User Reviews

The movie takes place during a bloody time period of Mexico history… At that time, anyone coming to Mexico ought to be speaking Spanish… But Lyedecker (Jim Brown) didn't speak the language… He was a black policeman looking for a valuable man, a bank robber named Joe Herrera (Burt Reynolds), who looks Mexican but doesn't talk Mexican… Herrera is a half-breed, whose mother was a Yaqui Indian and his father was from Alabama…

General Verdugo (Fernando Lamas) is sure that the money was not spent on women or on Whisky… For him, Joe stole the $6,000 from the Citizen's Bank in Phoenix, Arizona to buy 100 rifles for his people, the Yaqui Indians…

Verdugo—a murderer and an assassin who runs the State of Sonora—have orders to get rid of the Yaquis any way he could, and he took the easy way by killing everybody… He even kidnapped Yaqui children to regain the rifles… And now he wants Lyedecker's head on a stick in the middle of the plaza for everyone to see…

Lyedecker doesn't care about nothing and nobody… He took a job that nobody else wanted… His intentions are to take Joe back for the $200 reward and a permanent job… The policeman rejected any deal in spite of all the atrocities he witnessed like executing Indians or hanging them up like a side of beef…

Steven Grimes (Dan O'Herlihy)—who runs the railroad— doesn't want his train to be a small sacrifice to the mean general… The German military adviser Lt. Von Klemme (Eric Braeden) thinks that the Indians must be finished off as quickly as possible before more guns come through… Raquel Welch's most audacious moment comes out when the Indians attack a well-guarded train carrying troops and supplies, and she was openly showering in the flat part, under a water tower…

With a very nice score by Jerry Goldsmith, "100 Rifles" is a slam-bang action epic, with loads of explosions and gory fighting, making little sense but a lot of amusing noise

Decent enough action-drama, set in Mexico in the late-1800s/early-1900s. Good plot, though it runs out of steam towards the end. Direction is solid, though unspectacular.

Good performances Jim Brown and Burt Reynolds. However, Raquel Welch steals the show with her stunning beauty and action-girl character.

Burt Reynolds plays a half-breed who stole some money to buy the title amount of items for his people, Jim Brown is a sheriff pursuing him, and Requel Welch is a revolutionary having witnessed a hanging of a family member. All three eventually team up to defeat the Mexican general Fernando Lamas and his men for all the cruel acts they committed. With what I just described, this was quite entertaining what with all those action scenes, a steamy love scene, and Ms. Welch's assets almost exposed whenever her close-ups come on. Really, I don't have anything else to say except that 100 Rifles is worth a look for fans of the above players.

I admit that I liked the film, rather more than I expected to. Jim Brown, while not a professional actor held his own for the most part, although his scenes with Raquel Welch seemed a little forced. This makes me think that acting is not really that hard to do acceptably, since so many non-actors have done OK at it. Welch does her part and looked wonderful. Burt Reynolds was at the top of his game here, before he became a world-wide phenomenon, still had to make his way ACTING. Fernando Lamas was suitably evil as the native general/governor trying to commit genocide on the poor, misunderstood, peaceful Indians. And I have to mention the beauty of the late Soledad Miranda. She brightened the screen in the short time she was on it.

Entertaining and amusing Western that tells the story of a thief (Burt Reynolds is of part Cherokee Indian descent) , his flight into Mexico and his pursuit by a Black American lawman (Jim Brown) and both of whom chased by a despotic military governor (Fernando Lamas) and his hoodlums (Aldo Sambrell , Eric Braeden) . As in 19th century Mexico appears a half-breed bank robber (Burt Reynolds plays a native/half-white American and his previous film, Navajo Joe 1966 , he also played an Indian) , he is Yaqui Joe , an Indian who robs a bank in order to buy guns for his people who are being savagely repressed by the government . As the lawman and the outlaw eventually become allies and team up with a female revolutionary (Raquel Welch) to help save them from annihilation and to take up the cause of the Indians.

