Neville Brand

A tough Marshal has a difficult task when his two sons join a gang and rob a bank. J.D. Cahill is the toughest U.S. Marshal they've got, just the sound of his name makes bad guys stop in their tracks, so when his two young boys want to get his attention they decide to rob a bank. They end up getting more than they bargained for. —Christopher D. Ryan <cryan@direct.ca>

A true-life drama about Robert Stroud who educated himself in the science of birds while spending 53 years in prison. He became a world authority on birds. Convicted of murder twice, the second time for killing a prison guard, Robert Stroud is sentenced to life in solitary confinement. One day, after curing a sickly sparrow that lands in his cell, Stroud finds new purpose in his lonely life. He begins studying and eventually becomes an expert on birds. Through the strength of his will and the power of his intellect, Stroud is able to create a new life, and a fascinating world, in his tiny prison cell.

Aging gunslinger Jacob Wade hopes to settle down with his estranged son, but his old enemies have other plans for him. Gunslinger Jacob Wade finds his long-abandoned son Riley, now a young man who hates his father but has nowhere else to go. Hoping to settle down, Jacob finds no town will have him. They end at Monolith, the ranch of Jacob's former girlfriend Ada, to whom he had no intention of returning. A mustang hunt finds Riley himself attracted to the shapely Ada...and Jacob having trouble with his eyesight. And his visions of a quiet life are doomed by the re-appearance of enemies from his past... —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>

A cynical former sheriff turned bounty hunter helps a young, recently appointed acting sheriff with his advice, his experience and his gun. Veteran bounty-hunter Morg Hickman rides into a town in danger. The sheriff has been killed, and young inexperienced Ben Owens named a temporary replacement until a permanent can be found. Ben wants to be that permanent replacement, so needs to impress the townspeople with his skill. When he finds that Morg was a sheriff for a long time before he became a bounty-hunter, he asks the older man to teach him. Morg thinks that being a sheriff is a foolish goal, but agrees to instruct Ben in handling people, more important to a sheriff than handling a gun. —Ken Yousten <kyousten@bev.net> Despite the townsfolk's disdain towards him, veteran bounty hunter and ex-lawman Morgan Hickman rides into a small town to collect the $500 reward claim after delivering the dead body of a wanted outlaw. Instead, money-oriented Hickman spends the night in the unwelcoming town and finds himself stuck with Ben Owens, the community's temporary novice sheriff. In the meantime, trigger-happy local bully Bart Bogardus terrorises the town, and no one can stop him. Now, Owens' life is hanging by a thread. As Hickman picks sides, determined to prevent the inevitable, the inexperienced law officer finds a mentor. However, how can Owens learn the tricks of the trade in just a few days and summon the courage to survive the murderous mob? —Nick Riganas When the experienced bounty-hunter and former sheriff Morg Hickman arrives in a town to claim his bounty for killing a wanted outlaw, he meets the rookie temporary sheriff Ben Owens. Hickman befriends the boy Kip (Michel Ray) and is lodged by his widow mother Nona Mayfield at home. Meanwhile Ben asks Hickman to teach him to be a sheriff since he wants to be assigned by the residents to the position. Ben faces problem with the scum troublemaker Bart Bogardus and when a prominent dweller is murdered by two criminals, Bogardus organizes a posse to hunt them down. But Ben has decided to capture the killers alive and give a fair trial to them. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Morgan Hickman is a bounty hunter bringing a dead man into a town of people who, as usual, hold him in contempt. He's steeled to the cold reception though, saying in that inimitable Fonda manner, "I don't mind the chill: I'm after money." Ben Owen - the town's young, temporary sheriff - desperately needs the confidence that can only come from knowledge and experience, and though he tries to treat Morgan Hickman with the same disdain as the townspeople, he sees that Hickman - bounty hunter or not - KNOWS how to act, how to handle dangerous situations, how to be the kind of man that Ben wishes to be. When Ben chides Hickman with, "I wouldn't expect no bounty hunter to appreciate this badge," Hickman answers sharply, "I wore one a lot longer than you ever will." At this, Ben's face shows shock, then hope. He suddenly sees Hickman as the man who can teach him to be a sheriff. The rest of the movie offers us a veritable graduate course in Western frontier law enforcement. In teaching the younger man, Hickman is inevitably reminded of why he once wore that Tin Star, and - in so doing - he rediscovers himself. [Cf: "The Outlaw Josey Wales"] —John Withrow <withrow@withrow-software.com>

