The Spikes Gang 1974

In the Old West, impressionable teenage farm boys Will, Les, and Tod find an injured bank robber who asks for their help. At first, the boys are scared and reluctant to help, afraid of getting into trouble with the law and their parents. Moved by the wounded man's pleas, they finally agree to hide him in Will's barn and clean his wounds. Over the next few days, they bring food, drink, and clean clothes to the outlaw whose name is Harry Spikes. When the sheriff and his posse come by and ask questions, Will hides the fact the robber is concealed in his family's barn. After he sufficiently recovers, Harry Spikes thanks the boys for their help and vows to return the favor if they ever need his assistance. He takes Will's horse and leaves the county, heading for the Mexican border. Later, Will's parents discover their son's secret mischievous deed and administer a severe beating to teach him to never lie again. Fed up with his father's frequent physical abuse, Will runs away from home. He goes by Les and Tod's homes to bid them farewell. Yearning for adventure in their own lives, Les and Tod also decide to leave home. The three teenagers ride away and vow to have fun free of parental restrictions and interference. However, after a few days without food or money, the boys decide to rob a bank. The bank robbery goes wrong and the boys are on the run toward the Mexican border. In Mexico, they do menial labor to sustain themselves, but trouble is never far away and they end up in a Mexican jail for breaking into a pawnshop. Languishing in jail, the forlorn boys lose hope, but Harry Spikes happens to be passing through town and he finds them and bails them out of jail. In the end, he offers them the opportunity to work with him. The boys agree to form a bank-robbing gang with Spikes as their leader.—nufs68 / edited by Hans Delbruck

Charles Martin Smith

Tod

Ron Howard

Les

Lee Marvin

Harry Spikes

Gary Grimes

Will