Vicious, nearly psychotic Jack Remy (Oates) and his gang shoot up a Western town, killing its inhabitants, and streak for the border. All that stands between them and Mexico is the Rio Grande, fordable only by a rope ferry operated by Travis (Van Cleef), the ferryman or "barquero." By the time the gang makes it to the river, however, Travis and the locals have escaped to the far side, leaving both groups of characters on the wrong side of the river from where they want to be. Travis and his bizarre sidekick, the woodsman Mountain Phil (Tucker), don't really care about the townspeople, but the barquero is not about to let Remy burn his barge, so a war of nerves and attrition ensues. This 1970 American film, directed by longtime workhorse Gordon Douglas ("Them!" and several 1960s Sinatra cop movies are among his nearly 100 credits) and written by a team who did the "Branded" and "Wild, Wild West" TV series, clearly shows the influence of Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns, yet is a solid and underappreciated Western in its own right.
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The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
