Navajo Joe

Year releasted: 1966

by Keith Phipps
September 12th, 2001

Times may change with the economy, or the economy may change with the times, but it's clear enough that shifts in the marketplace can upset the lifestyles of individuals and communities alike. Illustrating this using a past age of olive-complexioned cowboys and hyperactive zoom lenses, Navajo Joe opens with a sequence in which the none-too-threateningly named outlaw Duncan (Aldo Sambrell) learns that his era may have passed him by. Riding into a Southwest town with a fresh batch of Indian scalps, Sambrell is informed by the city fathers that they will no longer offer him a dollar apiece for his kills, due to the changing times and the fact that their community might not be endangered by all the women and children Sambrell has slaughtered. Enraged, he and his gang attempt to settle their differences by shooting up the area. They only calm down when a strange man from the nearby town of Esparanza tips Sambrell off about a train filled with cash meant to fill the city's coffers. Robbing the train figures to be a tough job, made tougher by the presence of a buckskin-clad Burt Reynolds, who attempts to thwart Sambrell before the latter can even grow accustomed to his new line of work. Still bothered by the scalping of his woman, Reynolds hides the train money, refuses to reveal its location even under torture, and eventually forces Sambrell into a battle royale. Ultimately, the thwack of Reynolds' hatchet sounds the death knell for the region's scalp-based economy, and trumpets the start of a new era founded on the twin pillars of tolerance and vigilante justice.