Brando portrays the lead character Rio, and Karl Malden plays his partner, "Dad" Longworth.

The supporting cast features Pina Pellicer, Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson and Slim Pickens.

[5] Rio, his mentor Dad Longworth, and a third man called Doc rob a bank of two saddlebags of gold in Sonora, Mexico, in 1880.

Rio plans to kill Dad and rob the bank in Monterey with his new partners Chico Modesto, Harvey Johnson and Bob Emory.

Louisa attempts to smuggle a Derringer to Rio, but she is discovered by Dedrick, who carries her out of the jail, leaving the gun on a table.

Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone television series, wrote an adaptation of the 1956 novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider, at the request of producer Frank P. Rosenberg.

The book was a fictional treatment of the familiar Billy the Kid story, relocated from New Mexico to the Monterey Peninsula in California.

[6] Marlon Brando's Pennebaker Productions had paid $40,000 for the rights to Authentic Death and then signed a contract with Stanley Kubrick to direct for Paramount Pictures.

Cinematographer Charles Lang received an Academy Award nomination in the Best Cinematography, Color category that year.

But, at the same time, it is curiously surrounded by elements of creamed-cliché romance and a kind of pictorial extravagance that you usually see in South Sea island films.

Brando's concept calls, above all, for depth of character, for human figures endowed with overlapping good and bad sides to their nature.

"[17] Dave Kehr of The Chicago Reader wrote: "There is a strong Freudian pull to the situation (the partner's name is "Dad") that is more ritualized than dramatized: the most memorable scenes have a fierce masochistic intensity, as if Brando were taking the opportunity to punish himself for some unknown crime.

"[18] One-Eyed Jacks is the name of a brothel in the TV series Twin Peaks created by David Lynch and Mark Frost.

[citation needed] The film fell into the public domain and for years was only available via numerous low-quality budget reissues on VHS and DVD, along with the occasional official release by Paramount Home Video.

In 2016, work was completed on a "New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by Universal Pictures in partnership with The Film Foundation and in consultation with filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg".

[20] This restoration was issued on Blu-ray and DVD in November 2016 by the Criterion Collection in the US, and in June 2017 by Arrow Video in the UK.