Forrest Tucker | Through the Shattered Lens

Travis (Lee Van Cleef) is a former gunslinger who now makes his living taking settlers across a river on his small barge. When we first meet him, he is telling a child to shut up and stop bothering him while he is guiding the barge. He depends on the settlers on the other side of the river for his livelihood and they depend on him for transportation but he doesn’t like them and they don’t like him. Travis only cares about two people, his Mexican lover, Nola (Maria Gomez) and an eccentric hunter named Mountain Phil (Forrest Tucker).

After stealing a shipment of silver, outlaw Jake Remy (Warren Oates) and his army of mercenaries need to cross the river to escape into Mexico. To prevent anyone from following, they plan to destroy the barge afterward. However, Travis and Phil find out that Remy is on the way and take the barge to the other side of the river. When Jake and his gang arrive, a tense stand-off ensues, with the outlaws on one side of the river and Travis and the settlers trapped on the other.

Though Barquero was directed by the veteran American director Gordon Douglas (Douglas’s best known film is the 1950s giant ant film, Them!), it was heavily influenced by contemporary Spaghetti Westerns and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. This can be seen in both its graphic violence and in the casting of Lee Van Cleef and Warren Oates in the leading roles.

Travis was a perfect role for Van Cleef, a talented actor who was ignored by Hollywood until he found fame playing ruthless villains in European westerns. Surly and unsmiling, Travis may seem like an unlikely hero but, like many of the best Spaghetti westerns, there are no traditional good guys in Barquero. Travis is more interested in saving his boat than protecting the settlers. He is a hero of circumstance.

As Jake, Warren Oates is a great villain. In his very first scene, he and a prostitute watch as his gang massacre the citizens of a small town. When the prostitute asks if she can come with them, Jake calmly replies, “I don’t think so” and shoots her dead. Stuck on his side of the river, Jake smokes the local weed and starts to have violent hallucinations. Soon, he is shooting bullets into the river.

Also doing good work are Forest Tucker as Mountain Phil and Kerwin Mathews. Mathews, who is best remembered for starring in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, plays the Marquette, a disgraced French nobleman who has started a second life as Jake Remy’s right-hand man.

Barquero starts with a bang but it struggles to keep up the momentum over its entire running time. The opening shoot out is exciting but things slow down almost too much during the stand-off at the river. It is an interesting but flawed western that deserves to be better known than it is and worth watching to see Lee Van Cleef and Warren Oates at their best.

For one last time, Buford Pusser is back! The 1977 film Walking Tall: Final Chapter ends the story that was begun in Walking Tall and continued in Walking Tall Part II. And it turns out that the final chapter is pretty much just like the previous two chapters. In fact, I’m tempted to just tell you go reread my review of Walking Tall Part II because that review works just as well for most of the Final Chapter.

Final Chapter starts with footage from the first Walking Tall, with Bo Svenson awkwardly inserted in place of Joe Don Baker. Once again, we watch as Elizabeth Hartman is shot in the back of the head and Svenson — in the role of Buford Pusser — is shot in the face. Oh my God, we think, how many times can the exact same thing happen to the exact same character!?

Oh wait — it turns out that Buford is just remembering the death of his wife. Buford is still haunted by that day and he’s still out for vengeance. For the next hour or so, we follow Buford as he and his deputies blow up moonshiners across Tennessee. After each arrest, an attorney shows up and yells at Buford for violating everyone’s civil rights. In response, Buford smirks until the attorney gets so mad that he decides to run for sheriff himself.

Buford doesn’t give his opponent much of a chance. As one of his deputies puts it, this guy is just a “bleeding heart liberal.” (But if he’s so liberal, what’s he doing in Tennessee? Off with you, sir — return to Vermont!) Instead of campaigning, Buford spends his time hunting down more moonshiners. When he discovers that one moonshiner is also an abusive father, he personally drives the man’s son down to the local orphanage. Oddly enough, Buford does not offer to adopt the kid himself.

Anyway, to the shock of everyone, Buford is not reelected. No longer sheriff, he struggles to find a full-time job and makes plans to run in the next election. One of the moonshiners shows up and taunts Buford until Buford is forced to beat him up in the middle of the street. The new sheriff show up and demands to know what happened. None of the townspeople are willing to snitch on Buford. Good for them!

After about an hour and a half of this, something interesting actually happens. A film producer drives up to the Pusser Farm and tells Buford that he wants to make a movie out of his life. “We’re going to tell the story exactly how it happened!” the producer assures him. In the next scene, Buford is advising the director of Walking Tall on how to properly film a car chase.

And you know what? These scenes of Buford watching his life story be filmed are actually rather charming. For the only time in the series, Bo Svenson actually appears to be having fun in these scenes. And, when Buford runs from a theater while watching the recreation of his wife’s murder, it’s actually a very effective moment.

Anyway, there’s not much running time left after all of that. We see Buford sign a contract to play himself in the sequel and, by this point, we all know what happened afterward. Buford was killed in a mysterious car accident. But fear not! The film opens with a heavenly choir and Svenson’s voice booming from the heavens so we all know that Buford Pusser is arresting moonshiners in Heaven.

And good for him!

Peace be with you, Buford Pusser.