Like contemporaries Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cleef did his
sojuourn in European films mostlywesterns and graduated to leads. Unlike
Marvin, Bronson, and others like Claude Akins, Neville Brand, and Jack Elam,
Van Cleef never did explore a comic side. Maybe he just didn't have one. He's
also one strange hero as he is in Barquero.
In this film Lee Van Cleef is the man with the barge who ferries people across a deep river. He doesn't even particularly like the settlers in the town
on the river bank that has grown up. But when Warren Oates's gang of
renegade cutthroats want to use that barge, Van Cleef proves to be the
savior of the town.
Oates who usually plays with a comic twist either as a good guy or a bad guy is one deadly serious villain here. His gang massacres a whole town to
leave no witnesses to a shipment of arms that they are robbing. Van Cleef
knows well what they are capable of.
Forrest Tucker who can be comic here provides the comic relief as a mountain man. the last of a breed who proves to be Van Cleef's salvation. He rescues Van Cleef when he's captured by a couple of Oates's men who were sent to secure the ferry man for the gang. He has some sardonically
funny scenes with John Davis Chandler, the captive.
Mariette Hartley is in this and she's the wife of a local storekeeper who is also a most pious reverend. When he's left behind and captured by Oates,
Hartley makes Van Cleef an offer that an old time gentlemanly cowboy hero
would never take up. Think of Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, that's
the kind of hero Van Cleef is.
This one is a must for fans of Lee Van Cleef.
