Viet Nam vet Christopher George comes home to his Arizona town to try to make up with his brother, Dennis Patrick. Patrick is promptly murdered and thieves steal a million dollars from his racetrack. Then the plane they are escaping in blows up in the air, with the money replaced by newspaper. As his brother's heir, George is a suspect, but sheriff John Dehner thinks he can stir up more information by letting George free to investigate. There's racetrack co-owners fronted by Alan Hale Jr.; the corpoate papers give George three days to buy their shares at their price; if he doesn't they can buy his shares at the same rate. There's businessman Dean Jagger, who has a finger in every local pie save the race track; there's Tippi Hedren, who wants to take up where they left off when George left town; and assorted mysteries keep piling up.
It's R. G. Springsteen's last directorial effort, and the last movie appearance by Glenda Farrell. She had collapsed on stage and died in 1969, while this movie sat on the shelf. Editor Terry Morse would cut one more movie before he retired. The producers had picked up behind-the-screen talent cheap, I should imagine, and those had used their connections to do some interesting casting. While Charles Wallace's script has a couple of big holes in it, it's a well-run story of greed and desperation in the west.