Stirring and exciting Western with thrills , violence , shootouts , a lot of firing squad and plenty of action in which a misfit group formed by Yaqui Joe and a sheriff join up with a female revolutionary and attempt to take money from a bank to buy arms for their oppressed people but all of them are relentlessly pursued by the Mexican Army . It includes spectacular pursuits in which the pursued protagonists cross impressive landscapes , rivers and mountains . Although quite racy in its day for its interracial sex sizzle of Brown and Welch , it's overblown and tame by today's standards . In fact , this film was apparently one of the first movies to feature a sex scene between people of different races . What it lacks in political correctness it makes up for in fits of action . Although this film was shot in Spain , it was filmed by an American studio -20th Century-Fox- with an American director , Tom Gries , producer Marvin Schwartz , and expert Western writer Cliff Huffaker , being based on the novel written by Robert MacLeod . Nice acting by Burt Reynolds as a mestizo or half Yaqui Indian who finds himself wanted by an American lawman , adequately played by Jim Brown . Raquel Welch is gorgeous and memorably over-the-top as as the woman who forms a strong axis to Brown . This is one of a number of westerns that Burt Reynolds made during the mid- to late 1960s and early 1970s . These include Navajo Joe(1966), Sam Whiskey (1969) and The man who loved Cat Dancing (1973). And gorgeous Raquel Welch giving a mediocre acting ; Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds fell out whilst making this movie, three years later they both starred in "Fuzz" . Support casting and crew are formed by an European (usually Spanish) cast , all of them ordinaries in Paella/Spaghetti Western shot in Spain such as : Aldo Sambrell , Alberto Dalbes , Sancho Gracia , Jose Manuel Martin , Charly Bravo , Rafael Albaicín and the beauty Soledad Miranda as a prostitute .

Superbly photographed by Cecilio Paniagua on spectacular outdoors from Almeria -though the train wreck station shot in Villamanta, Madrid- , including its terrain closely resembles the northeast Mexico/southwest US área and where in the 60s and 70s were filmed uncountable Westerns . The Spanish Cecilio Paniagua was a very good cameraman who photographed several Westerns such as ¨Custer of the West¨ , "Great Treasure Hunt" , and ¨Hunting party¨ , all of them filmed in Almeria . Special mention for the thrilling as well as evocative musical score by maestro Jerry Goldsmith , composed in his peculiar style . The motion picture was professionally directed by Tom Gries though flopped in theatres . This movie was filmed in the same Almeria, Spain, region as director Tom Gries' TV series The Rat Patrol (1966), both starred Eric Braeden . Traveling to Hollywood in 1947, Gries took a job as a talent agent, and eventually went to work for producer/director Stanley Kramer . He entered the production end of the business as an associate producer, then graduated to writing and producing documentaries. Tom switched to television, where he received an Emmy in 1963 for directing the series East Side/West Side (1963) . Tom was an expert director of Western as ¨Breakheart pass¨ , this ¨100 Rifles¨ , and ¨Will Penny¨ that is the best work ever made ; Gries also directed other successes as ¨Breakout¨, ¨The glass house¨ , ¨Helter Skelter¨ and TV series as ¨QBVII¨ , but he also made some real duds . His later output in other genres was routine.

Sheriff Lyedecker (Jim Brown) comes to Mexiko as he chases the bank robber Yaqui Joe (Burt Reynolds). As a victim of circumstance, Lyedecker becomes the number 1 enemy of a Mexican general who wants to kill the Yaqui Indians. The sheriff has no other choice than to fight side by side with the bank robber and the Indians now...

The years 1969-1971 mark the beginning of the modern western with the irony of „Little Big Man", the cruelty of „Soldier Blue", the myth awareness of „Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid", the depression of „McCabe & Mrs Miller" and many more. „100 Rifles" is a kind of missing link between 1960s westerns and the new approach as from 1970 onwards. It makes deliberate, obvious attempts to break taboos, telling the love story between a black guy and a white woman, pushes violence to the level of an Italian western of that time, includes nudity not only in Raquel Welch's famous shower scene, but also in Soledad Miranda's hotel scene at the beginning, and the screenplay adds a left-wing political, anti-racist theme. „100 Rifles" gets carried away by its own enthusiasm sometimes, putting forward its messages a bit clumsily compared to the elegance of „The Professionals", a movie which took much more careful steps into the revolution movie direction 2 years earlier. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching the picture for being a (wild) child of its time, speedy narration and a gorgeous Raquel Welch.

