FightingWesterner Lovable rogue Lee Van Cleef steals from banks and blows things up for a living. He and his gang are hired by James Mason to explode an Army munitions stockpile in Mexico, using a luxury riverboat as a base of operations, only to be pulled into a bigger scheme that digs them even deeper into the revolution.Like most of the Mexican Revolution spaghetti westerns (A Bullet For The General being one exception), this is an acquired taste. Production values are a little iffy and it does run out of steam a bit near the end. On the whole though, there's certainly a lot of action and adventure to make up for it's shortcomings.A Spanish-made, but American-produced minor addition to the genre, this benefits from the participation of Hollywood veterans Philip Yordan and Bernard Gordon, as well as Van Cleef, Mason, and a few familiar European favorites like Aldo Sambrell, Eduardo Fajardo, Gianni Garko, Diana Lorys, and the beautiful Gina Lollabrigida.An oddball soundtrack goes from really dated vocal-quartets, to early-seventies style hard rock, with a marching band in-between!Recommended mainly for Van Cleef fanatics.

aleconstantine Bad Man's River is a spaghetti western movie which I chose based on Lee Van Cleef being on the cover -- I'm not a massive western fan but even I recognised Van Cleef as a fairly famous actor in the genre. Unfortunately this did not equate into a good movie. Van Cleef is, I assume, the character for the title song: "He's the baddest man in Bad Man's River, where virtue is a sin".Does this movie have a good plot? No. It involves a complicated process of blowing things up and stealing a bank cheque, but seems to revolve largely around Alicia -- played by Gina Lollobrigida -- who marries men and betrays them but for some reason they never think she'll do it again. I mean seriously, after the third time a woman has sold you down the river to death or worse you've pretty much only yourself to blame if it happens again -- and it does.However, if we ignore the shoddy plot we have to ask ourselves if we're left with a good action movie. We ask that question, and we receive a negative answer. I'm a keen believer in suspending disbelief in movies...you have to go with the flow and accept what the directors are trying to do. Yet there is a limit. This limit was not reached when the good buys never missed a shot and the bad guys aimed for the feet and never got a hit* -- even with a sub-machine gun -- but the limit was reached and passed and left eating dust when a protagonist would fire his gun twice and four men would fall over. And who knew that a cheap mattress would provide better cover from bullets than an inch of solid oak? It's impossible to suspend disbelief for this movie, the plot is appalling, and the acting stilted. I rate it: A bullet to the head.* Oh, one protagonist gets shot. At least, he falls against a wall clutching his arm or shoulder or chest or something. It doesn't slow him down though, in fact it doesn't even bleed.

ma-cortes The film deals with the bandit Roy King (Lee Van Cleef) and his band (Gianni Garco, Simon Andreu, Jess Hahn) that are robbing trains and banks along Mexican border . King is deceived by his recent wife (Gina Lollobrigida) and a Mexican revolutionary (Daniel Martin) and offer to collaborate in an attempt to blow up an arsenal for a reward about one million dollars , but he will be double-crossed . The gang will confront the Mexican army commanded by a nasty Mexican general (Eduardo Fajardo) and his underling (Aldo Sambrell) and are besieged in a fort governed by a nutty revolutionary colonel (Sergio Fantoni).This is an average Western with humor and action . The film is plenty of gunplay , thrills , irony , shoot'em up , comedy with tongue-in-cheek and results to be quite entertaining . The movie gets comic remarks of the spoof Western genre originated on the late decade of the 60s by directors Burt Kennedy and Andrew McLagen and stretch out to Italian Western with the Trinity series (Terence Hill and Spencer). Lee Van Cleef as an outlaw chief is humorous though very old , Gina Lollobrigida is attractive and James Mason finds himself miscast . They are like a hawk , a dove and a vulture ; all circling for the biggest haul in the West . Besides , there appears the usual secondaries , familiar faces as Gianni Garko (Sartana), Eduardo Fajardo (villain in hundred Westerns as Djanjo), Aldo Sambrell (secondary in Leone Westerns), Daniel Martin (For a fistful of dollars) , Ricardo Palacios, Barta Barry , Dan Van Husen and many others . The picture was shot in Almeria (Spain) where during the 60s and 70s were filmed innumerable Spaghetti Western . The motion picture was regularly directed by Eugenio Martin who made among others , terror films (Horror express) and more Spaghetti (The bounty Killer , Requiem for a gringo and Pancho Villa) . Rating : Mediocre but amusing .

JimB-4 Heaven knows how a talent like Philip Yordan came to such a sorry pass as writing this mess. Heaven knows how badly James Mason must have needed money for him to take part. Lee Van Cleef, one of my great movie heroes, made some really awful films here and there, but this one takes the cake. The pop-rock/barbershop-quartet score, completely inappropriate to the time and place, is the first clue that the viewer is in for a melange of malarkey. Everyone is dubbed, of course--it's a spaghetti Western. But at least Van Cleef and Mason dub themselves. However, Mason, who despite being second-billed doesn't show up until 2/3 of the way through, makes the most embarrassing attempt at a southern American accent I can recall ever hearing. Gina Lollobrigida exposes her talent in her special way, and the rest of the parts are played in the broadest fashion by a cast of overacting hambones. The plot is virtually unintelligible, though it does involve a river for a moment or two (the good guys hope their engine-less riverboat can drift from Matamoros to Laredo before the bad guys catch up to them--despite the fact that Laredo is UPSTREAM from Matamoros.) It's obvious that much of what goes on here is intended as comedy, except, one presumes, for scenes of people being shot and burned to death. Let's just say that none of the stars ever made a worse movie and then just pretend this farago never happened.