Pancho Villa (1972)

the audience applauded

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Absolutely Fantastic

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Well, it's Telly Savalas, an actor who turned gold any role he accepted. 20 years before, in 1952, the great Marlon Brando played Emiliano Zapata. Now, in 1972, Savalas offers us a very special Pancho Villa. I thought I will see a stupid western spaghetti (usually they are very bad) but no, I had the surprise to see a good decent film. It's not Sergio Leone's genius but it's pretty well-done. With Sergio Leone has in common only the fact that it was filmed in Spain, as well as the dollars series. Of course the best ingredient is Telly Savalas, without him, the movie would be hard to watch. The other actors are OK but only at the functional level, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing brilliant. I am referring especially to Clint Walker and Chuck Connors. Anne Francis is much better in the role of Flo. Does anyone know that Savalas was, besides a brilliant and unique actor, a very good singer, with a warm voice and a few hits under his belt? He plays a song at the end of this movie too. Telly Savalas did another role in the same year, 1972, Capt. Kazan, in "Horror Express", directed by the same Gene Martin (real name Eugenio Martín). Eugenio Martín, who directed before some other Westerns, "Bad Man's River"(1971), with Lee Van Cleef, "Requiem for a Gringo"(1968), "The Ugly Ones"(1966). 7 stars for the charm of Savalas and the accurate direction of Martin.

The western was in a bit of a cul-de-sac by the early 70's. The spaghetti and revisionist strands had pushed the format to its extremes, meaning that not much new territory was pursued. Pancho Villa was neither spaghetti, nor a revisionist; it was a Spanish western which decided that the best foot forward was to play things for laughs. It traded largely on its star actor Telly Savalas who was a massive TV star at the time as a result of Kojack.The result is a silly and often tedious biopic about the Mexican revolutionary of the title and is specifically about his mini-invasion of the U.S.A. in 1916. I don't know the real story but it's quite obvious that this is a loose retelling at best. There is a lot of very stupid humour here including ludicrous separate scenes involving a fly and a lizard. The humour really isn't very good so these scenes just come across as misguided. To ramp up the campy nature further the army officer who is Pancho Villa's adversary is played by Chuck Connors in a quite deranged fashion. Despite a promising opening half, things get bogged down when the Mexicans enter America and things do drag quite a bit thereafter. It is a somewhat strange movie so is possibly worth watching for that reason if you are inclined enough. It ends with Savalas crooning a song over the end credits.

Fast and funny account of Pancho Villa's invasion of the United States in order to get revenge on an unscrupulous arms dealer that double crossed him, only to get side-tracked by various mishaps and distractions.Telly Savalas and Clint Walker are great as the smarmy Villa and his number one crony but Chuck Conners is wasted on the caricatured role of a gung-ho Colonel racing to repel Villa's army. All his scenes (particularly the fly in the mess hall) are cringe-worthy in their silliness!All the fun is somewhat spoiled by the (historically accurate) sight of foreign invaders murdering US soldiers. These scenes would have been better off if they had been whitewashed as they undermine Savalas' "lovable rogue" performance, though it probably played better in those early-seventies days of "radical chic" than it does now.Overall, the film is so fast-paced that you never slow down long enough to realize how dumb it is until the ending credits roll and Telly starts singing to you!

This is an odd little film about infamous Pancho Villa featuring an all Spanish cast except for a quartet of "name" American actors. Savalas (attempting no sort of accent or strong characterization) slides through the film on his unique brand of charm. (He was at or near his height of fame at he time.) He's given a scene to explain why, in this version of the story, Villa is bald, yet in a clip that takes place prior to the shaving, he is bald then, too! He is only effective at all because so many of the rest of the cast are bad. Roman god come to life Walker co-stars as a gunrunner who works alongside Savalas. Sadly, he is covered up by a jaunty captain's hat and a double breasted coat much of the time, so his treasure of a chest is under wraps. Still, his innate charm and handsome face add a lot to this very slight movie. He manages to inject some humor and slyness into his part. Francis has very little to do in her role (and disappears without a trace at some point!), but is attractive. Conners (with his skeletal features and corpse-like lips) plays a mad, driven Army officer who's bent on cleanliness and order at the expense of efficiency. He has a notable scene in which a mess hall is virtually trashed in order to excise one fly. The film is impossible to take seriously and it doubtful that it was intended as such. It's a sort of parodic, satiric take on the genre. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the wit or the money to make much of an impression. The sets look like they wouldn't pass muster on "Bonanza" and the dubbing (in fact all of the sound) is horrible. The music in this film is almost it's worst aspect. There is a highly aggravating theme played by the Mexicans as they enter the U.S. and it is ceaseless in its torture of the viewers' ears. To top it off, there's a hellacious closing credit song sung by Savalas (!) and written by John Cacavas (who did music for "Kojak" and a horde of TV movies.) The film is not very good, but watchable once if little is expected of it.