle of "the good stuff." The bartender holds up a bottle of whiskey with his right hand. Crow, not believing that it really is "the good stuff," gets mad and shoots the bottle and breaks it. The camera view then changes to a stuffed deer head on the wall, which Crow also shoots. When the camera goes back to the bartender, he is standing there with the same bottle of whiskey in his right hand - with the bottle being intact and unbroken.

Inside the boat, Regret is seen to be sleeping on the bed. Suddenly, in the shadow projected on the wall behind the bed, the door opens and the image of Cutter appears. The next shot shows Cutter himself and his shadow is on the door by his left hand.

During Jake's and Regret's visit to the Schofield farmstead, the angle of sunlight and length of the shadows cast by men and horses change markedly between shots. For example, one minute Jake Cutter is talking to Major Henry in what appears to be nearly midday sunlight. The camera angle changes and Jake is watching Major Henry lead off the mounted team of Rangers, but now they are all casting fairly long shadows. Then the action goes back to Paul Regret, but now the sunlight indicates it is somewhere close to mid-day. This random shifting of sunlight and shadow lengths repeats throughout the Schofield scene.

The Texas Rangers are presented to be like a squad that gathered at their headquarters and rode out like a posse. In fact, there were very few Rangers and each was assigned territory consisting of thousands of square miles. Modern-day Rangers have offices in various locations around the state with a handful assigned to each office.

The central headquarters in Austin, as depicted, is in an arid location surrounded by mesas, sand, and scrub brush. However, Austin is very green, filled with rivers and lakes, and has the same relative humidity as Honolulu, Hawaii.

A Mississippi-style riverboat could not safely cruise in the Gulf of Mexico to the port of Galveston, Texas. The free board is too low and any sort of high wave action could swamp the boat. Also, the flat bottom of the boat is not suitable for cruising in open seas.

When McBain is interrogated, Major Henry states that McBain's guns had been stolen from Fort Sill and that McBain had served five years in the Yuma Territorial Prison. As the film is supposedly set before 1848, neither is possible. The Yuma Territorial Prison was opened in 1876, while Fort Sill was first established in 1869. Both occurred after Texas voted to become a state.

Comanches were Plains Indians, hunting buffalo. They didn't live in mountainous areas.

When Capt. Cutter handcuffs Paul Regret to his bed on the boat as he wakes him up, one end of the handcuffs is attached around the narrowing end of the bedpost with nothing seemingly holding it there.

However, the handcuff is secured around a decorative knurled section of the post, which would prevent Regret from simply sliding the handcuff up and off, as some would believe.

Capt. Cutter switches between a black hat and a beige hat several times. As this only happens during separate sections of the story, this is totally reasonable to have happened.

In the final gun battle, when the man in the wagon is shot, instead of seeing his body falling from the wagon, you can see someone throwing the dummy out.

During the last battle, Cutter is shown in a wagon shooting a lever-action rifle left-handed. The film is obviously reversed as the cartridge loading port of the rifle is depicted as being on the left side of the rifle. The cartridge loading port for this rifle is always on the right side.

Obvious use of a dummy in the final escape when Esteban is shot and "falls" out of the wagon.

During the final battle scene, Amelung falls from the wagon with his hands tied behind his back. As he falls, he places his hands in front of himself to catch himself then quickly places them behind his back again as others rush to assist him.

After Horseface hits Regret in the face with the rifle butt, he is approached by Pilar's lackey. While talking to the lackey you can see the rifle butt is bent. The rifle is very obviously a rubber prop.

As the wagon drives away towing the cow and calf, the calf can't keep up and is dragged.

At the end of the Comanchero's raid on the Schofield ranch, Cutter tells Regret to give the handgun back that he's been using to fight off the raiders. Cutter then shoves the gun under his belt, in front. In reality that gun barrel would have been very hot from the gunfight, and would have burned Jake's belly.

The guns used in the movie are Colt Single Action model 1873 revolvers, look-alike Henry lever-action model 1860 rifles, and Winchester model 1892 lever-action rifles. The only correct period guns are the single-shot percussion-cap dueling pistols used in the opening scene.

Cutter is shown wearing a Texas Ranger Badge. These badges were not introduced until the 1880s, 37 years after the year the movie story takes place (1843).

The movie takes place in 1843, but the song Red Wing (sung at various times throughout the movie) was not written until 1907.

Several characters wear pants with belts running through the available belt loops even though this was not the custom until the 1920s at the earliest.

As Jake and Regret are being escorted to the Comanchero hideout, in the middle section of the scene, going from right to left, there is a dark truck and trailer parked in the background. This can be seen just as regret is saying "I wish I had more practice praying."

In the final attack on the Comancheros camp, a camera truck and crew are clearly visible, especially on the Blu-ray version.

Cutter is supposedly taking Regret back to New Orleans, Louisiana, from Galveston, Texas, after they get off the paddlewheel steamboat. The land along the Gulf Coast of Texas and East Texas does not have mountains, buttes, or mesas, as seen here.

The Comancheros' hideout is supposed to be almost impossible to find, yet there are numerous mountains and mesas in the background from which presumably one could see the hideout, especially as fires and lamps are left burning at night.

The White cowboy characters wear vaquero-style cowboy boots which were not commonly worn by Americans until around the time of the Civil War. Anglos did not wear vaquero style clothing as that could have resulted in their being mistaken for Mexicans or even the eponymous Comancheros, the film's antagonists.

Paul Regret mentions to Melinda Marshall that he understands that her husband had been dead for four years. She answers that he was killed at the Battle of San Jacinto. The movie takes place in 1843 and the Battle of San Jacinto was fought in 1836, seven years earlier, not four.

When Graile is telling Jake that they make their own gunpowder, he says that "the nitrates come from their own mines and the saltpeter from deposits to the south". Saltpeter is potassium nitrate (the other ingredients in gunpowder are sulfur and charcoal).

The majority of characters are shown to be clean-shaven, which was rare at the time, especially outside of areas where clean water wasn't readily available. Additionally, most men wore at least a mustache, if not a full beard, as it was the fashion at the time.