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Wind
Across the Everglades represents the once-in-a-lifetime
collaboration between director
Nicholas
Ray and screenwriter Budd
Schulberg, and a strange little picture with entangled
subplots it is indeed. In his second film appearance, Christopher
Plummer plays alcoholic 19th-century Florida game warden
conservationist Walt Murdock, who is desperate to protect the turn
of the century Florida Everglades from both real estate developers
and the poachers in his region. This brings him in direct conflict
with the legendary Cottonmouth (Burl
Ives), the spiritual leader of a group of birdhunters who are
determined to snare plume birds in order to take the tail feathers
for ladies hats. The highly eccentric supporting cast includes
Gypsy
Rose Lee as a sensuous farm wife/bordello Madam, boxer "Two Ton" Tony
Galento as a lout named Beef, circus clown
Emmett
Kelly as the much-married Bigamy Bob, novelist Mackinlay
Kantor as the regional judge, Peter Falk in his film debut, as an owlish writer,
Sammy Renick as Loser, and George Voskovek, one of the original 12 Angry Men. After
Wind
Across the Everglades, Nick Ray's
Johnny
Guitar will seem as antiseptic as
Heidi.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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