100 Rifles (1968)

I once read an article in which this movie was labelled as ‘a movie that time forgot’. When released theatrically, 100 Rifles made some headlines for being the first major Hollywood production to offer an interracial sex scene, but according to critics it was a lousy picture with only few redeeming qualities, such as a scene in which the film’s heroine takes a public shower under a water tank. It almost completely fell into oblivion, but like some other Hollywood westerns shot in Spain in the late sixties, it has been re-evaluated in recent years, and today it has become a sort of cult movie. 

The film is set in the Northern Mexican region of Sonora, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, against the background of an ethnic cleansing by the Mexican government. The Yaqui indians are deported because they slow the works on a railroad down; most of them have already been deported, but small groups are continuing to resist  subjugation (*1). The story is about a black deputy sheriff from Arizona who accidentally becomes involved in their rebellion, when he crosses the border with Mexico to capture a half breed Indian who has robbed a bank and used the money to buy one hundred rifles to arm his people. The black American is very reluctant to join the Yaqui in their fight against the federales (to begin with he never liked Indians), but falls for their fiery red-headed leader, played by no other than Raquel Welch.

It's often thought that 100 Rifles was influenced by the Italian spaghetti westerns. There are indeed some similarities to the so-called Zapata westerns (Italian westerns set in Revolutionary Mexico), especially those of Sergio Corbucci: it features a beautiful woman alongside two rivaling macho men - one attached to a cause, the other only to himself – and also uses some familiar locations and faces from Italian westerns, such as Aldo Sambrell and José Manuel Martin (as Welch’s father in the opening scene). But in spite of these similarities, the film never feels like a spaghetti western.  

In one prolonged scene Brown and Reynolds are shackled to each other like Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis in The Defiant Ones (1958, Stanley Kramer). There are several other hints that the film also tried to say something about racial prejudice, but this aspect is never elaborated. Ironically, racial prejudices seemed to have caused some problems on the set. Welch thought Brown was insupportable and she was annoyed that he was top-billed; Brown thought Welch was prejudiced against black people and had expected him to behave like an Uncle Tom who was prepared to kiss her feet. Welch also had a bad time with her husband, who was on the set, when it came out that she was having an affair with one of the Spanish extras, who was subsequently fired (*2).

The ‘sex scene’, which gave some notoriety to the movie, seems rather tame today, and that other (in)famous moment, Raquel taking a shower, might be a bit of a disappointment if you learn that Raquel went against the director's wishes and refused to do it naked (!). 100 Rifles has its share of flaws, but the action scenes are quite exciting (notably an assault on a train) and remarkably violent for a western predating The Wild Bunch by a year. Jerry Goldsmith’s rousing score will stay with you for days, and oh yes, before I forget: the film also stars Soledad Miranda and unlike La Welch, she appears nude.

Notes:

* (1) The Yaqui website says: 
"(...) The Sonoran Governor Izabal had a policy to arrest and deport both peaceful and rebel Yaquis. This forced Yaquis to relocate to the Arizona communities and to join old family groups already in residence. Many Yaqui families moved to escape the violence of the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution. 

In 1916, Mexico had a constitutional governor named Adolpho de la Huerta, who was one-quarter Yaqui. He made the first attempts to restore Yaqui land and stop the bloodshed. But, the next president, Alvaro Obregon, changed the policy, and the Yaqui-Mexican wars continued." 

* (2) Ciné Revue, N° 18, May 4, 1972. According to the article, Welch had a brief affair with Spanish actor Sancho Gracia. When her husband found out, he reportedly chased Gracia at gunpoint in the hotel were they were staying.

Dir: Tom Gries - Cast: Jim Brown, Raquel Welch, Burt Reynolds, Fernando Lamas, Hans Gudegast, Dan O'Herlihy, Michael Forest - Music: Jerry Goldsmith