Rider On A Dead Horse (DVD)

The search for gold brings three men together -- but greed drives one of them to murder! John Vivyan, star of Blake Edwards' TV series Mr. Lucky, trades urbane cool for sweaty grit to play Hayden, one of three tough prospectors who strike it big, then bury their fortune in the blistering Arizona desert to protect it from hostile Apaches. But Hayden needs protection himself when one of his partners decides all the loot is better than a third. A gold hunter bites the dust, and a wounded Hayden must rely on a knife-wielding Chinese woman to escape the same doom. Fistfights, an Indian attack, a manhunt, a jailbreak and a dynamite-fueled denouement add to the sagebrush thrills. Bruce Gordon, who unnerved a generation of television viewers as mobster Frank Nitti on The Untouchables, is chilling as the greed-maddened killer.

• western