Wind Across the Everglades represents the once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between director
Nicholas Ray and screenwriter
Budd Schulberg, and a strange little picture it is indeed. In his second film appearance,
Christopher Plummer plays bibulous 19th-century Florida game warden Walt Murdock, who declares war on the poachers in his region. This brings him in direct conflict with the legendary Cottonmouth (
Burl Ives), the spiritual leader of a group of illegal birdhunters. The highly eccentric supporting cast includes
Gypsy Rose Lee as a sensuous farm wife, boxer "Two Ton" Tony Galento as a lout named Beef, circus clown Emmett Kelly as the much-married Bigamy Bob, novelist
MacKinlay Kantor as the regional judge, and
Peter Falk in his film debut, as an owlish writer. After Wind Across the Everglades, Nick Ray's
Johnny Guitar will seem as antiseptic as
Heidi. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide