Winning Losers

Rio Conchos lays money on the somewhat odd proposition that the West was won by losers. Its motley heroes are an incompetent Army officer (Stuart Whitman), his much-abused Negro aide (Cleveland Fullback Jim Brown), a half-breed cutthroat (Tony Franciosa), and a grizzled lay-about (Richard Boone) who loves red-eye as passionately as he loathes redskins.

Conveniently flung together by hard luck, the four men head through Apache country to find a Southern trader who may know the whereabouts of 2,000 carbines stolen from a U.S. Cavalry shipment. En route they brawl and bicker, drink and debauch in a rugged Old West that appears to be crawling with bandidos, prostitutes and sadistic savages. They add an Indian girl to their retinue, a sensible primitive who talks little and doesn't keep any of the fellows awake nights.

This virile, whimsical odyssey rises to a not-quite-credible climax at the Mexican hideout of Dixie Renegade Edmond O'Brien. It is two years since Appomattox, but O'Brien, nursing a mad dream that he will resume the Civil War, has established himself in a sort of alfresco plantation house as commander in chief of 1,000 or more Apache Confederate troops. Crazy, sure. But if Rio Conchos is no High Noon, it is a tough-minded little western that cuts the television competition down to size. It makes most of the saddlesoap operas that jockey for space on the home screen look like Brand-X horseplay.

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