Three American adventurers are stranded in a Mexican fishing village when their ship develops engine trouble. As they discuss their options in a local saloon, Leah Fuller, whose husband John is trapped in a distant gold mine, enters. She offers them $2,000 each, tossing a bag of coins on their table. Her gesture attracts the attention of another saloon customer, Vicente, who accepts. The Americans -- an ex-sheriff named Hooker, a gambler dubbed Fiske, and a young upstart bounty hunter -- sign on as well. During the harrowing journey inland, Leah informs Hooker that the site where her husband is trapped was once a boom town. It was erased by a volcanic eruption, leaving only a church steeple and a gold mine. The resident priest called it the "garden of evil." The Indians now consider the volcano sacred. One of the group, Vicente, keeps marking the trail and leaving stone arrows with direction-pointers, but Leah quietly dismantles the markings so that only she knows the way. When the group arrives at the mine, they discover John unconscious but alive. They work to free him just before the ceiling falls. They then transport him to a cabin where Hooker sets his broken leg. John sees the men with Leah and suspects she came back for the gold rather than him, but she denies it. With hostile Apache nearby, the group leave. During their return, John sees he is slowing the group's progress and, with the help of the young bounty hunter, disappears. Shortly, Indians kill the bounty hunter with an arrow in the back. Later, at a burnt-out mission, the group finds John dead, hung upside down on a cross. Vicente falls next, the victim of multiple arrows. Later, the three survivors reach a choke point in a cliff-hugging pathway, the only way back to the village. Hooker and Fiske draw cards. The loser will stay behind to hold off the Indians while the other escorts Leah to safety. Fiske loses. After Leah and Hooker depart, Fiske succeeds in killing or driving off most of the Apache. However, he is mortally wounded. After seeing Leah to safety, Hooker returns to aid the besieged gambler. Fiske admits he cheated on the card draw to guarantee he would stay behind. Before he dies, Fiske urges Hooker to settle down with Leah. Hooker returns to Leah, and they ride off into the sunset.
The working title for the film was Volcano. It was changed because there was an Italian-made picture of the same title playing in U.S. art-house cinemas. This 1950 film, Volcano, was directed by William Dieterle and starred Rossano Brazzi and Anna Magnani. Robert L. Jacks was originally set to produce, but he left 20th Century-Fox to join Panoramic Productions and was replaced by Charles Brackett.
The New York Times reviewer wrote, "Although the story and its fireworks are interesting, they are dwarfed by the rugged mountains and lush coconut and banana-tree jungles of the film's natural settings." Film critic of the day, Pauline Kael, called the film bloated and the meaning too obvious. In his 1988 book, The American West in Film: Critical Approaches to the Western, author Jon Tuska observed that the American characters in Garden of Evil are "stalked on the way to the mine by Apaches wearing Mohawk hairpieces."
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