Watch Wind Across the Everglades For Free

I love this movie so much

Memorable, crazy movie

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

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.

For it's time, I considered it original, thought-provoking, and typical of Schulberg's quirky, off-beat style. I would rate "Wind Across the Everglades", as a movie ahead of it's time, given it's now much-debated theme. I still remember--after almost 40 years---Burl Ives speaking lines which included the phrase "A man's an eel", or did I hear it right? Finally, it was the first film in which I ever saw ChristopherPlummer. I would dearly love to see it again, but it's seldom on television, and in my home town of Sligo, in the Irish Republic, it is not available on video or DVD. Well,that's about wraps my comment. Goodbye, and thank you Paddy Coen.

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.