Jeff Arnold’s West

The blog of a Western fan, for other Western fans

Cannon for Cordoba (UA, 1970)

 

Derivative

 

By the early 1970s the Western movie was in full decline. An overstatement, perhaps, but largely true. Yes, Fox’s box-office hit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and that great Peckinpah Western The Wild Bunch (both 1969) had recently come out, and some fine Westerns were still to be made (one thinks, for example of The Shootist in 1976) but by 1970 the revisionist Western was already in full flow. That was the year of the sordid little movie Soldier Blue which represented the formerly heroic US Cavalry as perpetrators of massacres (referencing My Lai), and Little Big Man made Custer out to be a raving megalomaniac. Soon other erstwhile Western heroes would be debunked: Wyatt Earp would become a corrupt coward in Doc (1971) and Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976) would make Cody out to be a drunken charlatan. Dirty Little Billy (1972) did a hatchet job on Billy the Kid: it is true that the New Mexican outlaw had been absurdly elevated to heroic status, especially by those Bob Steele and Buster Crabbe oaters, and needed taking down a peg or two but this picture was at the opposite extreme (and a bad Western to boot). Vietnam was having an influence, with massacres and cynicism becoming usual, and, well, the Western didn’t seem to have anywhere to go. Even TV Western shows were being canceled. In theaters, the Italian Western (or western) had diverted or even perverted the true form of the genre; yes, spaghettis were fading by 1970/’71 but they had a big impact on American Westerns. Take Lee Van Cleef in Barquero (1970) as an example. The made-in-Spain oater was becoming the norm. Even classy Westerns such as Valdez is Coming (1971) were shot in Almeria and very many lower-grade pictures were too. Ah me.

 

Walter Mirisch (left) was one of the great producers of the heyday of the Western. In fact, Walter and his brothers Marvin and Harold were together one of the most successful producing teams in Hollywood history. They would make such huge 60s hits as Some Like it Hot, In the Heat of the Night, West Side Story, The Great Escape and The Pink Panther but as far as proper films go (i.e. Westerns) the Mirisch name deserves endless credit for The Magnificent Seven in 1960. Though a slow starter commercially, it became one of the greatest hits of the genre – and a superb Western to boot.
Walter started as a producer for Monogram back in 1949 on very low budget stuff. Once Monogram merged into Allied Artists (Mirisch was one of the prime movers of that deal) he would move upmarket, producing the classy Wichita with Joel McCrea in 1955, the first of six oaters he did with Joel (The Gunfight at Dodge City in 1959 would be the last) and he would also work with Gary Cooper. So he’s a major figure in our beloved genre. It says a lot that the company of the producer of major A-Westerns such as Man of the West and The Tall Stranger should, by 1970, be putting out a paella western. But Mirisch had been milking The Magnificent Seven with weak sequels and, Westernwise, didn’t seem to know where to go.

 


Cannon for Cordoba is the Nth gringo-in-the-Mexican-revolution movie. We are in 1912, when, the screen text tells us, the US was suffering from “raids of Mexican bandit hordes”. I suppose the reference was to the March 1916 attack by a hundred of Pancho Villa’s men on Columbus, New Mexico.  Villa at that time needed more military equipment and supplies in order to continue his fight against Carranza. The Villistas attacked a detachment of the US 13th Cavalry Regiment, burned the town, and seized a hundred horses and mules and other military supplies. Eighteen Americans and about 80 Villistas were killed. Something similar happens in the opening of Cannon for Cordoba, though it’s not Villa but (fictional) revolutionary General Hector Cordoba (Raf Vallone).

 

US President Woodrow Wilson responded to the Columbus raid by sending 10,000 troops under Brigadier General John J Pershing to Mexico to pursue Villa in the so-called Punitive Mexican Expedition. The attack penetrated 350 miles (560 km) into Mexico but was eventually called off after failing to find Villa, who had successfully escaped. In the movie Pershing is in Columbus (or the fictional town anyway) at the time of the attack and though he shoots numerous Mexicans (Pershing was in fact a crack shot) a young captain has to rescue him by throwing him off the train carrying the cannon, which now fall into Cordoba’s hands.