100 Rifles is directed by Tom Gries and Gries adapts to screenplay with Clair Huffaker from Robert MacLeod's novel The Californio. It stars Burt Reynolds, Jim Brown, Raquel Welch, Fernando Lamas and Dan O'Herlihy. Music is by Jerry Goldsmith and cinematography by Cecilio Paniagua.

Arizona lawman Lydecker (Brown) travels into Mexico to arrest bank robber Yaqui Joe Herrera (Reynolds), and lands in the middle of a war between the Yaquis and the Mexican army.

A good blood pumping Oater feasting on Spaghetti leanings, 100 Rifles boasts star appeal coupled with exciting genre staples. Filmed in Almeria in Spain, pic doesn't lack for smooth on the eyes locations either. The dialogue is a mixture of cheese and the philosophical, but it sits well in the production. It's strong on violence, with a number of action sequences very well constructed, while it has a cheeky glint in its eye and for sure is sexy into the bargain. OK, so the cast aren't exactly pulling up any trees, but they are fun to watch as we take in weasel villains and lovable rogues.

Good time to be had here. 7/10

Jim Brown isn't too bad as a sheriff who chases half-breed bank robber Burt Reynolds to Mexico, where both are captured by the vicious Mexican Army, but Raquel Welch is surprisingly underused as a guerrilla fighter. All the western clichés you can think of (and probably some you've forgotten) are on display here: the cliff-side brawl, the train-wreck, the dirt town shoot-out, the wild drunken party, the surprise fire, and on and on. Welch is lovely if over-the-top while warming up to manly-but-wooden Brown (when she tells him, "I am your woman", she's suddenly so serious you can almost believe it); she's also very sexy showering under a water-tower (as a ruse to get a train to stop), but 80% of the picture is given over to the men, and their squabbles are completely routine and dull. "100 Rifles" could use less rifles and more human interaction. ** from ****

this my not be the best western ever made but for my money this is a great action flick. the action has not dated to bad. this is an action movie with the next battle more a priority than plot or story. I'm not saying this is a bad thing because we have see umpteen storys of this type before, so what tom grimes is give us a solid action movie in a western setting.

as for the cast they are just outstanding, especially rachael. I'm a burt fan so he can't do no wrong but the surprise is big jim brown probably his best role. all the extras were good excluding some poor death scenes throughout but hay it is also a western and that comes with the territory.

100m rifles is truly worth seeing and the DVD look stunning a good transfer probably looks better than ever. if you have not watch a western before give it a go if your a western fan give it another go you will be surprised how well it has stood the test of time.

If you never once use your gray-matter during the 110 minutes of Tom Gries 100 Rifles, you may escape with nothing more than a feeling that Gries, who made the dull, episodic, and beautifully acted (by most of the characters) Will Penny, decided to throw out the performance aspect and replace it with lots and lots and lots more killing and stabbing and dynamiting.

Just a feeling, mind you.

100 Rifles is drive-in movie trash. You really can't get mad at it because it is, if you pardon the cliché, 100 Clichés. Fernando Lamas plays a Mexican general, and plays him like Michael Ansara in one of the Magnificent Seven sequels, like Ansara played his Mexican colonel a little like the fat officer in The Wild Bunch, and on and on.

Jim Brown is big (like the trees in my yard).

Burt Reynolds shows flashes of the humor and action-oriented charisma that would propel him to superstardom.

But, it's Raquel Welch, her awful Mexican accent notwithstanding, who gains the viewer's greatest affection. There are indications of an actress here. She occasionally seems tender and likable. I always found her too Barbie Doll-like--boobs, butt, big-hair, and hard as a rock (not me, you nitwit, her), but somewhere along the way, parked in amongst some of that killin' and maimin', I realized I wasn't cringing every time she was on screen.

Oh, well. I first heard about this flick some 20 years ago. I finally watched it, uncut, on YouTube. Now, I've seen it.

