By Fred Blosser
Life goes from bad to worse for Confederate soldier John
Warner (George Hilton) in the opening half hour of “A Bullet for Sandoval,” a
1970 Spaghetti Western now available on Blu-ray in a Special Edition from VCI
Entertainment. On the eve of battle in Texas, Warner learns that his sweetheart
Rosa has just given birth to their son in plague-ridden Los Cedros, and now is
dying from cholera. Denied authorisation to leave camp, Warner rides off
anyway, incurring a death sentence for desertion. Arriving in Los Cedros with
hopes of marrying Rosa before she dies, he finds no sympathy there either. Rosa
has passed away, and her father Don Pedro Sandoval (Ernest Borgnine), a
powerful grandee who loathes “gringos” in general and Warner in particular, is
infuriated that the soldier has returned. He disowns the baby and drives Warner
and the newborn out of his palatial hacienda.
Fleeing Los Cedros with his son, Warner is rebuffed at
one way-station and then a second when he begs for milk for the infant. The
people at both places are fearful of being infected when they learn that he has
just come from Los Cedros. The weakened, feverish baby dies, and Warner becomes
a vengeful outlaw, assembling a gang of henchmen to raid the settlements that
drove him away when he needed their aid to keep his child alive. Three of the
men—Sam, Lucky, and Priest—are trustworthy. The other three—Morton, One-Eye (“a
sex maniac convicted of raping two little girls”), and Guadalupano—not so much.
Warner comes to enjoy the riches and women that accrue from his new career as a
bandit, but his ultimate target remains Sandoval. In the meantime, Don Pedro and
his fellow cattle barons on the Border convince the Confederate army to help
them pursue and eradicate Warner and his band.
Like most Spaghetti Westerns, “A Bullet for Sandoval” was
an international production with Italian studio backing, a cast of actors from
several countries, outdoor locations in the Spanish desert, and in this case, a
Spanish director (Julio Buchs), and Spanish writers. In the starring role,
George Hilton (born Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara) was an accomplished, darkly
handsome Uruguayan actor who had a thriving career in Italian genre movies but
was largely unknown to U.S. moviegoers. For marquee value in the States, the
producers paired him with Ernest Borgnine as the imperious Don Pedro. Who
didn’t know Ernest Borgnine from “The Wild Bunch,” “Ice Station Zebra,” a
hundred other movies, and “McHale’s Navy”?
With Borgnine’s name prominently displayed on ads, “A
Bullet for Sandoval” was one of several Spaghetti Westerns that opened in the
U.S. in 1970, after the surprise success of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”
Derided by most critics as violent trash, they were usually relegated to
drive-ins and second-run movie houses. There, they filled a void on
double-bills left by the death of traditional, American-made B-Westerns like
those made a decade before with aging stars like Dana Andrews, Glenn Ford, and Robert
Taylor. Sometimes, ironically, they were paired with the homegrown Spaghetti
imitations that Hollywood studios had begun to produce, like “Two Mules for Sister Sara,”
“Barquero,” “Macho Callahan,” and “El
Condor.”
The critics may have dismissed the genre, but their
opinions were immaterial for the U.S. target audience of young guys in their
teens and early twenties, who welcomed pictures like “A Bullet for Sandoval” on
all-night movie marathons at local drive-ins. At one o’clock in the morning, in
a pleasant stupor of fatigue and beer, few would question the accuracy or
plausibility of a Civil War in which Confederate officers pause their military
campaign to help ranchers chase outlaws. As far as fans were concerned, such
fine points could be argued by history professors, as long as they could rely
on filmmakers like Buchs to deliver a gritty succession of gunfights, chases,
and gorgeous European starlets—in the case of “A Bullet for Sandoval,”
Annabella Incontrera, Mary Paz Pondal, and Paquita Torres—in low-cut peasant
blouses.
VCI Entertainment’s new Special Edition of “A Bullet for
Sandoval” presents the film in a remastered, 4K version from the original
negative, adding the English-dubbed voice track and diligently restoring ten
minutes of footage edited out of the U.S. print in 1970 and consequently, out
of previous American home video releases. As director and enthusiast Alex Cox
suggests in his informative audio commentary for the disc, the movie is better
than its synopsis implies. The script and direction give the story an epic
scope despite a limited budget, culminating in a briskly staged showdown in a
bullfighting arena, and Hilton and Borgnine offer heartfelt performances as the
two antagonists. Relatively rare for a Spaghetti Western, both Warner and Don
Pedro are emotionally damaged characters instead of the cool-cat bounty hunter
and deranged bandido who usually anchor such films.
Cox notes that the grim scenes of Warner and his friends
Lucky and Priest trying to keep Warner’s baby alive in the desert owe an
obvious debt to “Three Godfathers,” John Ford’s 1948 parable of the Nativity
story with horses and six-shooters. Ford was ever the optimist, and the infant
in “Three Godfathers” survives, delivered safely to a Western town called
Jerusalem by outlaw Bob Hightower, played by the indomitable John Wayne.
Warner’s newborn isn’t as fortunate in a world bereft of Christian charity, reflecting
the grim philosophy of the Spaghetti genre where the innocent are as likely to
suffer as the corrupt and the guilty, and often, more likely.
In addition to Alex Cox’s commentary track, the VCI
Special Edition includes the title sequence from the original Spanish version,
titled “Los Desperados,” and the U.S. theatrical trailer. It is an admirably
respectful package for a movie that few would have regarded as anything other
than disposable entertainment five decades ago.
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