Most uneven film!--Spoilers

One of the most uneven films, in fact, that I think I have ever seen.

Most representative of this in the stretched-out climax. During the mountain crumbling scenes, there are some absolutely incredible fx shots that still hold up today, such as when the faces of the mountains come tumbling off. But then there will be inserts of the threesome riding away using horrific rear projection. These shots were better done in lesser films decades earlier! The lighting doesn't match, the focus is too sharp, the movements don't match. Then there will be some nice riding shots, some boulders coming down, then more rear projection. Then some obvious models being shaken around off screen. Then back to some decent sequences.

This goes on and on. The crowning shot to all this nonsense is a glowing indian chief head that does a partial fade into the landscape, as in "We the powerful dead indians did this, this is our gold!".

If they had shortened this long drawn out sequence just by editing out the bad shots, that stupid indian shot and thrown in some more tracking shots of Peck, Sparv and Sharif actually on their horses, the climax would have been very exciting and not so preposterous.

This movie is like something that had just run amok; there was no restraint and common sense consistently goes out the window. According to that punk Ben on TCM, critics hated this film.

For once I agree with them, this is a mess.