Fed up with the inhumane prison living conditions, a general prison riot breaks out, leading to hostage-taking, a stand-off with the guards and eventual negotiations with the prison administration officials. Producer, Walter Wanger, who'd just done time (4 mos after shooting a man he believed was having an affair with his wife), wanted to make a film which showed the appalling conditions he saw while incarcerated. Working with Don Siegel, they wrote this film. In protest to the brutal guards, substandard food, overcrowding and poor living conditions, inmates stage an uprising, and take several guards hostage. Negotiations between the inmates and prison officials are stymied by politicians interfering with the prison administration, and by dissension and infighting amongst the inmates. —frankfob2@yahoo.com

Captured Americans coping with life in a German POW camp in World War II are puzzled by the simplicity with which the Germans are able to stave off escape attempts, shooting those who try. Sefton () is a POW who has profitably wagered with his fellow American prisoners that these escapes would fail. The POWs fear there may be an informer in their midst, but who is it? As it becomes clearer and clearer to his fellow inmates that Sefton has considerable contact with his German captors, his fellow POWs mistakenly conclude that he is the informer and they turn on him, including physically beating him and helping themselves to some of his belongings. Sefton understands in full that to clear his name, he must determine the identity of the real informer, and he is, eventually, able to work out that Price (), whose English is impeccable, is a German informant masquerading as an American POW. Written messages, Sefton discovers, are being smuggled by Price to the Germans through a hollow chess piece on the chessboard in the barracks, with phony air raid drills staged to enable the Germans to retrieve these messages undetected. Now realizing that Price has figured prominently in the death of the Americans that have attempted escape, Sefton plots revenge, and, after exposing Price's true identity to his fellow POWs, he maneuvers to force Price to make an unauthorized exit from the barracks. To the guards manning the tower, Price's exit looks like an American escape attempt, and they shoot him, much to the dismay of Stalag Commandant Von Scherbach (). The diversion created by the shooting incident gives Sefton a chance to escape, and he takes with him a brave lieutenant () who has recently been captured. Because of the measures of success against the Germans he had gained prior to his capture, the lieutenant is a marked man, but he and Sefton are successful in their escape attempt. The elimination of the German informer and the first successful escape by American POWs lift the spirits of the other POWs. ================================ A few days before Christmas, 1944, at the German prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag 17, two American POWs, Manfredi and Johnson, inmates of Barracks 4, are preparing an escape. The story's narrator, Cookie, one of the prisoners, suggests that there may be a traitor among the men of Barracks 4. The men have secretly been digging a tunnel from their latrine to a point just beyond the barbed-wire fence that marks the perimeter of the camp. After going over their plan to sneak into Switzerland, Manfredi and Johnson get out of the barracks through a trap door hidden under the wood-burning stove and sneak into the latrine. They crawl through the tunnel and begin digging to the surface beyond the barbed wire fence. Inside the barracks, the men speculate as to how long it will take their comrades to emerge beyond the fence. They begin to predict that the escapees will make it all the way when one of them, a shrewd man named Sefton, wagers two packs of cigarettes that the men won't even make it out of the nearby forest. The other men, most of whom dislike Sefton, wager against him. Outside, Manfredi and Johnson dig to the surface and are about leave when they are spotted by a small German squad outside the fence, who open fire, killing them both. Inside the barracks, the remaining prisoners, including Sefton, are disheartened, knowing their buddies could not possibly have escaped. The hot-headed Duke demands an explanation from the barracks' security officer, Price. Price says he doesn't have an answer. Meanwhile, Sefton and Cookie quietly gather up the cigarettes that Sefton has won in the bet and store them in a footlocker Sefton keeps under his bed. The next morning the entire camp is awakened for roll call. Barracks 4 is overseen by Sergeant Schultz, a jolly man whom the men have absolutely no trust for. In the camp's muster grounds, the men are addressed by the camp commandant, Oberst von Scherbach. Scherbach tells the men that his guards successfully prevented the escape from the night before and that no man has ever escaped from his camp alive. He also has the corpses of Manfredi and Johnson lying in the mud and uncovered for all the men to see. The Barracks 4 chief, Hoffy, protests the treatment of the bodies and demands they have a proper burial. Von Scherbach agrees to do so. Von Scherbach goes on, saying that being caught outside the barracks after lights out means summary execution. Also, the stove in Barracks 4 will be removed so it cannot be used to camouflage the trap door