Andrew V. McLaglen learned his craft during the 1950s and 1960s when he helmed over a 115 episodes of "Have Gun, Will Travel" but only six of "Rawhide" with Clint Eastwood and Eric Fleming. Although he graduated to the silver screen with John Wayne's comic oater "McClintock" (1963), McLaglen's first credit as a director was "Gun the Man Down" (1965) with James Arness! Nevertheless, when he left television to make westerns for the Duke, he never looked back and went on to make some dandy dustraisers as well as epic war pictures, bristling with memorable performances and first-rate production values, such as "Shenandoah" (19667), "The Way West" (1967), "The Devil's Brigade" (1968), "Bandolero!" (1968), "The Hellfighters" (1968), "The Undefeated" (1969), "Chism" (1970), "One More Train to Rob" (1971), "Something Big" (1971), "Cahill, U. S. Marshal" (1973), "Last of the Hard Men" (1976) and then "The Wild Geese" (1979), "Breakthrough" (1979), "North Sea Hijack" (1980), and "The Sea Wolves." Among his oaters, "Bandolero" stands out uncharacteristically one of his more harrowing westerns with violence galore. If you abhor movies where the leads are extinguished at fade-out, you should shrug off "Bandolero!" James Stewart and Dean Martin bite the dust in this bustling western. Character actor Will Greer, who was best known for his role as Grandpa Walton on "The Waltons," plays a slimy, no-account outlaw, here whose lust for money brings about his demise. Lovely Raquel Welch doesn't die, but she loses not only her husband (Tarzan's Jock Mahoney) in the opening scene, but also Dean Martin in the final shootout! James Stewart's death is a difficult one to swallow. No matter how grim "Bandolero!" gets during its last half-hour with its mounting body count, Stewart and Martin both deliver robust performances as brothers. This is one of James Lee Barrett's best screenplays. Later, he wrote John Wayne's controversial Vietnam flagwaver "The Green Beret" (1968) as well as "The Undefeated" and "Something Big." Irony figures gloriously throughout "Bandolero!" Mace Bishop (Dean Martin) and his gang try to hold up a bank in Val Verde, Texas, but Sheriff July Johnson (George Kennedy) thwarts them. Meantime, Dee's older brother (James Stewart) masquerades as the hangman who enables Dee and his cronies to escape from the gallows. While the posse hightails it off to nab the would-be bank robbers, Mace enters the bank and holds it up! One of the most interesting touches in the grand finale gunfight is the sight of Andrew Prine as George Kennedy's dutiful deputy Roscoe Bookbinder lugging a huge water bag across the street of a derelict Mexican village when multiple bullets strike him. Rather than bright red blood erupting from the water bag, water gushes out of it and Prine staggers under the impact of the slugs and falls. The perforated water bag as a metaphor for the violence of the deputy's death is a masterful touch. Previously, the best thriller to showcase such as metaphor was John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) where John McGiver's senator is seen getting shot through a carton of milk! Altogether, "Bandolero" qualifies as a tour-de-force sagebrusher.
Review of Bandolero!
