The premise of "San Antone" revolves around an interesting footnote to the American Civil War. At the end of the war Confederate General Shelby was operating in the Trans- Mississippi area and rather than surrender he led about 200 of his remaining men into Mexico with the intention of becoming mercenaries in Mexico's own civil war; between elected President Juarez and the European puppet Maximilian. Shelby wanted to support Juarez but his men (hard line Southerners) identified more with the aristocratic Emperor Maximilian. Shelby went along with their wishes and met with Maximilian. But Mexico was already flooded with European mercenaries and Maximilian could not afford to employ the former Confederate soldiers.
The basic premise would be repeated again in "The Undefeated" (1969) and "The Shadow Riders (1982). Those two movies take even more liberties with history than "San Antone", which is by far the best of the three if only because its background story is far more plausible that the distorted mess invented for the later movies.
"San Antone" is not really the story of General Shelby but of a small group of soldiers (and their rescuers) from outside his command who enter Mexico with the intention of joining him. They are captured by a band of Juarez's Republicans and held for ransom.
This film belongs to the women as Arleen Whelan and Katy Jurado pretty much steal the whole thing from wooden star Rod Cameron and his movie nemesis Forrest Tucker. In fact, had the producers recognized the great dynamic they had going here and revised the script to feature it instead of the lame action sequences they would have ended up with a decent film. Unfortunately they remained clueless and the two substantial but still supporting actress roles are not enough to salvage the production.
Interestingly, both Whelan and Jurado play totally against their physical casting types (wholesome redheaded Irish girl and haughty aristocratic Spaniard) and these physical disconnects bring unexpected depth to their characters. Whelan has a lot of fun as Julia Allerby, channeling the nastiest traits of Bette Davis' "Jezebel" and Vivian Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara.
Cameron might be the feature performer but Whelan is not far behind him in screen time. In large part this is due to this being a modest budget Columbia production. There was no money for elaborate action scenes so Columbia substituted a lot of stock footage instead. The film stock is poorly matched with the original footage and of course Cameron is not present in any of these assorted sequences. They include a lengthy civil war montage from a 1930's educational film-complete with a voice-over of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (it suddenly appears-you watch until it goes away-you wonder why they put that in there). A bit later a badly staged Alamo sequence (probably for the same high school civics class) is inserted to represent Maximilian's attack on Monterey (an engagement that actually occurred many years earlier during the Mexican War and did not involve Maximilian).
There is also a lot of miscellaneous stock footage of cattle drives. The only major action scene actually staged for "San Antone" is cinema's all time most moronic Indian attack. Rather than simply overrun the cattlemen the Indians ride up and down in front of them like shooting gallery targets. Maybe that stock footage wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