the men cut in the floor and the men will also dig up the tunnel they dug and fill it in. Von Scherbach also announces that each barracks will be given a small Christmas tree and that all the prisoners will go through delousing. One of the prisoners, the shellshocked Joey, begins to play his ocarina, which is gently taken away by another prisoner, Stanislaus "Animal" Kazawa (Animal makes Joey another one later as a Christmas present). While the commandant talks and uses a mocking tone, Animal slyly throws the ocarina at the water in front of the commandant, splashing his highly polished boots with mud. The Commandant demands the guilty man step forward. Animal does and is followed moments later by several other men. Eventually, the entire prisoner population steps forward, covering for Animal. The Commandant, temporarily flustered, cancels the Christmas trees and tells the men they'll be deloused with cold water from the camp's fire hoses. The men are dismissed. After the men have the opportunity to clean up in their latrines, and following a small incident where Animal is nearly shot for crossing the barbed-wire of the camp while lusting after Russian female prisoners, the men go back to their barracks for breakfast. Sefton fries himself an egg in front of the other prisoners and when questioned about how he paid for it, he tells them that he bartered for it using the cigarettes he'd won the night before. The other men are quite angry that Sefton would use cigarettes he'd gotten as a result of the deaths of their comrades, however, Sefton counters, saying that many other prisoners trade with the Germans and that life in the camp is such that thievery is common. One of the other prisoners, the short-tempered Duke, tells Sefton that collusion with the Germans could get him hurt or killed and small fight breaks out. Hoffy promptly breaks it up and Sefton, claiming he has indigestion, gives the fried egg to Joey. Price, the barracks security officer, asks Sefton how he could be so sure that Manfredi and Johnson wouldn't make it to freedom. Sefton says he didn't know for sure but he "liked the odds" of the situation. Sefton also angrily tells his comrades that they're wasting their time and risking their lives unnecessarily by trying to escape. Sefton plans to ride out the war as a prisoner and stay alive. The barracks of the camp share a ham radio that they keep hidden and use to listen to the BBC and other communications about the war. The radio is smuggled throughout the compound by Marko and his partner, Steve, who is on crutches having lost a leg in combat. They use his empty pantleg to hide various items, including the radio. When the radio is brought to Hoffy and Barracks 4, Marko tells them they can have it only for two days instead of a week; the traitor in their barracks is known to the rest of the camp and the other barracks chiefs fear the radio will be discovered. The men set up the radio immediately, using a few yards of chicken wire as the antenna, which doubles as their volleyball net. One of the prisoners, Blondie, is a radio expert and begins to report about military actions in Europe; the news he picks up is about the famous Battle of the Bulge. Just then, Schultz arrives to seize the barracks stove and the radio is cleverly hidden in a pail of water. Hoffy and Duke try to grill Schultz about the barracks spy but Schultz refuses to tell them anything. Schultz also notices that a signal from the spy has been left for him; a loop has been tied in the cord for one of the bare light bulbs hanging from the rafters. After he barks orders for the men to report outside to fill in the escape tunnel, he goes to the chess board and takes the black queen. Pulling off the crown, he sees a small note rolled up and hidden inside. He exchanges the queen for an identical piece, pulls the loop out of the cord and walks out. While the men uncover the escape tunnel they dug, they notice a horse-drawn cart going by with the coffins of Manfredi and Johnson. The men all remove their hats in respect. Cookie narrates for a while about Sefton himself who, despite the poor conditions of the camp, has built a substantial entrepreneurship for himself based mostly on the trading of cigarettes. Sefton has several successful businesses at his disposal including distilling schnapps from potato peels, horse races (he uses mice that run around a small track), and a telescope that the men use to peek into the delousing shack in the Russian compound where female prisoners are disinfected. Hoffy, Price and Duke are not pleased with Sefton's ventures, fearing that the Germans will find out and punish them more harshly than ever. During a session where Sefton has the telescope set up, Harry Shapiro and Animal try to sneak into the Russian prisoners camp to look inside the windows of the delousing shack, using a pot of white paint to mark a line down the center of the road. They're caught immediately by a German guard and escape when they slap him in the eyes with the brush, making it back to their camp successfully as their comrades cheer. A new prisoner arrives; Lieutenant James Dunbar, who is being housed at 17 until the Germans ship him to the officers