Cinema: Frontier Freedom Riders

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Duel at Diablo is ostensibly a battle between murderous Apaches and a company of American folk types who are fighting their way with troops, ammunition and supplies from a place called Fort Creel to a place called Fort Concho. Many a sturdy western has sprung to life from such straightforward plans as these, but Director Ralph Nelson and his scenarists clutter up the spectacular Utah scenery with something other than frontier history. Clearly indebted to more current events, Diablo's wagon train carries two kinds of people: bad guys and freedom riders.

A pivotal role is played by Sweden's Bibi Andersson, who lends flickering pathos to the film as a settler's wife. Kidnaped once by Apaches, she yearns to go back to the tribe because her husband (Dennis Weaver) doesn't think any decent woman should have lived through the ordeal, much less have borne a son to an Indian chieftain. Bibi is de fended by a trail scout (James Garner), who is determined to find the marshal who slew and scalped his Comanche wife. Broncobuster Sidney Poitier and Scottish Cavalryman Bill Travers pointedly underplay the long thought that a man's color or accent is no measure of his worth.

With so many warm human issues at stake, the attacking Apaches tend to come across as more or less unfortunate bystanders. Even when bullets and arrows fly thickest, many just mill around in the background on horseback, as though someone had told them not to do anything—other than occasionally torturing white men—that might discredit their people. If anything, Diablo proves that it can be extremely difficult to promote racial harmony while playing cowboys-and-Indians.