Duel At Diablo (1966) I don't think there's a genre that director Ralph Nelson missed. This guy dabbled in every type of film imaginable......heartwarming dramas, thrillers, quirky comedies.....he even took a swipe at science-fiction.
But anyone with a passing familiarity with his previous films, couldn't ever predict he'd direct a western as uncompromisingly brutal and fatalistic as "Duel At Diablo".
In its single-minded devotion to carnage nihilism and prolonged torture, you could almost mistake this film for a homage to spaghetti westerns......except that the film arrived one full year before the American release of the first in the Clint Eastwood-Sergio Leone 'Dollars' trilogy, "A Fistful Of Dollars".
So you can consider Nelson's film a prescient preview of coming attractions, not just of the Spaghetti onslaught, but of the hyper-violent, gritty 'revisionist' westerns that would dominate that genre throughout the 1970's. Like some of those latter films, "Duel At Diablo" touched on the corrosive, shameful treatment of Native American tribes......which Nelson would go on to depict four years later in his equally disturbing and gore-soaked "Soldier Blue" (see our post on 6/29/19)
Right from its first minutes, 'Diablo' makes itself instantly memorable as composer Neal Hefti's catchy main theme, bounces into action. The music puts a deadly serious melody to an insistent, propulsive beat......it promises that nothing good will happen to these characters, even while you nod your head to the beat.
And nothing good does befall this full array of tortured souls. An enraged, grief-stricken Cavalry scout (James Garner) searches for the killer of his Apache wife. A desperate woman (Bibi Andersson) has escaped from Apache captivity with her infant son, fathered by the son of the tribe's chief. Rescued by Garner, she's now shunned by the townsfolk, including her merchant husband (Dennis Weaver)
Somehow these tormented souls end up on a trek back into Apache territory, headed by the obstinate Lt. McAllister (Bill Travers) and a company of barely trained young cavalry recruits. Also along for trip to continue breaking in the equally untrained horses is Toller, (Sidney Poitier), a cool-as-ice former soldier himself.....and nobody to mess with.
(In one of the film's most remarkable and unique ideas, absolutely nobody in the cast ever makes any reference whatsoever to Poitier being black. You just know his character is so steely and potentially lethal, nobody would dare bring up the subject....)
Fleeing the reservation, the Apache warriors launch a series of punishing, bloody attacks on our wayward group.......and by the time the film concludes, not many of them are left standing.
If you like your westerns tough, tense, and right to the point, then you need to put this one on a "Can't Miss" list. And prepare to hear that one-of-a-kind Neal Hefti theme ricocheting around in your head for years to come. 4 stars (****)
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