Lee Van Cleef plays King, the leader of a gang who robs a bank but quickly loses the money to Alicia (Lollobrigida) who marries him and has him sent to a lunatic asylum. Much later, King gets the gang back together again to go after her. She has meanwhile married Montero (James Mason) and made a new plan to steal even more money. King and his companions meet her on a steamship, like the sound of 'million' and decide to postpone their revenge..."Bad Man's River" has got an excellent cast (Fajardo as a general, Sambrell as a bandit, Garko as a gunman are in supporting roles), and it surely has some great dialog worth quoting, such as Van Cleef/Lollobrigida on their first meeting: "What do you look for most on a man?" - "Honesty." - "Umm... second?", Van Cleef tries again. Or when Alicia reminds both men she's married to: "You should be friends, you've got a lot in common - me!" I think I watched this movie at least 5 times by now, on British TV, German DVD and Italian DVD. Unfortunately, on neither DVD release the picture format was correct, clearly cut on the right and left and the quality was rather grainy, so the perfect remaster is something I still wait for. I always thought of "Bad Man's River" as very entertaining despite its little flaws, and I'm rather surprised at the mostly negative other reviews here. It's neither a typical European western of the time in its tone nor as well directed as American comedies ('Cat Ballou', for example), maybe somewhat unluckily caught in the middle.

Bad Man's River is a spaghetti western movie which I chose based on Lee Van Cleef being on the cover -- I'm not a massive western fan but even I recognised Van Cleef as a fairly famous actor in the genre. Unfortunately this did not equate into a good movie. Van Cleef is, I assume, the character for the title song: "He's the baddest man in Bad Man's River, where virtue is a sin".Does this movie have a good plot? No. It involves a complicated process of blowing things up and stealing a bank cheque, but seems to revolve largely around Alicia -- played by Gina Lollobrigida -- who marries men and betrays them but for some reason they never think she'll do it again. I mean seriously, after the third time a woman has sold you down the river to death or worse you've pretty much only yourself to blame if it happens again -- and it does.However, if we ignore the shoddy plot we have to ask ourselves if we're left with a good action movie. We ask that question, and we receive a negative answer. I'm a keen believer in suspending disbelief in movies...you have to go with the flow and accept what the directors are trying to do. Yet there is a limit. This limit was not reached when the good buys never missed a shot and the bad guys aimed for the feet and never got a hit* -- even with a sub-machine gun -- but the limit was reached and passed and left eating dust when a protagonist would fire his gun twice and four men would fall over. And who knew that a cheap mattress would provide better cover from bullets than an inch of solid oak? It's impossible to suspend disbelief for this movie, the plot is appalling, and the acting stilted. I rate it: A bullet to the head.* Oh, one protagonist gets shot. At least, he falls against a wall clutching his arm or shoulder or chest or something. It doesn't slow him down though, in fact it doesn't even bleed.

Lee Van Cleef is conned by Gina Lollobrigida TWICE...first into marrying her (she robs him), then into helping her come into a million dollars thanks to her involvement with Mexican revolutionary James Mason. The unlikely pairing of Van Cleef & Lollobrigida actually works well but Mason is miscast in his relatively small role. Director "Gene" Martin keeps the pace moving briskly. This is a spaghetti western with a real sense of humor. A fun comic western marred by some really insipid faux country rock ballads thrown into an otherwise fine incidental music score. Also featuring the great Jess Hahn as one of Van Cleef's cronies.

I have seen this film in a double feature together with SABATA and it fell clearly short in comparison with the latter. The cast is good(Van Cleef, James Mason, Eduardo Fajardo and Gina Lollobrigida) and the "sets"(e.g. a riverboat) are somewhat original. But the score is mostly annoying and the story was unable to really involve me(Don't ask me intensely about the plot!). The Comedy is often fast paced and sometimes mildly funny.For people who like the country/pop/rock score, however, things might look certainly different. 3 / 10.