Duel at Diablo

Duel at Diablo (1966) is a tough American western you can watch online on iFILM. Scout Jess Remsberg leads an army supply column across Apache country, but he is riding with a private errand too: he wants the man who killed his wife. James Garner plays him as a quiet tracker with rage simmering under the calm.

Sidney Poitier rides alongside him as a sharp-dressed horse dealer who sells mounts to the cavalry and gets pulled into a fight he never wanted. Director Ralph Nelson turns the desert into a trap — the column ends up pinned in a dead-end canyon, low on ammunition, with Apache fighters waiting along the rocks and every sortie a possible last one. Bibi Andersson, Bill Travers and Dennis Weaver round out the cast, and Andersson's character hands the film a conflict the genre rarely touched: a white woman who chose tribal life on purpose.

What sets it apart from mid-sixties westerns is a grown-up streak about race and brutality, plus Neal Hefti's jazzy, decidedly un-cowboy score. It suits anyone who likes their westerns dry, dusty and free of heroics, where staying alive beats looking brave. Stream Duel at Diablo (1966) online on iFILM.