Breakheart Pass

I didn't really intend to do posts on multiple westerns in fairly quick succession, especially two with a gunrunning theme, but I happened to watch Breakheart Pass without really knowing what it was about.

It's the 1870s somewhere in the northern half of the Rockies, in an area where snow-covered mountains aren't uncommon. One of the army forts has suffered a breakout of one of those communicable diseases that were more common in the 1800s, so the fort is basically on quarantine until a special train can be put on to bring medicine to the fort. In addition to relief soldiers and the crew of the train, there's a private car on it which is owned by Fairchild (Richard Crenna), territorial governor. He's heading up to the fort with his fiancée Marica (Jill Ireland), because her father is the current commander of the fort.

The train stops at one of those small towns that populated western movies, where it picks up a few more passengers. One of them is Pearce (Ben Johnson), a US Marshal who is there for the obvious reason that the train and its supplies need to be protected. Also brought on the train is Deakin (Charles Bronson). He's the prisoner of Pearce, so you wonder why he'd be taken to the Fort as it doesn't really seem to be mentioned whether this is a through train. In any case, he's been on wanted posters that all of the other passengers have seen, so they immediately suspect anything he's been doing.

And they're going to have a lot to suspect Deakin of, when they find out that the doctor who is going to be treating the outbreak, Molyneux (David Huddleston), is found dead in what looks like a fairly obvious murder. Deakin seems to know way too much about medicine for his own good and starts to take over the investigation, which you'd think would set off alarm bells in the other passengers.

To be fair, it does set off those alarm bells, but not for the reason that a normal viewer would expect. In fact, as the movie develops, there are quite a few more murders, and all of the main characters turn out to be not quite what they seem. The train, as well, is not necessarily going to the fort in order to treat that outbreak. But who is committing the murders, and why?

Breakheart Pass is the sort of movie that feels a bit out of place and out of date. The idea of setting a murder mystery on board an old west train is a good one, but you feel like it would have been done already in the 1950s. That, or this is the sort of material that by the mid-1970s would make great material for the TV movies of the week when there were only the three networks and all-star TV movies were the rage. Now, none of this is to say that Breakheart Pass is in any way a bad movie. Instead, it's more that it's the sort of material that feels a bit pedestrian, like it's been done before. It does entertain and it also quite thankfully doesn't outstay its welcome.

There's also the lovely photography. The northern half of Idaho stands in for what I think was supposed to be Colorado, and for the most part the scenery is quite nice. As with Oh Mr. Porter, train buffs will probably enjoy the movie as well. Breakheart Pass certainly isn't an all-time classic, but it's also the sort of movie that nobody who made it has anything to be embarrassed about.