camp. Dunbar is greeted warmheartedly and comically by the rest of the barracks. However, there is instant friction between him and Sefton. Sefton, from the same suburb of Boston, tells everyone that Dunbar is from a wealthy family and should be pampered during his stay. Dunbar lets the first few comments go but tells Sefton that he can resent his family's wealth but he should tread cautiously. Sefton tells Dunbar that his family fortune won't protect him in the camp. Sefton leaves the barracks, to an unknown destination. The rest of the men ask Dunbar about how he was captured & brought to the camp. He was shot down on a bombardment mission and had been on his feet for three days without any sleep. He'd have been brought to Stalag 17 earlier but there was a major delay coming out of Frankfurt: a German munitions train was destroyed just outside the city and snarled much of the Reichsbahn transport for miles around. The sergeant that accompanied Dunbar, Bagradian, tells everyone that it was Dunbar himself that blew up the train. Dunbar is modest about the incident but tells everyone that he'd rigged a simple time bomb and tossed it aboard the train as it was leaving the station. Schultz shows up unexpectedly, telling the men they'll be getting new blankets. A visit from a representative of the Geneva Conventions is due to show up in a few days & the Commandant wants to give the appearance that the camp is complying with regulations. Hoffy scoffs and says that they know the blankets will be confiscated after the Geneva agent leaves. Schultz also confiscates the radio, playing coy for a bit before revealing it's hiding place in the bucket. He also sees that a new message has been left for him by the spy. He orders the men outside to get their blankets and retrieves the hidden message. After the men file back into the barracks they turn on Cookie, demanding to know where Sefton has been for the past few hours. With Hoffy's permission, Animal breaks into Sefton's footlocker & discovers a wealth of contraband that Sefton has been hoarding, including a cuckoo clock and silk stockings. Duke appears and tells them that he knows where Sefton disappeared to: he's been over at the Russian women's barracks partying with them. In a fury, Hoffy smashes Sefton's prized telescope. When Sefton returns, he finds the men staring angrily at him and that his footlockers have been broken into. Hoffy and the rest of the men suggest that he's the German spy they've been unable to identify. Sefton claims he's innocent and that the men should hold a kangaroo court. The Commandant suddenly makes an appearance and arrests Dunbar for suspicion of sabotaging the train that was destroyed near Frankfurt. Dunbar is taken into custody and the men become angrier with Sefton, immediately suspecting him. They turn on him and he is brutally beaten. The next morning, on Christmas Eve, the men are rousted out by Schultz to receive Red Cross parcels, brought by the Geneva agent. A mistaken shipment leaves the men with a large supply of ping-pong balls. Sefton is nearly unable to get out of bed and Schultz notices that he's been severely beaten. Sefton tries to bribe Schultz into revealing the identity of the traitor but is rebuffed. When the other prisoners walk in on them, their belief in Sefton as the traitor is reinforced. Hoffy tells Sefton that he tried to get Sefton transferred to another barracks but couldn't. Sefton tells everyone that he'll find out who the traitor is. Schultz walks in with the Geneva agent, who inspects the barracks and sees through the ruse of beautifying the camp: the blankets smell of moth balls & the meat promised in the men's meal is missing. When he asks Price and Harry about the conditions they live in, they both give non-committal answers but refuse to speak up about problems. When he questions Sefton about his obvious injuries, Sefton refuses to rat out his fellow prisoners. Hoffy takes the opportunity to tell the agent about Dunbar being taken to the Commandant's quarters without formal charges and the agent promises to investigate. At the Commandant's apartment, Dunbar is being forced to stand upright in an attempt to make him confess. Dunbar has held out but is rapidly becoming weaker with the lack of sleep he had while being taken to the camp. After talking a bit about how he became a prison camp warden, he places a call to his superior to let him know he has caught the saboteur responsible for the Frankfort train explosion. When the Geneva agent arrives, he asks about Lt Dunbar. The agent tells Von Scherbach that he cannot torture Dunbar in this manner without proof. The Commandant agrees and says he'll find out about the time bomb Dunbar allegedly used. Later in the day, the men celebrate with a small tree they decorate with their dog tags, smuggled to them by Marko and Steve. The men have traded Sefton's distillery equipment for the camp's phonograph and begin to sing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home". Price steals away from the group and sees that the cord for the light used to flag a message has been looped. Revealing himself as the traitor, he's able to switch the black queen for a new one. When the marching