 

 

General Pershing

 

Pershing is played by the great John Russell, Lawman on TV in 1958, Nathan Burdette in Rio Bravo, superb late in his career as Marshal Stockburn in Pale Rider, and very many other Westerns, big-screen and small, to his credit as well.

 

The young captain is headline star George Peppard. Peppard, an actor who, as the IMDb bio puts it, was “too often cast in undemanding action roles”, only did five Westerns, perhaps surprisingly. His debut in the saddle was in MGM’s lumbering bore How the West was Won in 1962; he was good however in Rough Night in Jericho in 1967 (also Dean Martin’s best Western) but after that it was only this paella, AV MacLaglen’s third-rate One More Train to Rob and finally a TV movie with Pernell Roberts, The Bravos. It’s hardly a spectacular or glittering Western career. Still, he’s OK as the tough and daring commander of an anti-Cordoba expedition.

 

 

Peppard does his bad-boy act

 

The picture was directed for Mirisch by Paul Wendkos. Put under contract by Harry Cohn at Columbia, he helmed the Fred MacMurray Western Face of a Fugitive for the studio in 1959, but was better known for teen movies and TV shows. In 1968 he signed a five-picture contract with Mirisch, and directed two Westerns set in Mexico but filmed in Spain, Guns of the Magnificent Seven (the one with George Kennedy as Chris) and Cannon for Cordoba.

 

 

Wendkos

 

It was written by Stephen Kandel, a TV writer (especially Iron Horse) and the picture does have the air of a TV movie. It’s pretty derivative and unoriginal. Pershing gives Capt. Peppard the dangerous mission of going down into Mexico in plain clothes to Cordoba’s mountain lair, destroying the stolen artillery and bringing the revolutionary leader back alive for trial. The captain assembles his team and of course succeeds. It’s The Professionals redux really, with bits of Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone thrown in. Only less good.

 

In the first reel an American soldier is tortured to reveal where the train carrying the cannons will be going, and when. Peppard and one of his sidekicks, Jackson (Don Gordon, Delgetti in Bullitt) witness this and the tortured man is Jackson’s brother but the captain will not intervene to save him as this would blow their cover. Jackson vows revenge on the ruthless captain.

 

 

It doesn’t end well

 

The torture is supervised by a European officer, and it seemed that all Mexican revolutionaries in movies had to have such a military adviser, usually Prussian. This one is a Swede, Svedborg (Hans Meyer) but he’s just as ruthless and sadistic as the German officers in 100 Rifles, Border River, Bandido!, The Wild Bunch, Three Amigos!, etc. Meyer was South African but born into a German farming family, so maybe that was Prussian enough.

 

 

Revolutionary General Vallone with European officer Meyer (looking a bit like Corto Maltese)

 

The general isn’t that bloodthirsty but still countenances torture and orders the unfortunate to be shot afterwards, so that isn’t very nice. The revolutionary will come to a sticky end, doubtless. Vallone was actually Italian but to Hollywood, hey, Latin’s Latin, right? He’ll do for a Mexican. Vallone didn’t really do Westerns, though you may remember him as the impresario in A Gunfight and the priest in Nevada Smith.

 

John Larch is there too, as American rancher Warner who has done a sneaky and unAmerican deal with Cordoba in return for a huge land grant. It will do him no good. He will fall under the guns of the very men he was dealing with. Serves him right, the skunk.

 

Another of Peppard’s men (he only has three) is Pete Duel. I was waffling on about Duel the other day, when reviewing The Young Country, the pilot to Alias Smith and Jones. He was of course Hannibal Heyes (to start with). A depressive who sought solace in alcohol, he would succumb to what is generally thought to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound the year after this movie. Duel was born Peter Deuel. He said, “People were always saying, ‘Peter who?’ Or ‘Peter O’Toole’? I first took the ‘e’ out of Deuel, and then said to myself, ‘Why not take the ‘r’ out of Peter and make that a four-letter word, too, to balance the other?”  He was named the “Most Promising Male Star” of 1966. It was not to be. In Cannon for Cordoba he strums a guitar (rather badly) and is rather careless of military discipline. He’s one of the stronger actors in this actioner though.

