Strange pseudo-Western set in turn-of-the-century Florida, with Christopher Plummer as a seemingly half-crazed ornithologist going up against Burl Ives as a fully-crazed cottonmouth-snake-fondling swamp-god of the Everglades. Gypsy Rose Lee turns up as a whorehouse madame and Peter Falk stalks the sidelines in his first film appearance.I stumbled onto Wind Across the Everglades playing on TCM; as a native Floridian, I just had to check it out. The film is undeniably entertaining but it is consistently undercut by strange dialog, uneven editing, and a plot where characters seem to meander aimlessly into and out of trouble. Plummer seems lost in his role, veering from composed and thoughtful to wild and unkempt again and again. Burl Ives fares better in his role as the grizzled poacher, though he isn't really given a lot to do.The cinematography, too, is as uneven as the old "African safari" travelogues that intermix shots of the actor/s with assorted wildlife. I swear to God, when we got shots of egrets, alligators, ibis, a wood duck, and a freakin' sawfish all in the same montage, I just lost it. I mean, this is great stuff.The strangest thing about all this hooey is that it is, in the end, really entertaining. While I wouldn't call it a "good" film, it holds up well against classics of "bad" cinema like Spider-Baby, Robot Monster, or any of Ed Wood's gems. This is a worthy cult film for any cinephile.

And in Nicholas Ray's canon,it's not the only one.Few directors (if there were any) displayed ecological concern fifty years ago.Maybe John Huston did when he filmed the plight of the elephants in "roots of Heaven" at the time.But it was not as successful as "wind across the everglades.They say Ray did not finish the film (once again it was not the only one;see also "55 days at Peking" )but ,apart from his plea for the everglades wildlife,we find one of his permanent features:the Walt/Cottonmouth relationship is very complex and verges on a father and son one (for that matter ,see also " knock on any door" "the lusty men" " run for cover" ..) The picture with these birds flying away is sublime.

**SPOILERS** Set at the turn of century in the uncharted Florida Everglades the movie is about the feather craze that swept the nation and the world that resulted in the killing of millions of Blue Herons and Snow White Egrets by poachers who got as much as $100.00 an ounce, this in the early 1900's being a King's Ransom, for the birds beautiful and valuable feathers.Upset over whats happening down under in the Sunshine State the Audubon Society had the Federal Government send law enforcement Marshall's down to Florida to prevent and arrest the gangs of poachers, who called themselves Swamp Rats,and prevent them from upsetting the delicate balance of nature that in the end would destroy all the wildlife in the swamps and wetlands.Nature and bird lover Walt Murdoc, Christopher Plumer, goes down to Miami as a Federal Mrashall to enforce the law against the indiscriminate killing of birds by the scuzzy and insensitive poachers and has it out with the biggest baddest and heaviest poachers of them all Cottonmouth, Burl Ives, and his motley gang of Swamp or Water Rats. Even though the Cottonmouth Gang could easily take out and put away Mudoc they instead have one of their lackey's Seminole Indian guide Billy One Arm get Murdoc lost in the swamps where he's to end up as dinner for the local alligators.Billy won over by Murdoc's love of nature and concern for the birds as well as his people the native Seminole Indians can't bring himself to do him in which later costs Billy One Arm his life. Cottonmouth enraged at Billy One Arm's humanity, which he totally lacks, gives him the full treatment by having Billy One Arm tied to the poisonous Manchioneel tree, thats a fate far worse then death itself. The the sap of the plant slowly eats away Billy's skin and infects his blood stream killing poor Billy with it's lethal venom that's more deadlier then the bite of a hundred cottonmouths or rattle snakes.Murdoc still trying to arrest Cottonmouth & Co and bring him back to civilization, Miami, to face justice goes by himself to Cottonmouth's hideout, Cottonmouth Key. But instead of Murdoc bing killed by the murderous poachers he's invited to a drinking contest with the far bigger, who can really pack it away, Cottonmouth which ends up with Murdoc passing out from consumption and ending up in the swamps during a raging hurricane.The ending is a little too much to take with for some strange reason Cottonmouth agreeing to go back to Miami with Murdoc, after he recovered from his hangover, and give himself up but under only one condition: that Murdoc do all the driving or rowing through the snake and alligator infested swamps! We have then Murdoc and Cottonmoth sloughing their way back to Miami with Murdoc,like Cottonmouth planned, losing his way and getting an ore bashed over his head by Cottonmouth. This happened after a delirious Murdoc shot at an imaginary snake that he thought was trying to kill him. Cottonmouth losing his hat, with a white bird feather stuck on it, later goes back to the swamp to retrieve it and as Murdoc is just about to be submerged by the rising waters. It's then when Cottonmouth gets bitten by a real cottonmouth that leaves him crumpled up, like a bag of potatoes, and slowly dying from the bite of the poisonous reptile. Murdoc gets instructions in how to get back to Miami from the dying Cottonmouth who, with him at death's door, finally sees what he overlooked all his life in the beauty of nature and the indigenous birds of the Glade's as he loses consciousness and peacefully passes away. As he finally departs from this realm of existence the birds of the Glade's that he and his gang of poachers had been ruthlessly gunning down by the hundreds,for a nice and tidy profit, end up pelting Cottonmouth with their daily deposits.

Bud Shulberg started his own production company with this movie. He pretty much ended it with the same movie. Well-acted and beautifully photographed, the movie suffers from what appears to be very heavy cutting. Christopher Plummer plays a man whom by chance becomes a protector of the exotic birds in the Everglades. Burl Ives plays the head of a group of poachers. POSSIBLE SPOILER: At a key point during the film, for some reason, Ives spares Plummer's life. It really amazes me this film would be so highly regarded by IMDB viewers, when GREEN MANSIONS, a much more coherent movie, is so badly panned. Oh well;if you must see it, expect to be a bit bored. I gave it a six, entirely for its aspirations, and what was undoubtedly left on the cutting room floor.