The Gambler from Natchez

Dale Robertson stars in the title role as The Gambler From Natchez who has come home after a furloughed leave to join Sam Houston in Texas. Which would put the year at around 1836 in the ante-bellum south and in New Orleans.

Robertson has come home to visit his father whom he finds out has been killed. His father was a gambler by trade and he was murdered with all the proprieties of the Creole code covered. Robertson himself is a gambler and good one.

He identifies three men Kevin McCarthy, Douglas Dick, and John Weingraf, as the perpetrators and he's marked them in his little black book of revenge.

The comparisons of The Gambler From Natchez with films like Mississippi Gambler and The Iron Mistress are rather obvious. But a very astute previous reviewer saw the elements of The Count Of Monte Cristo here and I salute that person.

The most harrowing scene in the film is Robertson with a knife in his back eluding the people pursuing through the shore marshes of the Mississippi. Those pursuers included the overseer who put said knife in his back and some of his slave charges. I'm sure it was with a great sense of irony that 20th Century Fox filmed black people pursuing a white runaway in the swamp.

Later on said overseer meets a most timely end at the hands of Woody Strode. How many times did black man kill a slave overseer and suffered no consequences.

Aiding and abetting Robertson's cause is riverboat captain Thomas Gomez and daughter Debra Paget. McCarthy has a fetching sister in Lisa Daniel who also intrigues Robertson. You never know on which side she will fall.

The Gambler From Natchez is not as good as the other cited films, but it certainly holds its own in the entertainment department.