William Holden did Escape from Fort Bravo as a double loan out from his two studio employers, Paramount and Columbia. It would have been a wasted trip, but for the fact that he also did Executive Suite in the same package. Mr. Holden was much in demand after winning the Oscar for Stalag 17.<br /><br />He's very much like Sefton from Stalag 17 only this time he's the jailer and up to all the tricks the prisoners have. He's second in command of a prison stockade in the west during the Civil War. And the prisoners and their jailers are surrounded by hostile Mescalero Apaches.<br /><br />One trick he's not up to is the charms of Confederate agent Eleanor Parker. Coincidentally enough she's a friend of Polly Bergen who is post commandant Carl Benton Reid's daughter and she's arrived for Bergen's wedding to young Lieutenant Richard Anderson. But she's also sweet on Confederate captain John Forsythe and she's there to spring him.<br /><br />Just why Forsythe's services are so desperately needed by the Confederacy is not gone into. In any event I would think that the Confederacy would try for a mass escape like in The Great Escape before using an agent to affect the escape of one man and some of his selected companions.<br /><br />And what companions. Two feuding enlisted men William Demarest and William Campbell and a sensitive young lieutenant in John Lupton who already failed at an escape himself. Not the guys I'd take along.<br /><br />Nevertheless Escape from Fort Bravo boasts of some great scenic photography in Death Valley and a very exciting last stand battle with the escapees and Holden facing certain death at the hands of the Mescaleros.<br /><br />Director John Sturges and all the players involved did films a lot better than Escape from Fort Bravo.