What a waste of a great cast!

I rewatched this wretched movie today on Encore Westerns. I really don't know why I did it, maybe I was hoping that my mind was changed since I haven't seen it in 10 years or so. But, no, it was still a bad movie.

As the reviewer said, the first hour is not bad, particularly the first 10 minutes where we see Mace (Stewart) rescue Dee (Martin). This whets your appetite to see these two together because they both have such a great screen presence and their personalities really would seem to play off each other well. They are not bad, but the story is not good enough for these two guys.

There is a long "chase" scene which seems to drag on forever. We get to learn about Dee's gang and they are a bunch of scum suckers if there has ever been any. Especially Pop Chaney (Will Geer) who, if he were in my gang, I would have just pulled my gun out and shot him and his son right off. A pair of creeps who, as Mace says, would shoot you in the back in a heartbeat if they could.

But, the worst part of this film is the ending. It was so contrived and silly in concept, it made me literally laugh at some parts. First of all, Mace, Dee, his gang and the girl (Raquel looking scrumptious as always) are in the cantina and the posse finally catches up to them. The bandito gang come riding into town and attack the cantina. They all get guns and, firing through the windows, they kill a lot of the bandito's while in relative safety. Good idea, huh? I guess not because over the next 3 or 4 minutes, the "good guys" come out into the open, shooting at the bad guys with no cover and the bandits just shoot them down like dogs! My first thought was, "why did you go out into the open, shooting when you could have stayed in the building and killed them easily as they kept riding by?" Makes no sense whatsoever. It even has Pop Chaney go out into the street trying to retrieve the saddlebags (which holds the money from the bank robbery) while people are shooting at him and he finally gets killed. His idiot son goes out and the same happens to him. It's a good thing that these creeps aren't too smart.

Of course, with the banditos continually just riding around on their horses and the defenders are behind thick walls, it's sort of like a carnival mechanical duck shooting booth. Just stand still, take aim and finish them off. But, that would have made this fight scene last about an hour longer than it should and this thing needed to be ended before the audience would have fallen asleep or walked out.

But the scene that makes me laugh is when Maria (Raquel) starts to screaming like a hysterical woman, albeit it's several minutes after the attack begins, alerting the head bandito (Rudy Diaz) to her being there, he goes in to the building to rape her. He starts to rip her blouse off and we see a beautiful shot of this beautiful naked ..... BACK and he proceeds to rape her. We get to see a beautiful pair of legs with nylons, even though they weren't invented yet, with him on top of her! Now remember, guns are blasting all around and he is going to rape her in the middle of a gunfight?? That's the thought that made me laugh!! Dee comes to the rescue, gets killed, Maria gets a gun and finishes off the bad guy, the banditos leave when they see their leader is dead and then Mace is mortally shot and the few survivors ride off.

Oh! I failed to mention that Dee comes up on the bandito raping the woman he loves, puts his gun to the guys head and then proceeds to fight WITH HIS FISTS instead of blowing his head off!! I know some of his blood may have dripped onto Maria and we can't have that, but he probably would have survived the fist fight and not died!! Stupidity at it's worst.

Also, George Kennedy, Andrew Prine and Harey Carey were also in this and they gave fine performances, but this movie was a real waste of film and performances.