Ride in the Whirlwind is a 1966 American Western film edited and directed by Monte Hellman and starring Cameron Mitchell, Millie Perkins, Jack Nicholson, and Harry Dean Stanton.

A gang of outlaws led by Blind Dick (Harry Dean Stanton) stop a stagecoach, kill the guard and rob the occupants.

Another trio of cowboys, Vern (Cameron Mitchell), Wes (Jack Nicholson) and Otis (Tom Filer), unknowingly come upon the gang's remote hideout and stop to rest for the night.

Vern and Wes take refuge at a farm belonging to Evan (George Mitchell), who lives with his wife and daughter.

[2] Hellman said that the crew and some cast members stayed on location, and, after taking a week's break, they began filming Ride in the Whirlwind.

Hellman and Jack Nicholson, who produced, wrote, and acted in Ride in the Whirlwind, and had a smaller role in The Shooting, had agreed that if they went over budget on either film, they would pay the overage out of their own pockets.

Both Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting feature the same reddish low mountains with white lines in the rock (possibly water marks from a past age when the area was a sea or lake).

In Ride in the Whirlwind, vigilantes that began by tracking a gang who robbed a stagecoach end up mistakenly hunting down the Nicholson character and another man, innocent cowboys.

Both films end with the Nicholson character's facing bleak outcomes, almost certain death in The Shooting but a tinge of optimism the Whirlwind one will escape the leader of the posse's prediction that "They've seen their last sunrise."