Rio Conchos (1964)
RIO CONCHOS
(1965, Gordon Douglas)
The shooter is Jim Lassiter (Richard Boone) an ex-Confederate officer who has turned into an Apache killer after the tribe has tortured his wife and children to death. He’s arrested by the U.S. Army because he’s in possession of a rifle that is part of a cache of U.S. Army rifles, stolen by a group of southern renegades, led by a man called Pardee. The renegades are now living south of the border and Pardee has planned to continue his war against the Union by arming the Apaches. Lassiter is offered a chance to regain his freedom if he’s willing to lead an illegal search party into Mexico along with the officer, Captain Haven, who was responsible for the shipment of weapons. Haven is accompanied by his own (black) sergeant and to ‘balance’ the group, Lassiter appoints his own ‘sergeant’, a knife-wielding and womanizing Mexican adventurer called Rodriguez, who was about to be hanged by the Army.
“Let ‘m burn! Let ‘m burn!
But Brown releases the man from his sufferings, noticing laconically:
“Doin’ like they do, don’t make it right”
With his sturdy physique and rugged face, Boone was the ideal actor to play a man full of hatred, who may explode any minute. He actually explodes when he’s confronted with the Apache chief Bloodshirt (Rodolpho Acosta in a small but essential role), who recognizes him as the famous ‘murderer of his people’. In other words: the men are each others counterparts, direct opponents, but not that different. Bloodshirt is the murderer of Boone’s family, Lassiter is the murderer of Bloodshirt’s people.
Rio Conchos isn’t perfect; some of the ethnic stereotypes (notably those of Mexicans) are mere caricatures and the racial and social issues that are raised, are hinted at, but not really analyzed or studied in depth. But it’s a great transitional movie, gritty and exciting, a forerunner of revisionist movies like Soldier Blue, Little Big Man or Ulzana’s Raid, that would treat the historic conflict in terms of racial hatred and genocide.
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This is a slightly altered and extended version of an article previously published on Furious Cinema
Notes:
* (1) On posters Whitman’s name was listed first, but
Boone’s name was placed a bit higher. Warner Bros. had introduced the idea on
the posters for Key Largo which had Humphrey Bogart’s name more to the left and
Edward G. Robinson’s name elevated a little. The idea most probably was that
both actors were equally important and therefore ‘shared’ top-billing.
* (2) Most of these war/adventure movies of the dirty kind were made in the second half of the decade, but there were earlier examples, notably The Guns of Navarone
* (3) See: http://davycrockettsalmanack.blogspot.be/2010/09/rio-conchos-book-to-movie.html (see also note 2)
* (4) I’m not the only one who saw some surrealist qualities in Pardee’s improvised headquarters; Philip French (one of the first major film critics to notice the special qualities of the movie) writes: (...) through the windows of the Palladian facade one can see the sky - and [the mansion] has the same disturbing qualities as a Margritte. Philip French, Landscape, Violence, Poker, in: Westerns, Aspects of a movie genre, p. 62
* (2) Most of these war/adventure movies of the dirty kind were made in the second half of the decade, but there were earlier examples, notably The Guns of Navarone
* (3) See: http://davycrockettsalmanack.blogspot.be/2010/09/rio-conchos-book-to-movie.html (see also note 2)
* (4) I’m not the only one who saw some surrealist qualities in Pardee’s improvised headquarters; Philip French (one of the first major film critics to notice the special qualities of the movie) writes: (...) through the windows of the Palladian facade one can see the sky - and [the mansion] has the same disturbing qualities as a Margritte. Philip French, Landscape, Violence, Poker, in: Westerns, Aspects of a movie genre, p. 62
Cast: Stuart Whitman, Richard Boone, Tony Franciosa, Jim Brown, Wende Wagner, Warner Anderson, Rodolfo Acosta, Edmond O’Brien
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