Texas Across the River is a rootin’, tootin’ comedy western with no holds barred. It’s a gag-man’s dream, an uninhibited spoof of the early frontier packed with a choice assemblage if laughs, many of the belly genre.
Writers have developed a situation of a gallant Spanish innocent set down in a world he can never quite understand. That he is a nobleman, too, with courtly ethics, makes him all the more improbable as a character who takes in stride wild Comanches and wilder longhorns, and finds Dean Martin, as a Texan, the most perplexing of all.
Michael Gordon’s direction juggles the misadventuress of Alain Delon, in Spanish role, and Martin with a mission of transporting guns across Comanche terrritory and Delon on his hands. Both Indians and the cavalry are satirized with countless slick touches.