Whoop.

I wonder if I ever see Kansas City Bombers, Welch will turn in a fairly good performance there, too.

That's sarcasm.

I just rewatched "100 Rifles" and it is still a joy to watch, good actors and effective action makes this very spaghetti-like US western simmer, as well as a very sexy Raquel Welsh. Made 2 years before Leone made his "Duck You Sucker" and has a surprisingly lot of elements in common with it. A healthy dose of humor is also infused into this film. 7/10

Judging by the plot this movie shows up as a pretty typical action western of the late sixties with revolution stuff leaning strongly on the messages of counterculture and the Vietnam era. Mostly it seems to ride somewhere between 'The Professionals' and 'The Wild Bunch' for its mood and action. A strong link through the story can also be made to Damiano Damiani's 'A Bullet for the General', an excellent spaghetti western with some political overtones. In '100 Rifles' one can forget the politics and concentrate on action. This is a very violent western but still surprisingly low on gore. A bit like in those older westerns, a lot of shooting and stabbing and whatever without gushing copious amounts of fake blood. Maybe that suits better here. We have seen enough Peckinpah imitations already.

The film takes full advantage of Raquel Welch's well working sex appeal. The hot love scene between her and Jim Brown was considered controversial at the time the movie came out. Now it's just two people making love and Welch really enjoying her work or being corny, judge yourself. Brown makes a highly likable hero and Reynolds in his before super-stardom state of career is also good as a halfbreed bandit with the familiar glint in the eye. At times I got the feeling he was lightly making fun of Marlon Brando's Zapata. That may be, because I recently saw on DVD an old episode of Sonny and Cher Show in which he was successfully aping Brando's Kowalski from 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and was so funny. So, an okay action western but nothing revolutionary in spite of the story subject.

100 Rifles is a film worth seeing for western fans because it's a European shot western which has absolutely no trace of the spaghetti flavor. As I think westerns are best made in America by a mile, this was a pleasant surprise. It also features interracial lovers Raquel Welch and Jim Brown.

Brown is a lawman down with extradition papers looking for Burt Reynolds, mixed racial revolutionary who robbed a bank in Phoenix. But the money was used to buy guns for the Yaqui Indians who are being persecuted and harassed by genocidal general Fernando Lamas. Being the cowboy hero you know that Brown will get involved and having Raquel there is an added inducement.

As mean as Lamas is watching the film I also thought he was rather stupid at times. Reynolds and Brown outwit him at every turn.

Also here are Eric Braeden as Lamas's German adviser and Dan O'Herlihy who runs the new railroad in the Sonora State. O'Herlihy just wants to make sure he's with the winner.

Some question about Brown being both black and a sheriff. Actually during Republican administrations like the Roosevelt-Taft era that 100 Rifles is set in a black US marshal would have been not so uncommon in those times. In anyway he's as tall in the saddle as John Wayne ever was.

Fans of the three leads will like 100 Rifles and you might become a fan of any or all of them upon seeing this film.

What makes a film crew, living a stones-throw away from the real Mexico, book a flight all the way to Spain to film a movie about the Mexican revolution? I don't know, but they sure had a lot of fun, especially Burt Reynolds and Fernando Lamas, who's half-breed redneck and bloodthirsty general characters are way more interesting than those of top-billed Jim Brown and Raquel Welch. In fact, it's easy to see here why Burt seemed to rule the big screen in the nineteen-seventies.

The violence is potent and the pace is breezy enough for the most part. The only real drawback is the sense of deja-vu that hangs over the proceedings. I mean, we've been down this revolutionary road a lot, in about a million other movies, with varying degrees of success.

One point of interest for some is the appearance of tragic Spanish starlet Soledad Miranda, who appears in her only non-dubbed English-speaking role as Burt's gloriously unclothed bedmate. She really should have been in the rest of the movie!