line of his barracksmates catches up to him, he enthusiastically joins them. Sefton, still recovering in his bed, notices that the loop in the cord is gone. Later, while playing horseshoes with Bagradian, Price asks him how the Lieutenant could have carried any explosive device with him through the German prisoner searches in the train station. Bagradian tells him Dunbar simply folded a lit cigarette into a book of matches. When the cigarette burned down it lit the matches, causing a fire that detonated the ammunition. That night the men gather around the tree and sing "O, Come All Ye Faithful". Sefton notices that the loop in the cord has reappeared. The solemnity of the evening is ruined when the camp lights go out & Schultz tells them all to evacuate and take refuge in the trenches used in case of bombings. Schultz waits until everyone leaves and begins talking in German to Price, who'd lingered behind to make sure the barrack was empty. He shows Schultz how Dunbar sabotaged the train using the method Bagradian told him about. After they leave, Sefton steps out from a hiding spot, having heard the whole conversation. On Christmas Day the men throw a party in their barracks with music and much of the liquor and wine that Sefton had been hoarding. Sefton talks to a suspicious Cookie about the traitor in their midst. Sefton talks about the potential consequences of revealing the traitor to the others & what punishment they'd face if they killed the man outright. Sefton suggests that a well-constructed plan to rid themselves of the traitor and appear blameless is needed. Cookie suggests that Sefton tell Hoffy or Price. Sefton takes the suggestion to heart. Hoffy shows up and announces that the SS has arrived to take Dunbar into custody -- his method for destroying the ammo train has been uncovered. Hoffy tells the men that they've come up with a plan to rescue Dunbar from the SS. All the men from the other barracks will disperse outside and help with a diversion. Sefton seizes the opportunity to demand that he stay in the barracks & be guarded by someone they trust -- Sefton suggests Price. Outside, the men have Steve drop a smudge pot crafted from ground ping-pong balls from his empty pantleg onto the mud near the SS agents car. When the cover from it is thick enough, also making it impossible for the tower guards to open fire, a small group of the men rush the SS guards and grab Dunbar, hiding him. The commandant is furious and runs checks of every man against their records. The barracks are thoroughly searched and the prisoners are forced to stand in the appelplatz for six straight hours, however Dunbar is never found. It is later revealed that Dunbar is hiding out in one of the water towers above one of the latrines. That night Hoffy calls a meeting where they'll collect everyone's dog tags, with the notable exception of Joey and Sefton, and draw the name of the man who will get Dunbar out of the water tower and out of the camp through the barbed wire. When the name is drawn, Price takes the tag and says he'll go. He figures that his work as barracks security chief has been less than adequate and he'd like to make it up to the men. Another trap door is cut in the floor and as he prepares to leave, Sefton steps forward and announces another wager that Dunbar will never make it out of the camp. The men are instantly furious with him but he slowly begins to reveal Price as the traitor: he approaches Price and asks him where he was when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Price slips up, saying he was having dinner at six in the evening, but in Germany, when America was getting the news earlier in the day. Sefton tells everyone that Price had sworn loyalty to his family's homeland and had gone back to Germany when the war broke out, he'd been trained as spy and was planted in the camp. Price tries to escape through the trap door but is easily caught and subdued. Sefton then tells everyone that he'll be the man to get Dunbar out -- he likes the odds because now they can use Price as a decoy. Considering that he'd sent Johnson and Manfredi out to their deaths when they tried to escape, Hoffy and the other prisoners are eager for payback. They'll throw him out the door with cans tied to his leg and he'll draw the searchlights and gunfire from the Germans in the guard towers. Sefton slips down through the trapdoor, bidding everyone a sardonic farewell and sneaks over to the latrine. He gets a freezing Dunbar down from the water tank and waits for the signal from his comrades. When Price is thrown out into the appelplatz he draws fire from all the towers, despite his cries for help in German. As he desperately tries to approach the commandant's offices, he's gunned down. At the edge of the camp, Sefton cuts through the wire fence and he and Dunbar escape into the woods. In the appelplatz, the commandant and Schultz first smile at the corpse lying the mud but are quickly chagrined to find that it's not Dunbar, but Price. In the barracks, the men reflect on how well Sefton's plan worked. The Animal suggests that Sefton merely wanted to steal their wirecutters. Cookie happily begins whistling the theme of the Army Air Force.

