La rançon de la peur

As a player Jeff Chandler had several westerns to his credit most notably Broken Arrow where he got an Academy Award nomination. His last film in the western genre is The Plunderers where he's cast as a crippled Civil War veteran who is forced to lead his town of Trail's End in taking a stand against four juvenile toughs.

Some people are born leaders and like it or not in tough situations the job falls to them. John Saxon, Dee Pollock, Ray Stricklyn and Roger Torrey all come to town and start essentially pushing people around. They beat up bartender James Westerfield and later shoot down sheriff Jay C. Flippen who is a tired old man who should have retired from that job long ago. Flippen is symbolic himself of this post Civil War Texas town.

Chandler is a former cavalry leader in the Civil War and he's like Lucas McCain in The Rifleman, the one in the town the people look up to in a moment of crisis. He's as tired as any of the rest of them and just wishes they would ride away, but when that doesn't happen despite his physical limitations Chandler steps to the plate.

There is a lot of criticism of The Plunderers with some saying this is just a modern juvenile delinquent story set in the west. That maybe so, but what was Billy the Kid for instance if not a most murderous juvenile delinquent. This film is a harbinger of the Young Guns films or the Lee Marvin classic, The Spikes Gang. The only difference is that the punks aren't glamorized here. I swear all that was needed was for Sal Mineo to be cast as one of the punks.

The Plunderers was done for Allied Artists which we know was formerly Mongram Pictures. Back in their day they did their share of B westerns and the sets were used most notably for The Cisco Kid movies. The Plunderers is a great deal above the quality of those horse operas and it's one of Jeff Chandler's better latter day films.

Four young armed cowboys ride into town. Jeb, Rondo (John Saxon), Mule and Davy have been driven out of Dodge City. They don't pay for Whiskey and ask for the Sheriff. Sheriff McCauley decides not to wear his guns and all they want are warm beds in jail for the night. Once released, they start taking stuff and refusing to leave. Ellie Walters (Dolores Hart) is the beautiful store owner's daughter. One armed war veteran Sam Christy (Jeff Chandler) seem to avoid trouble.

This is obviously calling out the youth of its day. These four could be rock-n-rollers or greasers or bikers or general delinquents during its time. The town is full of old folks and helpless youngsters. Westerns are the films of older folks and younger kids. This is black-and-white moral delineation.

Better-than-usual western has interesting premise: Four young cowboy-hoodlums take over a sleepy town population 50. The whole thing looks and feels like a Twilight Zone episode (black and white) without the fantasy. Two gorgeous women, Delores Hart and Marsha Hunt; a fair performance from Jeff Chandler; and vivid portrayals by the relatively unknown youngsters including a promising one by John Saxon. Sleazy early 60's B-Movie fun of the Juvenile Delinquent genre.

Typical Western of tough guys bullying a town, yet the acting and dialogue make it very entertaining. John Saxon steals the film even though he sometimes overplays his Mexican accent. Veteran character actor Flippen is also a standout. Pretty good overall.

Juvenile delinquency was a very hot topic in the late fifties and early sixties. The new scourge of civilization, rock and roll, had transformed the younger generation into rebels who wanted to cast off the repressive rules by which they were expected to conduct themselves. The burgeoning post-war economy was removing the fear that had formed so much of the older generation's embracement of responsibility and the ever-quickening pace of materialistic progress was making any prospect of boredom anathema to the young.

This certainly didn't go unnoticed by the establishment who were understandably alarmed by what appeared to be a rise in youthful disrespect and hedonism and the war of the generations was taken fairly seriously for a while. Hollywood quickly realized that this was a very sexy and saleable topic for entertaining the masses and began churning out dramas of rebellious youth by the boatload. By 1960 (the year this film was released) these rebellious youth movies were becoming pretty repetitive as far as contemporary settings went, so it was a darned good idea to take the issue and transfer it to a different time - the old west.

It worked rather well, I think. Westerns tend to be fairly simple story lines for the most part anyway, so bringing an aspect of modern juvenile delinquency into the western was novel enough to spice up both tired genres a little. I watched it on the late show when I was on a baby-sitting gig and it made my night. Held my interest all the way and I enjoyed repeated viewings of it over the next couple of years.

It's well acted by all. John Saxon has a great time playing the quietest but most dangerous gang member and Jeff Chandler gets to be a bad-tempered hero. As a small and relatively simple movie with a social message geared to the time of its release it's not really an 8 now, but I think it deserves a little better rating than it has here so I've given an extra point or two to help raise the average and I don't think that's the wrong thing to do at all. It's a decent piece of entertainment.