This is an average western that does not live up to its potential. A tale of revolutionaries, Mexican Indians, gun running and a determined law man. A lot of gun play and killing in the early 1800's. Ex-football icon Jim Brown seems pedestrian chasing bank robber Burt Reynolds to Mexico. Then there is Raquel Welch. Need I say too much more. An eye-popping outdoor shower scene by a highly exposed Miss Welch is most memorable. Fernando Lamas and Eric Braeden are notable in support. The names Brown, Reynolds and Welch are enough to get you to watch. How involved you get with the story is something else.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. That would seem to be part of the thinking behind 100 Rifles. By the late 60s, the traditional American Western had been replaced by the Euro or Spaghetti Western with more emphasis on violence and blurred lines between bad and good. 100 Rifles was filmed in Spain and has that same raw, dirty look to it that most of the Westerns coming out of Europe had at the time. The biggest difference is that 100 Rifles is an American production. The film features an interesting storyline and several good action sequences with a couple of train shootouts being the highlight of the film for me. A lot of the action may seem over-the-top, but that's the way I like my Spaghetti Westerns.

100 Rifles actually has four main characters played by Jim Brown, Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch, and Fernando Lamas. Brown is by far the weakest of the four. To describe his acting as wooden would be an insult to trees everywhere. He's simply out of his league with the rest of the cast. Reynolds is surprisingly good as the half-breed Yaqui Joe Herrera. At first, he may seem to be little more than a mischievous drunken outlaw, but there's a definite intelligence behind the hyena like laugh. Besides being one of the most beautiful women who ever walked the planet, Welch throws herself into her role and is reasonably convincing. But Lamas is the real standout. His General Verdugo is a marvelous character more obsessed with personal revenge than in doing what is necessary to beat his enemies. Other than Brown, it's a solid cast.

While the story is good, if not predictable for this kind of movie, it runs on a little too long. Cutting about 20 minutes out of the film's 110 minute runtime and making it tighter would have gone a long way to making 100 Rifles a much better movie. One of the biggest draws of this film upon its initial release was the scandalous love scene between Welch and Brown. It has so little bearing on the plot that cutting it out would have been a good place to start with the editing scissors.

God awful acting & how does this movie make the PG rating?!? Reynolds is the only one showing any 'acting' ability but his demeanor and persona belong in a Smokey & the Bandit type casting. Welch has only three acting 'talents'. Two are prominently mounted on her chest and being a sexpot is all she offers the viewing audience. Though 'sex' does sell and she does that well in all her flicks. Brown, stiff, stale, and mechanical, does not bring any acting abilities to this movie. ~ PG?!? Reynold's play-toy at the beginning of the movie clearly shows all of her derriere (And it is nice!), twice, and her breasts/nipples three times. At the water tank Welch's nipples are clearly outlined. ~ Yaquis were barely stone age pagan Indians hated & feared by the Mexicans, Americans, and other Indian tribes (Mostly the Apaches) for their barbarism. That they could master machine guns, artillery pieces, and even, to a lesser extent, rifles is preposterous. Some minor humor but mostly disjointed attempts to make an unrealistic Western.

100 Rifles is a little lesser known and underrated western coming out of the late 60's. This film has a odd trio of stars(Raquel Welch, Jim Brown and Burt Reynolds). This is an early film for Reynolds before he became a star. This takes place towards the end of the western era in Mexico, a time of great turmoil and revolution. It stylistically is similar to the spaghetti westerns of the time and is shot in Spain. It combines action, wit and humor well here. 100 Rifles is nicely shot, scored and acted. This is sold entertainment in my opinion and a great western.

Definitely the least good of the three westerns Raquel Welch made in the late 60s and early 70s, her only forays into this most worthy genre. It's the kind of film that asks to be patted on its enlightened back for the interracial sex stuff but would have you ignore the backwardness of a Caucasian actor appearing in brownface as late as 1969. It's also the kind of film that in lieu of cinematic rhythm or flow just kind of lumbers and sputters along, like a truck with a defective engine, spewing out violence pollution at more or less regular intervals from its rusty tailpipe. And to cap it all off it features, in the lead, perhaps the least talented American male actor of the later half of the twentieth century, a fellow who makes Chuck Norris look like Joseph Wiseman. (For the record, Reynolds and Raquel are decent). Solid C.