 

 

Pete Duel

 

The last of the captain’s men is a Greek, Peter (Nico Minardos, who appeared in quite a few Western TV shows, including Alias Smith and Jones). He is a sensitive type and intellectual. He has a presentiment of his own death. It’s quite a small platoon but then I don’t think this was a big-budget affair.

 

There has to be a dame, natch. She was Italian too, glam Giovanna Ralli (this and a couple of spaghettis is all, as far as Westerns go). She was raped by Cordoba and her menfolk killed and now she wants revenge. She will do anything to get it.

 

 

La Ralli

 

The music is by Elmer Bernstein, who had of course done The Magnificent Seven for Mirisch. It isn’t a patch on that score though.

 

There’s mucho shootin’ and dynamite throwin’, and some 1970s special effects. Naturally there’s the final showdown between Jackson and his commander in the last reel, but it’s rather a damp squib. I’m afraid it’s all rather ho-hum. I have seen worse, to be fair, but well, I don’t think this one was ever in danger of winning any Oscars. The seventies had dawned.

 

 

By 1970 a whorehouse scene was obligatory

 

 

 

4 Responses

  1. Long time since I've seen this one Jeff,but then again I was never too fond of
    Mexican Revolution type Westerns.
    In your fine essay you refer to ROUGH NIGHT IN JERICHO as Dean Martin's best Western,
    surely you mean his best "starring" Western.
    Funnily enough I watched the new Blu Ray of ROUGH NIGHT IN JERICHO last night and
    really enjoyed it and also enjoyed your review as well as going through your
    "Dean Martin Back Pages"

    Derringer Derring Do…..
    Way out of Jeff's comfort zone but Mill Creek Entertainment have just released
    a Spaghetti Western double bill on Blu Ray.
    I only mentioned this because Derringer's feature in both flicks.
    First in FORT YUMA GOLD Giuliano Gemma runs out of bullets using is last two
    shooting off the lock off the door of a blazing barn where his lady friend is
    trapped.The bad guy now has the drop on Giuliano and mentions it's now time
    for his last rites. Giuliano then makes the Sign of the Cross but swiftly
    whips out a derringer from his shirt and sees off the baddie.
    In the co feature THE GATLING GUN Robert Woods is a sort of James Bond of the
    Old West,he's a Union Agent on the trail of nasty renegade John Ireland who has
    not only captured a Gatling Gun but also it's inventor to aid the Confederate
    cause. Woods while tracking down Ireland has to bed the occasional Femme Fatale
    one of whom sleeps with a derringer under her pillow. Later in the film the
    lady in question whips out her derringer not knowing Woods has already unloaded
    the darn thing while she was sleeping. I doubt if these two are of interest to
    you,Jeff but only mention them as additions to your "Derringer Checklist"

    1. Perhaps I should have said best Western as lead. I guess you are thinking of Rio Bravo.
      I once bought a Mill Creek collection but the quality of the DVD was utterly lousy so I haven't bought any more. Plus, I'm unlikely to lay out my hard-earned $$$ on a pack of spaghettis! Still, you are right, spaghettis did like derringers. The pocket pistols often appeared.
      Jeff

  2. Having recently watched it, I agree with Jeff saying we have seen worse… Even if John K. is not fond of the westerns located south – or both sides – of the border, I think it is a very interesting topic of the genre and we may wonder why there so much effervescence about it in the late sixties – seventies (maybe the spaghetti influence, the Vietnam war and all its consequences, maybe the research for new inspirations – hey Vera Cruz arrived far ahead of the spaghettis…! Wether the Maximilian-Juarez period, the mexican revolution or the refuge taken by the indian tribes chased by the US Cavalry and Mexican army as well, the border theme – and the US/Mexico relationship are pretty important on the western, maybe an idea for one of your next essay Jeff ?

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