Border River (1954, Joel McCrea, Yvonne De Carlo, Pedro Armendáriz) – Classic Movie Review 11,025

‘They Had a Date With Destiny in the Powder-Keg of the West… ZONA LIBRE’

Director George Sherman’s 1954 Universal International Pictures Technicolor film Border River stars the admirable Joel McCrea, who is the best thing about this familiarly scripted, minor but action-packed and entirely passable Western, based on a novel by Zane Grey.

During the US civil war in 1865, a small territory on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande River known as Zona Libre (Free Zone) was ruled by General Eduardo Calleja and he made it a haven for outlaws. Clete Mattson arrives in Zona Libre, wanting to buy guns for the Confederacy.

McCrea sturdily plays Clete Mattson, a Rebel officer who takes part in a raid in which he steals several million dollars in Mexican gold to buy rifles for his Confederate troops. But soon he finds that Mexican general General Eduardo Calleja (Pedro Armendáriz) and German military expert Newlund (Howard Petrie) are among the unsavoury characters who also after the bullion. Another admirable star is Yvonne De Carlo, who plays Carmelita Carias.

The script may be weak but McCrea, De Carlo, Armendáriz and Alfonso Bedoya as Captain Vargas keep it going, and Irving Glassberg’s Technicolor cinematography is a treat.

Ivan Triesault, George Lewis, George Wallace, Lane Chandler, Martin Garralaga, Charles Horvath, Nacho Galindo, Joe Bassett, Salvador Baguez, Felipe Turich and Renate Hoy [Erika Nordin].

William Sackheim and Louis Stevens’s screenplay is based a story by Louis Stevens.

It is the last film shot in the Three-Strip Technicolor process.

It is shot at  Universal Studios, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California; White’s Ranch, Milepost 14 Utah Hwy 128, Moab, Utah; and Morelos, Mexico. Other parts of the film were shot in Colorado River, Professor Valley, and Courthouse Wash in Utah.

Filming began on 3 June 1953, the same day as Universal’s The Glenn Miller Story. 

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,025

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