Marshal of Madrid (1971)

Genres - Western  |   Sub-Genres - Police Detective Film  |   Release Date - Jan 1, 1972 (USA)  |   Run Time - 100 min.  |   Countries - United States  |   MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Bruce Eder

This 100-minute feature actually consists of two episodes of the series Cade's County, starring Glenn Ford as Sam Cade, the modern-day sheriff of Madrid County, CA, with Edgar Buchanan as his chief deputy. In the first half, Bobby Darin plays a psychopathic ex-con, obsessed with Billy the Kid, who starts to act out episodes in Billy's life in the modern West. Carrying a bazooka as well as Billy's real frontier revolver, he holds up armored cars from horseback, attempts to kill people he thinks betrayed him (and killed John Tunstall), and plans a move on trains and banks. He also involves his estranged wife (Linda Cristal) and the son (Leif Garrett) he didn't know he had in a plot to get revenge on the sheriff who betrayed him -- except that this sheriff is Sam Cade, not Pat Garrett. In the second half, a local bully is stabbed to death and the prime suspect is the Chicano laborer he had just fought with -- but Cade smells a rat when he discovers that the supposed killer was afraid of knives and that the victim never had his out, or even reached for his despite being attacked from the front. He begins digging, with help from a border patrolman (Rudolfo Acosta) and discovers that there's a lot of activity at the ranch where the suspect and the victim worked and lived that doesn't seem right, and too many ties between the victim, the ranch owner (James Gregory) and his lawyer (Simon Scott), and the witnesses, for all the pieces to fit together.

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Keywords

lawman, oil-man, smuggling