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Lizards in Movies   Red River (1948)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This is a classic western made by the great American director, Howard Hawks. John Wayne is Dunston, who leads a cattle drive, but he is such a tyrant that his adopted son Matt leads some of the other cowboys in a mutiny. While driving cattle in Oklahoma, Matt (Montgomery Clift) leans far over the side of his horse while still riding forward and reaches into a small bush. The camera cuts back to show him holding a Texas horned lizard in his hand. The effect looks so spontaneous that I sometimes wonder if it was in the original script or if it was added on the set. If it was in the script - then I'm not sure what are they trying to tell us about Clift in the scene other than he has great eyes to spot a horned toad in the brush at a distance while riding a horse and the flexibility to reach down and grab it from horseback.