There are many ways to "read" this film: for some it is a poor man's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", for others a simple western, to a few an antecedent of "Brokeback Mountain" (and when considering it as such, these two cowboys surely had more sense of humor than the latter couple), the third installment of a Douglas-Walker western trilogy
they all are valid, and it also fits in one kind of film that somehow stresses me: "the desert trap film". There are comedies of this type (as "The Gods Must Be Crazy), but I refer to those dramas in which characters are literally trapped in a desert or a snow-covered steppe, where they suffer the inclemency of the weather of these extreme locations during all the running time. In the sub-category "desert", you find, for example, "The King Is Alive", "The Flight of the Phoenix", the Mexican "Viento negro" and even indoors plots as "The Wind"; and in "snow", there are "Quintet", "The Thing" or "Never Cry Wolf". In "Gold of the Seven Saints", Clint Walker and Roger Moore never leave the dry lands in their intent to take a fortune in gold to the town Seven Saints, some kind of nowhere land in the 19th century. During the trip they have some well-written and finely-delivered manly conversations, but for 35 minutes everything is slow and low key until Chil Wills as a "medicine man" enters and delivers action, and later Robert Middleton and Leticia Román in costume add some Mexican chili to the events. There is nothing special about this film, but somehow it works. Walker projects a pleasant personality, while Moore is surprisingly funny as his Irish companion. Gordon Douglas is a director with no following, but I like a few of his works, as the hilarious "Zombies on Broadway", the science-fiction movie "Them!", the off- beat western "Rio Conchos", and now I add this one.
Review of Gold of the Seven Saints
