Gilbert Roland Movies

In this strange, unsatisfying remake of Casablanca, directed by J. Lee Thompson, a bar owner helps a woman find a missing fortune. Right after the end of WWII, Giff Hoyt (Charles Bronson) owns a bar in Peru into which Marie Allesandri (Dominique Sanda) enters one day, in search of her lover and some missing money. Matters are complicated by Gunther Beckdorff (Jason Robards), a Nazi who has his own plans for the money. Terredo (Fernando Rey) observes all the action and helps at an important moment. Despite the very good cast which also includes Camilla Sparv and Gilbert Roland, all of the various subplots and characters fail to gel, and Caboblanco is confusing, unsatisfying and slow-moving. Any fan of Casablanca should skip this and see the original again. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

The hunt for a large, precious black pearl located off the coast of Baja California provides the basis of this youthful adventure. Though a relatively simple dive is required, the young hero must first contend with the giant, protective manta ray that guards the treasure. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

We feel assured when veteran actor Gilbert Roland shows up in the prologue of the independently produced Treasure of Tayopa. Alas, this is the last we'll see of Roland until the epilogue. The rest of the film is Amateur Night in Old Mexico. The never-popular Rene Winters heads the cast as the leader of an expedition into the Mexican hills in search of gold. Another all-time favorite, Phil Trapani, puts a damper on the proceedings with a series of brutal murders. He is unfortunately stopped before he can bump off the producer and director of Treasure of Tayopa. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Mexican-filmed melodrama was released under a multitude of titles. Running Wild was evidently its working title, but even this apparently changed from day to day. Lloyd Bridges is given top billing, though Dina Merrill carries the plot as a big-city reporter who heads west to cover the activities of a humanitarian movement. Wild horses are being rounded up to be sold to dog-food companies, and a group of pro-animal activists want this practice to be discontinued. Veteran actors Pat Hingle, Morgan Woodward and Gilbert Roland manage to avoid the "take the money and run" attitude that most major names impose upon quickies like Running Wild. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy a golden-boy tennis player in search of Life's meaning is corrupted by Hollywood, too much praise, and the temptation to sell out. His life therefore, becomes a metaphor for the morals of Hollywood society. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

At the behest of a Latin-American dictator (Thomas Gomez), the Mafia sends one of their most efficient operatives (James Callahan) on a kidnap assignment. The prospective victim is the dictator's most powerful political foe, publisher Emilio Cruz (Gilbert Roland), who is living in exile in the U.S. Offered FBI protection by Inspector Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), the headstrong Cruz turns the Inspector down--little realizing that his best friend is in on the kidnap plot. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A bunch of anxious men attempt to track down the treasure stolen from a Texan church, and few are left standing. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Posing as "Tony Maxwell", Richard Kimble (David Janssen) hides out in the Barrio of an unnamed city. Taking a job at the cigar-manufacturing business run by Jose Anza (Gilbert Roland), Kimble befriends Jose's grandson Jimmy (Tom Nardini), a troubled youth torn between the demands of his father and the peer pressure exerted by a local street gang. Offering to help Kimble hide from the police, Jimmy soons discovers that the real threat to the fugitive's safety is the boy's own hoodlum "friends". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ruthless Four follows four prospectors who are out to strike a big lode in the Nevada gold rush days. When one of the four hits the riches, he finds the other three are out to partake of the hard-earned find. ~ All Movie Guide

Director Serge Bourguignon coadapted the screenplay for The Reward from a novel by Michael Barrett. Efrem Zimbalist Jr., usually cast on the right side of the law, is here a fugitive from American justice hiding from a murder rap in Mexico. Zimbalist and his girlfriend Yvette Mimieux try to avoid those who'd like to collect the $50,000 dead-or-alive price on his head. Police chief Gilbert Roland captures Zimbalist alive, promising to divvy up the reward with his men. But the police officers greedily turn on each other, leaving the audience to sort out for themselves just who's the real "bad guy" hereabouts. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Ford's last western film, Cheyenne Autumn was allegedly produced to compensate for the hundreds of Native Americans who had bitten the dust in Ford's earlier films (that was the director's story, anyway). Set in 1887, the film recounts the defiant migration of 300 Cheyennes from their reservation in Oklahoma territory to their original home in Wyoming. They have done this at the behest of chiefs Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland), peaceful souls who have been driven to desperate measures because the US government has ignored their pleas for food and shelter. Since the Cheyennes' trek is in defiance of their treaty, Captain Thomas Archer (Richard Widmark), who agrees with the Indians in principle, reluctantly leads his troops in pursuit of the tribe. While there was never any intention to shed blood, the white press finds it politically expedient to distort the Cheyennes' action into a declaration of war. Thanks to the cruelties of such chauvinistic whites as Captain Oscar Wessels (Karl Malden), the Cheyennes are forced to defend themselves--and whenever Indians take arms against whites in the 1880s, it's usually misrepresented as a massacre. Only the intervention of US secretary of the interior Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson) prevents the hostilities from erupting into wholesale bloodshed. Based on a novel by Mari Sandoz, Cheyenne Autumn is a cinematic elegy--not only for the beleaguered Cheyennes, but for John Ford's fifty years in pictures. It is weakest when arbitrarily throwing in a wearisome romance between Richard Widmark and pacifistic schoolmarm Carroll Baker, who out of sympathy for the Indians has joined them in their 1500-mile westward journey. When the Warner Bros. people decided that the film ran too long, they chopped out the wholly unnecessary but very funny episode involving a poker-obsessed Wyatt Earp (James Stewart). Contrary to popular belief, this episode was included in the earliest non-roadshow prints of Cheyenne Autumn; the scene was excised only when the film went into its second and third runs in 1966 (it has since been restored). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide