Ben Sad

War is brewing between the soldiers at an otherwise quiet army base and the civilians of a nearby Southern town. Brian Keith is an officer who tries to keep the peace. However, peace is hard to come by with Ernest Borgnine as a stereotypical dumb hick sheriff who's quick to call in the local militia. Tony Curtis plays a skirt-chasing sergeant who can't stay out of trouble and soon lands in jail. Brian Keith borrows a tank to release his friend from jail. Things get more chaotic after that.

Jake Remy leads a gang of outlaw cutthroats making their escape toward Mexico from a successful robbery. Barring their way is a river--crossable only by means of a ferry barge. The barge operator, Travis, refuses to be bullied into providing transport for the gang and escapes across river with most of the local populace--leaving Remy and his gang behind, desperately seeking a way across. A river-wide stand-off begins between the gang and the townspeople, both groups of which have left people on the wrong side of the river.

While working as a counselor at a summer camp, college-student Marjorie Morgenstern falls for 32-year-old Noel Airman, a would-be dramatist working at a nearby summer theater. Like Marjorie, he is an upper-middle-class New York Jew, but has fallen away from his roots, and Marjorie's parents object among other things to his lack of a suitable profession. Noel himself warns Marjorie repeatedly that she's much too naive and conventional for him, but they nonetheless fall in love.