Spagvemberfest 2023: Pancho Villa (1972)

An Italian Spanish co=production, this was directed by Eugenio Martín and produced by Phillip Yordan as part of three movies they’d make together, which also include Bad Man’s River and Horror Express.

After being double-crossed in an arms deal by a gun merchant McDermott (Luis Dávila) from New Mexico, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa (Telly Savalas) and his American lieutenant Scotty (Clint Walker) attack a U.S. Army weapons depot and seize McDermott.

Colonel Wilcox (Chuck Conners) is stationed on the American side of the border and is assigned to rescue the shady McDermott, who is as bad or worse than the Mexican revolutionaries.

In his book Hollywood exile, or, How I learned to love the blacklist: A memoir, producer Bernard Gordon goes into how little Telly Savalas and Clint Walker liked one another. Savalas made attempts to upstage Walker while — unlike their characters in the movie — Anne Francis and Walker got along quite well. Walker was also not far from a near-death experience. The actor Walker skied out of control and had his heart stabbed with a ski poke. He was pronounced dead until a doctor heard a faint sign of life and performed life-saving surgery.

Walker is pretty much Rick Dalton. He was the lead on Cheyenne before getting into Western and war movies. He eventually moved into TV movies, several of which are pretty good, including Killdozer! and Snowbeast.

Pancho Villa even has a song, We All End Up the Same”, which was written by John Cacavas and Don Black and sung by Savalas. This feels very Vietnam-era, in that Connors has a scene where the entire army can’t kill one fly. It ends as all movies should with a train on train head to head crash.

You can watch this on Tubi.

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