The Deadly Trackers (1973)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Powerful

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

A very uneven film, filled with a "a bit of the olé' ultra-violence", shows its troubled production and finally emerges as a curios and a signpost of the changes in Hollywood that were still evolving and not without pains.There is a vastness to the production with a gritty feel, children in distress and some really despicable characters. The Hero's change of heart from pacifist to killer is abrupt as are some of the other plot devices that take a backseat to the carnage and and mayhem.It does have a memorable feeling to it that seems to stem from the movie's outrageous flourishes and one wonders if this was probably the best they could cobble from all the changes in Directors and other on the set strife. The good cast, however, are all in top form.After all, it is recommended for fans of Westerns and movie chronology. It is a definite piece of postmodern cinema that is having difficulty (although not always aware) finding its niche and as a lot of seventies films show, it was not an easy transition as the art-form was released from over thirty years of repression.

Peace-loving Irish sheriff in a small town on the Texas-Mexico border single-handedly goes after a pack of scurrilous bank robbers whose leader is responsible for the death of the sheriff's wife and child. The western genre of late-'60s/early-'70s cinema took a sour turn once the production code was abolished and the ratings system established, allowing films to push the boundaries of their violence and language. By the time "The Deadly Trackers" has dispensed with its godawful credits sequence (which is nothing more than dialogue from the film dubbed over grainy stills from the shoot), we've already heard enough expletives and racial slurs than any number of films from John Wayne's heyday. Two of the picture's principle sequences involve holding loaded guns to the heads of children, while the talents of Richard Harris and Rod Taylor are thoroughly trashed. Buffs may find some tension here, but the direction (by Barry Shear, filling in for the fired Samuel Fuller) is weak, and the production is depressingly cheapjack. A foul-mouthed, mercilessly elongated bore. * from ****

I find it interesting how I can reconcile my feelings about this film. On the one hand, it's a boldly intense revenge Western, while on the other, there's so much nonsense going on that with any serious scrutiny one might dismiss it as gross caricature. Take the character of Choo-Choo (Neville Beand) for instance - how exactly did 1880's medical technology manage to graft a chunk of railroad track to his right arm? Then there's Gutierrez (Al Lettieiri), the Mexican Federale - you mean to tell me that he gets shot off his horse, does a forty foot swan dive over a cliff, and some time later manages to get up and walk away? I had him a goner, but if he could have survived, how so without a broken back? Then there's the main character himself, Sheriff Kilpatrick, ably portrayed by Richard Harris. Now I know it doesn't take much of a stretch to go from pacifist to hell bent avenger after seeing your family wiped out, but how about some discretion. Kilpatrick just jumps right in without thought of consequences, like jumping that big lug Schoolboy (William Smith). OK, I know that had to work out to keep the story going, but gee, the guy looked like he just finished a workout at World Gym.There's something else about Kilpatrick - did you notice that after every one of his bloody encounters (that first one with Schoolboy was the worst), he appears in the next scene with a clean set of duds. I didn't notice any Chinese laundries along the way, so it left me wondering how he might have managed that. Maybe I'm being picky, but didn't anybody else think about that?Here's something neat though - I liked the idea that Kilpatrick had the town of Santa Rosa so organized that they were able to back him up at a moment's notice with all hands on deck. If these were the citizens of Lago, there would have been no rest of the story in "High Plains Drifter". Something to think about.As for the finale, I'm not buying it. After all that Kilpatrick and Gutierrez had gone through to catch up with Brand (Rod Taylor), the Mexican lawman would just shoot him in the back as he rode away? Where's the code of honor among lawmen? Even if Gutierrez wanted to be hard core by the book with Kilpatrick, by the final showdown with Brand it was going to be self defense any way you slice it. So I have to ask, was that really necessary?

A very simple, old-fashioned Western about a man of peace destroyed on a trail of vengeance, with no particular nuance or grace and nothing to mark it as a product of the early 70s except lots of blood squibs. Still, DEADLY TRACKERS reminds us that in Hollywood, anything can happen. Even a Richard Harris-Al Lettieri buddy movie.Rod Taylor is a happy surprise as a brutal killer, unregenerate and nasty, unrecognizable from the pretty Englishman in GIANT who goes fishing for Elizabeth Taylor and ends up hooking - do you remember? - Carolyn Craig. William Smith's vicious idiot, Schoolboy, is perhaps his best acting work outside that monologue as Conan's father, and his fellow war hero Neville Brand is weird and big enough to wear a piece of train track instead of a hand, which is at least interesting, if unlikely. But Harris pretty much walks through this one, apparently numbed by all those underperforming Westerns that preceded it (though he can't make it all the way through this one without his MAN CALLED HORSE headband); maybe he saw that his career was headed for the rickety CASSANDRA CROSSING. And the wonderful Al Lettieri is handcuffed by a nice-guy role that disallows his greatest strengths: sadism, menace, barbarity.Gabriel Torres' photography is okay, but the story (by original director Sam Fuller and Lukas Heller) moves along in fits and starts, probably because its multiple other directors were fired by Harris, who manages not to appear drunk through most of the picture. TV director Barry Shear does a decent job with the final product; I'm not a big fan of Sam Fuller anyway and am not certain that the movie would have been better if he had been allowed to finish it. But Shear's (perhaps unwilling) choice of opening with a terrible, unnecessary V.O. scroll and dialog over "still" photos of town life, is a bizarre and not very good one. Then the action starts, and it's true 70s violence, with children's heads stomped by horses and women shot in the face so close to camera that blood spatters the lens. This is the kind of movie that made the MPAA rethink some of its decisions and reduce the violence quotient in PG pictures.The best thing about this movie is the music it appropriates from THE WILD BUNCH (a choice likely made by Warner Brothers due to budgetary concerns after the numerous headaches associated with its difficult star), and this great music isn't even appropriate - Jerry Fielding's epic score, itself reminiscent of Elmer Bernstein's work on MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, is ill-suited to an intimate, low-end quickie that would have been better served by a dirge.