PISTOLEROS DE ARIZONA (SP-GER-IT, 1964)

Five Thousand Dollars on One Ace; Cinquemilla dollari sull’asso; Die Gejagten der Sierra Nevada

D: Alfonso Balcázar. P: Edmondo Amati, Alfonso Balcázar. W: José Antonio de la Loma, Alfonso Balcázar, Alessandro Continenza. Ph: Carlo Carlini, Christian Matras, Roberto Reale. M: Angelo Francesco Lavagnino. St: Robert Woods (Jeff Clayton), Fernando Sancho (Carrancho), Helmut Schmid (Jimmy the Black), Maria Sebaldt (Linda Greenwood), Richard Haussler (Dundee)

A typical specimen from the early experimental phase of European westerns, melding scraps of plot from Hollywood B-movies with acting styles of a distinctly European persuasion, particularly Fernando Sancho’s creation of a Tuco-like miscreant. If the formula does not entirely cohere, discrete elements combine well enough in a narrative that is always lively.

Sancho’s mannerisms would become a fixture of the genre, as would the cat-and-mouse game played by his character, Carrancho, with Woods’ easy-going gunman, Clayton. After the latter wins a half-share in a ranch at poker, he loses his horse and cash to the opportunistic Carrancho, having discovered the Mexican staked out in the desert. (The result of dishonour among thieves, it transpires.) Their trails cross repeatedly thereafter as Clayton takes on land-grabbing villains and Carrancho becomes a witness to their crimes.

The first film produced on the Balcázar brothers’ western set near Barcelona, this was also Woods’ debut in the genre. Based in Paris at the time, he was modelling for Helmut Newton and acting at the American Theater when he was approached by Alfonso Balcázar. Woods was unenthusiastic. “I was making a fortune. Why would I want to do a Spanish western? The next night he came back and offered me a contract for five pictures – for money I’d only dreamt of before.”[i]

So Woods set off for Spain, flush but full of misgivings. “I didn’t think it would be a western. I pictured myself in gaucho clothes or something.” Hedging his bets, he took with him a script he had written (“It was called The Ranch of the Damned, a working title”), which was much revised by other hands.[ii]

The screen story offers little that hadn’t been seen in westerns before. Clayton’s newcomer squares up, à la Shane, to the bullying Jimmy the Black, who has been forcing homesteaders from their spreads at the behest of the slick lawyer Dundee. Clayton also tries to pacify his new partners in the ranch, hot-headed Davy and his sister, Linda. She and Clayton become a romantic item, purely because that’s the sort of thing that used to happen in B-westerns; it certainly doesn’t reflect the negligible chemistry between the characters. “In the original I had made the love angle a little more pronounced,” says Woods, “but Alfonso wanted more action. The people who love these movies say, ‘Stop the kissing and get on with the fighting.’”

More welcome is Clayton’s sparring with Carrancho. Numerous Euro-westerns subsisted on the contrast between a laid-back gringo and an excitable Mexican. This was among the earliest examples, and the comedic aspect of the partnership is well judged by the leads. Woods realised instinctively, as did Clint Eastwood, that underplaying was the wisest option against a more high-spirited performer. Stealing a march on Giuliano Gemma, he affects an air of amused detachment. Sancho, for his part, was already well-versed in amoral roguery (see Seven from Texas, for example). He steals the film, and was rewarded with the lead in the follow-up, Viva Carrancho, although he remained below Woods (playing the villain on that occasion) in the billing.

Balcázar was a clever and enterprising producer, but only a middling director. The film lacks flair and attention to detail – there are continuity errors (one caveat: the version under review was abridged) and some of the action choreography leaves much to be desired, which is especially egregious in a film padded out with lengthy fistfights that mutate into shootouts, or vice versa.

It is a handsome production, however, with the Balcázars’ purpose-built sets – ‘Esplugas City’ – comprising a convincing backdrop, and the Aragonese exteriors rendered in all their burnished glory. And it was successful enough financially for Esplugas City to flourish and for Woods, the reluctant ‘gaucho’, to become a major star of the genre.[iii]

Kevin Grant

---

[i] Author’s interview with Robert Woods

[ii] Woods maintained the practice of contributing to his scripts in Europe. “I was pretty busy rewriting almost everything I did, at least in sections. It depends. I did what I was told unless it would really make me look terrible – spaghetti westerns make you look pretty bad anyway!”

[iii] The film was screened in Esplugues de Llobregat in 2014 as part of 50^th anniversary celebrations of the foundation of the Balcazars’ town.