'RIO CONCHOS'.........TOUGHING IT OUT, WAY OUT WEST.......

Rio Conchos (1964)    Take special notice of the release year on this one.......it's one of BQ's favorite westerns.....one of those movies that if we stumble upon it while channel surfing, we'll invariably end up watching it to the end.......

                   The rage, brutality and violence that permeates this film puts it way ahead of its time......in many ways, it anticipated the coming avalanche of ultra-nasty Italian westerns that would land on American shores with "A Fistful Of Dollars" in 1967.......

                   But unlike the jokey, casual nihilism of  the spaghetti oaters, "Rio Conchos" stays rooted in the strong, solid dramatic structure of American westerns. The characters are consumed with their agendas, their anger, their goals.  They have a lot at stake.......including their own lives.

                    Even before Jerry Goldsmith's superb score kicks in for the main titles, the film kicks you in the teeth with its prelude...... an enraged ex-Confederate soldier (Richard Boone) guns down an entire Indian burial party.to satisfy his unquenchable thirst for revenge on Indians who slaughtered his wife and child.

                    Boone's promptly arrested by an equally seething cavalry officer (Stuart Whitman) who's aided by his black sergeant  (Jim Brown,mostly silent and powerful in his first screen role)........Whitman's boiling mad at Boone, but not so much over the murdered Indians......

                    What stirs Whitman's ire:  the rifle Boone wields came from  a shipment of guns hijacked by an insane ex-Confederate general (Edmond 'O Brian) who's set up his own lunatic, South-Will-Rise-Again kingdom in the middle of the Southwest desert........complete with an already partially constructed Southern mansion.....

                    Under the threat of imprisonment, Boone agrees to join Whitman and Brown on a mission to track down and thwart O' Brian, who's arming  bloodthirsty Apaches with the stolen rifles. Boone insists on taking along a fellow prisoner, a wily, duplicitous and extremely lethal Mexican bandido (Anthony Franciosa, joyously hamming for all he's worth).

                    And off this odd bunch goes on their bloodsoaked, action-packed quest. Boone and Whitman snap, snarl and distrust each other as they fend off  attacks from rampaging Indians, vicious bandits and O'Brian's shifty minions......joined along the way by their captured Indian girl (the gorgeous Wende Wagner, the closest thing this movie has to sex appeal.)

                    It's tough, violent stuff all the way through, directed by the criminally under-appreciated Gordon Douglas ("Them!") with his usual professional, cut-to-the-chase eye for action.

                    By the time our battered heroes get to launch their final attack on O'Brian's faux-'Tara' lair, you can sense it will cost them dearly, that this is no feel-good John Wayne saga, designed to make you stand up and cheer at the climax......

                   We don't care.....BQ still stands up and cheers for "Rio Conchos", one of the most colorful,uncompromisingly tough,  well acted and directed westerns to come out of 1960's . Hollywood. And that makes it a genuine BQ 5 star (*****), FIND OF FINDS. Seek it out soon.
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