El Dorado/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Nelse McLeod is a surprisingly likeable character and in some ways a more honorable fighter than Cole Thornton.
  • Recycled Script: Many situations and plot elements are very similar to those of the previous Hawks/Brackett/Wayne western, Rio Bravo, and to those of the next and last one, Rio Lobo. Some elements are inverted, e.g. instead of the hyper-competent Young Gun of Rio Bravo you had a youngster who is useless with firearms. The scene in which Thornton pushes one of McLeod's mooks through a door to be shot by his own men echoes a similar one from the first Hawks/Brackett collaboration, The Big Sleep. There also had been a scene similar to the one where Mississippi throws himself in front to the bad guys' horses that was cut from the final version of Rio Bravo, so to do it here, Howard Hawks bought the rights back from Warner.