PANCHO VILLA

 

PANCHO VILLA is a 1972 Euro Western, filmed in Spain, with Telly Savalas in the title role. Many of the people involved in this production, such as producer Bernard Gordon, writer Julian Halevy, and director Eugenio Martin, would soon later go on to make the fantastic HORROR EXPRESS. 

A number of early 70s spaghetti westerns would venture into the realms of the absurd, and unfortunately PANCHO VILLA falls into this group. During the Mexican Revolution of the early 1900s, the flamboyant Villa "invades" the American state of New Mexico in order to get weapons and money. A rather mediocre group of U.S. army soldiers tries to stop him. 

PANCO VILLA isn't a hard-edged, action-packed tale about the legendary bandit-revolutionary. Telly's Pancho has nothing to do with the real-life figure. Savalas doesn't even try to use a Mexican (or Spanish) accent, and his baldness is explained by having Villa's head shaved at the beginning of the film while he is a prisoner. This Pancho is a cross between an egocentric bratty kid and a drama queen. Telly is always entertaining to watch, but if you are looking for a fact-based dramatic interpretation of Mexican history, you won't find it here. 

You also won't find any sort of political subtext here, despite the fact that both Bernard Gordon and Julian Halevy were affected by the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s. There's so many dopey elements involved in PANCHO VILLA that one wonders what type of movie the producer and director were trying to make. 

Clint Walker plays Scotty, an American soldier of fortune who is Villa's right-hand-man, and he's constantly overshadowed by Savalas. Anne Francis (it's amazing how many different types of performers wound up in spaghetti westerns) plays Scotty's wife, but her character could have been edited out of the film with absolutely no impact on the plot whatsoever--apparently she was cast in this just to have an attractive American female in the movie. 

An even worse use of talent is the casting of Chuck Connors as U.S. Army officer Colonel Wilcox. The character is written and portrayed as a ridiculous martinet stereotype--during one overlong sequence in the film Wilcox demands that his officers hunt down a fly that has gotten into the mess hall of the fort he's commanding. The sequence is supposed to be funny, but it's an example of the silly antics that this story is filled with....and Connors doesn't even get to share one scene with Savalas. 

The end credits are accompanied by a song called "We All End Up the Same", performed by none other than Telly Savalas. The music for it was written by John Cacavas (who would go on to score HORROR EXPRESS), and the lyrics were written by Don Black, who also worked on a number of James Bond title songs. This song has nothing to do with Pancho Villa, or early 20th Century Mexico, but I'm sure it's inclusion in the film made Telly happy. 

The few action scenes presented here are handled very well, and the miniature trains used are quite effective (the trains and the carriage sets would be re-used for HORROR EXPRESS). PANCHO VILLA should have been a much better movie, with three classic tough guys like Savalas, Walker, and Connors, and a subject and a setting that offers all sorts of possibilities, but it winds up being a goofy affair. I will say that the version of it I watched on Tubi was very sharp-looking.