Taking more of its plot from The Dirty Dozen than from the previous Magnificent Seven movies, The Magnificent Seven Ride! finds Lee Van Cleef in the role of Chris the leader, previously filled by Yul Brynner and George Kennedy.
There's a bandit named DeToro (Ron Stein) who apparently took over the role from Rudolfo Acosta mid point in the filming who's a really nasty devil, raping the women of a given place after the men have been killed is an avocation of his. When he rapes and kills Van Cleef's woman, it's time for Van Cleef and writer friend Michael Callan to find five more to make another seven.
Good men are hard to find so when you can't find good ones, get bad ones. Which Van Cleef does by going to the nearest prison and getting five specimens, William Lucking, Luke Askew, Pedro Armendariz, Jr., James Sikking, and Ed Lauter.
Obviously this part of the plot is completely ripped off from The Dirty Dozen. And Van Cleef does have an interesting way in both insuring his parolees don't desert him and guarantees that the bandit chief will meet him on ground of his own choosing. That's the big surprise of the plot and I won't reveal it.
Some surviving women of another town, Stefanie Powers, Mariette Hartley, Allyn Ann McLerie, and Melissa Murphy join up with the Dirty Seven knowing full well, it's either their protection or their open targets any time the bandits are having a booty call. This is the only Magnificent Seven film with any real women participation in it.
Still it doesn't quite come up to the standards of that first film. None of the successors do.