At a stagecoach stop, Ben Warren (Rock Hudson) is reunited with his beautiful Southern belle fiancée Jennifer (Donna Reed). They dine with several fellow passengers, Frank Slayton (Philip Carey) and his friend Tom "Jess" Burgess (Leo Gordon). After a stagecoach holdup, Slayton's notorious outlaw gang shoot Warren and leave him for dead and head off with his fiancée. Warren follows, and although none of the townspeople he comes across are prepared to help, he manages to recruit two men who have sworn revenge on the ruthless Slayton. One is Jess Burgess (Leo Gordon), gang member who had objected to this planned kidnapping and was bound, and abandoned to die in the desert. The other is Johash (Pat Hogan), an Indian with an equally personal grudge---his sister was abducted and murdered by Slayton under identical circumstances. Johash follows Warren and Jess secretly. He catches up with the two and joins their small posse. One of the gang, Curly (Bob Herron), tells Jennifer that her Ben is alive and following them. He tries to help her escape but this fails, and they kill him for it. Warren and Jess come across Slayton's jealous Mexican girlfriend who wants to get even. Overnight, Slayton sends a note he wants to trade Jess for Jennifer. Jess thinks it's worth a try, but it turns out to be a ruse. Just as Jennifer is free and reunited with Warren, Slayton kills former partner Jess. She begs her fiancé not to pursue the gang further, but he wants revenge. Just a few miles short of the Mexican border, his gang is forced to take shelter at an old pueblo where Johash's deadly skill with a sniper rifle cuts off the gang's escape route, as three more gang members fatally discover. Warren places the only available water in an open space and challenges Slayton to come and get it. But he uses his girlfriend as a hostage, threatening to shoot her. Slayton reaches his horse and rides away alone as Johash picks off the other gang members with a rifle. Slayton runs out of ammunition, and Warren eventually wins a lengthy fistfight that begins at the top of a steep hill and slowly and dangerously progresses to ground level. After the fight, Slayton finds Ben's pistol and is about to kill him when Slayton falls over with Johash's knife in his back. Warren's experiences during the American Civil War had made him basically a pacifist. But thanks to Johash, he is able to keep his own hands basically clean; and he and fiancé Jennifer Ballard are re-united.

Joe Rolfe (John Payne) is a ex-con delivering flowers to the local businesses in Kansas City. When disgruntled ex-cop Timothy Foster (Preston S. Foster) cases a local payroll armored car for a holdup he takes into account the schedule of Rolfe and his deliveries as he plans his robbery. Foster contacts three crooks separately to help with the crime while keeping his own identity secret with a mask he blackmails them with past crimes and a guarantee of a $300 thousand-dollar payout for each. Pulling in Peter Harris (Jack Elam), Boyd Kane (Neville Brand), and Tony Romano (Lee Van Cleef), Foster as Mr. Big pulls off the robbery of the armored car right after one of Rolfe's deliveries by using a duplicate flower van. Rolfe is arrested and brutally interrogated by the police. Eventually cleared when the police find the duplicate robbery vehicle Rolfe is determined to clear his name and sets out to find the crew that set him up. He tracks Harris to a gambling joint in Tijuana Mexico and takes on his identity after Harris is killed and travels to a resort town of Barados Mexico to confront the rest of the crooks. Once there he meets Foster's daughter Helen (Coleen Gray) who has come to surprise her father. Rolfe and Helen develop an immediate attraction for each other and Foster attempts to keep them apart, as he knows Joe is an ex-con and is impersonating Harris. As the time for splitting up the money draws near Kane and Tony are aware Rolfe is not Harris and a dangerous confrontation with Mr. Big appears inevitable.

A despised cavalry commander is unfairly blamed by his troop for the death of a popular officer and must redeem himself in front of his men during an Indian attack on the fort. Capt. Richard Lance is unjustly held responsible, by his men and girlfriend, for an Indian massacre death of beloved Lt. Holloway. Holloway is killed while escorting a dangerous Indian chief to another fort's prison. The chief escapes. Knowing their fort is in danger of Indian attack, Lance takes a small group of army misfits to an abandoned nearby army fort to defend a mountain pass against the oncoming Indian assault. Their mission is to stall for time until reinforcements from another fort arrive. The men in this small group of malcontents, deserters, psychopaths and cowards all hate Capt. Lance and wish him dead. Much to their chagrin, the men recognize that Lance's survival instincts, military knowledge and leadership are the only chance the group has of staying alive. —E.W. DesMarais <jlongst@aol.com>