This Wagon Train episode has Robert Fuller going to meet a couple of Wagons to join the main body of the Wagon Train when they encounter the Bancroft family. They're an outlaw family with father Leif Erickson who has taught his sons Carl Reindel, Bruce Dern, and Randy Boone to hate all the respectable folks that are coming west. Some 17 years earlier the Bancrofts got burned out of their home by some good citizens acting as a mob and the mother killed. Now they take it out on one and all.
The Bancroft modus operandi is to move in slow, appear friendly and Erickson has a good line of con to do that. Then they're stripped of everything and forced out in the wilderness. That's what happens to the settlers that Fuller is meeting and Fuller himself. He survives and of course seeks the Bancrofts out.
Leif Erickson is brilliant as the crafty killer con man head of this dysfunctional family. Reindel and Dern are faithful followers of dear old Dad, but Boone shows signs of a conscience and he proves they're undoing.
There's also a nice performance by Nestor Paiva as a real bottom feeding Indian trader who buys all the Bancrofts can scavenge. Down in the cast as a Bancroft victim is David Carradine.
Nice job all around.
The Bancroft modus operandi is to move in slow, appear friendly and Erickson has a good line of con to do that. Then they're stripped of everything and forced out in the wilderness. That's what happens to the settlers that Fuller is meeting and Fuller himself. He survives and of course seeks the Bancrofts out.
Leif Erickson is brilliant as the crafty killer con man head of this dysfunctional family. Reindel and Dern are faithful followers of dear old Dad, but Boone shows signs of a conscience and he proves they're undoing.
There's also a nice performance by Nestor Paiva as a real bottom feeding Indian trader who buys all the Bancrofts can scavenge. Down in the cast as a Bancroft victim is David Carradine.
Nice job all around.
