The Raiders

CinemaSerf

Someone was clearly on the wrong end of a night on the Bourbon when they concocted this tale of poverty stricken, post US Civil War, ranchers who decide that the only way they can get their meagre cattle herds to market is by forcing the railroad to build a branch line to their Texas backwater. It's not immediately attractive to the railroad bosses, this cunning piece of industrial endeavour, so it falls to the seven (more middle-aged than magnificent) led by a way to goody-goody Brian Keith to disrupt construction on their existing project until the railroad cave in. It somehow manages to rope in Robert Culp as "Wild Bill Hickok"; Judi Meredith as a terribly poor imitation of "Calamity Jane" and Jim McMullan as "Buffalo Bill" - I was half expecting General Custer to join in too. The storyline is all over the place, the imagery is a collection of outdoor/indoor/archive with continuity from someone else on the Scotch - and the gatling gun arrives way too late to do any of us much good. It's only 75 minutes, but seemed way longer...