Absolutely the worst movie.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The screenplay is basically a contest between the traditional exploitation of nature's bounty to near exhaustion, and the new conservation movement to conserve natural resources so that they may be with us in the future. Cottonmouth(Burl Ives) and his crew of waterbird poachers represent the epitome of exterminate and move on practice, that reached its peak in the late 19th century, with the advent of superior repeater weapons, and population pressure. Walt Murdock(Christopher Plummer)(also called 'bird boy') represents the wave of the future, as a student of nature, and game warden with the dangerous job of enforcing recent no kill laws. Ives' character very much reminds me of his character in "The Big Country", also released in 1958. There too, he is the patriarch of a motley crew of men, again ruling with an iron fist. His character also much reminds me of Eddie Robinson's Wolf Larsen, in "The Sea Wolf", who preferred to go down with his ship rather than have to start over as a nobody. Cottonmouth 'knew' he wouldn't survive that snake bite, thus ordered Murdock to leave him there in his beloved glades rather than try heroics to save him. But, Murdock and Cottonmouth are, in some ways, more alike than different. They both relish wild places, far from the prying eyes of conventional civilization. Murdock acknowledges this connection in his participation in the drinking spree and rough games of the poachers.Incidentally, the dramatized death by tying a Seminole to a Manchineel tree is a bit overplayed. There is indeed such a tree in the glades that contains many types of poisons, whose sap mostly causes bad skin and eye ulcers, which may become septic. The tempting fruit is quite toxic when eaten.

Playing like a demented cross between Fellini & Lil' Abner, Budd Schulberg's & Nicholas Ray's film features Christopher Plummer in one of his first roles. He plays an ornithologist working in the Florida Everglades and attempting to stop swamp gangster Burl Ives & his goons from pouching the bird population. Ives is ruthless but Plummer proves a worthy adversary. Director Ray and writer Schulberg create quite a potboiler leading up to an all-night moonshine drink-off between Plummer & Ives. The actors are all perfect (among Ives's posse is a young Peter Falk and a make-up-less Emmett Kelley). Curt Conway plays the "prefesser." The art direction is by Richard Sylbert & the stunning cinematography is by Joseph C. Brun, who later shot FLIPPER (also filmed in the Sunshine state).

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.

I first saw this film as a youngster, and it had a huge impression on me. As this movie showed on TV semi regularly back then I watched it many times. I was blown away the first time and every other time I saw it. With each re-watching I always picked up on new things I'd missed or didn't understand before, I was a kid after all.Wind Across the Everglades invokes raw power, beauty, commitment, wilderness, redemption, morality, Human Nature, Nature.This movie really needs to be re-released on DVD. I haven't seen it in maybe 36 years or more, but still consider it a major "Classic" that has everything going for it..great acting, great story, a non-partisan moral.