Irving Glassberg's camera work is first-rate, capturing some lush scenic views which is bound to receive some "oh" and "ah" responses from audiences.

Insufficiently intense to qualify as a psychological western, this is still superior to the average genre fare.

Free Zone and the Quicksand Quandaries! Border River is directed by George Sherman and written by William Sackheim and Louis Stevens. It stars Joel McCrea, Yvonne De Carlo, Pedro Armendariz, Alfonso Bedoya and Howard Petrie. Music is by Joseph Gershenson and cinematography by Irving Glassberg. During the war between Maximillian and Juarez in 1865, there was a small territory on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande River known as Zona Libre - - - "Free Zone". It was dominated by a man who called himself General Eduardo Calleja and he made it a haven for any man outside of the law. This is the story of Zona Libre. The above statement that opens the pic is actually a bit of a lie since the film is a story that operates out of Zona Libre. It essentially finds McCrea as a Confederate soldier who has hidden stolen gold bullion in the territory. He then sets about keeping it safe in readiness for the buying of Henry Repeater rifles to aid the Confederacy in keeping the Civil War on going. Naturally there are plenty of folk in Zona Libre interested in finding out where the gold is stashed... "Never saw a Southern boy yet didn't have a lily sprouting out of his liver" Utterly frustrating piece of Western genre film making. We have a top draw premise on the page - where a hot bed of a neutral area inhabited by crooks and various Civil War(s) operatives operate - is not brought about f…

The title doesn't really do much for this film, but once it gets going it's quite a fun outing for Pedro Armendáriz as he hams up nicely as rogue general "Calleja". He runs a sort of liberty port on the river between the wartorn USA and Emperor Maximilian's Mexico from which he won't extradite anyone - and so his citizenry are all a bunch of cut-throats and criminals. Newly arrived - and only just escaping a pursuing troop of Yankee cavalry - is "Mattson" (Joel McCrea) who is loaded with Confederate gold to buy guns for his side in the civil war. Getting the guns might be one challenge, but staying alive once his host finds out he is the bearer of a cool $2 million is going to prove a much harder task, especially with the blue-coats wise to his plan and just as keen to thwart it. Maybe he can trust "Carmelita" (Yvonne De Carlo)? She is the lady friend of the general but is tired of being treated as his chattel and might make for an useful ally in his dealings with the duplicitous "Calleja" who'd sell his own mother for a cigarillo. All anyone can really say about this is that it's an average daytime effort that challenges nobody - including us, and that's a shame. The story is quite intriguing and could have made for something altogether more substantial had they spent a little more time developing the menacing side of this scenario rather than just following the "Janet & John"…