Black Eagle of Santa Fe

Third Sauerkraut Western from Rapid Film with Brad Harris and Joachim Hansen

This is the third western produced by Wolf C. Hartwig and his Rapid-Film, but this time not based on a template by Friedrich Gerstäcker. The director was Ernst Hofbauer, who was to establish the world's most successful German-language cinema film series in the 1970s with the infamous series of report films ("Schulmädchenreport / Schoolgirl Report") and also the Bud Spencer and Terence Hill imitating films about the "Teufelskerle / Devil Guys " (for example "Zwei Teufelskerle auf dem Weg ins Kloster / Two devils on the way to the monastery"). This western, also known as "I gringos non perdonano" and "Black Eagle of Santa Fe", was released in West German cinemas on March 12, 1965.

Out of greed for money, a devious landowner (Werner Peters, known from "Der Untertan" (1951) but also seen alongside superstar Sean Connery in "A Fine Madness" (1966)) and his man for the rough (Pinkas Braun) stir up conflicts between the people Commanders around Chief Black Eagle (Tony Kendall, who would co-found the successful "KOMMISSAR X" series with Brad Harris a year later) and the peace-loving citizens of Santa Fe. As the death toll piles up, the citizens seek shelter in the fort of Captain Jackson (Joachim Hansen, in a less radiant role than in "Und ewig singen die Wälder / The Forests Sing Forever" (1959)). But he is a procrastinator and is not up to the whole situation, which especially goes against the grain of the robust Cliff McPherson (Brad Harris). The situation is getting worse...

Other roles include Horst Frank, Helga Sommerfeld, Edith Hancke (as a wonderful Berlin accent barmaid), Josef Egger and the beautiful Olga Schoberova. She and Brad Harris, who would later become her husband in real life, have a funny bathing scene in the washtub in which both of them show off their physical assets perfectly. As a proven stunt choreographer, Brad Harris also ensures that there is good fighting and that the tension is maintained.

In his long career, the actor and stuntman Brad Harris (1933-2017) has done an incredible amount for German cinema through his participation in many adventure films produced in German-speaking countries. These achievements have not been adequately recognized. Unfortunately, Brad Harris failed to be given an overdue Bambi or honorary Lola during his lifetime. A missed opportunity! On September 7th, 2017, a few weeks before his death, Brad Harris was awarded the Cineways Lifetime Achievement Award in Braunschweig.

By this point, Idaho-born Brad Harris had switched away from the sword-and-sandal movies to the westerns and spy movies which formed the bulk of his later career. Since Brad looked good in both peplums and buckskins, the switch to westerns proved successful and this is a typical example of that genre. It moves well, has a fistfight or two, and ends with a noisy skirmish on the desert pitting Indians and cavalry against the henchmen of an evil rancher. Romantic interest is minor but there are two pretty young women on hand, one blonde and one with black hair. Needless to say, Brad winds up with the blonde, both on-screen and off. (He and co-star Olga Schoberova were married from 1967 to 1969.) He also has a chance to shed his shirt and show off that impressive torso when he prepares to take a bath in the local bath-house. Horst Frank gets second billing but his part seems largely extraneous. The music score hovers between the routine and the annoying, and despite its English title, the movie contains no reference to Santa Fe.

German produced Westerns made in the former Yugoslavia during the 1960s are a pet favorite. The long running "Winnetou" series with Tarzan actor Lex Barker were as popular in Europe as the James Bond films, or any other semi-serial of related features. The best known examples of the Schnitzel Western form, they have an unreal quality about them, set in uniquely decorated East European hill country with rock formations even more bizarre in appearance to those used for locations by the Spaghetti Western directors in Spain. "The new old west" is what Roger Ebert called the look. North American Westerns all look the same, no offense intended. European made Westerns look like Star Trek episodes in comparison: "Fake", confined to tightly claustrophobic sets, populated by actors costumed for style rather than authenticity.

This is a pretty smooth one. "Sampson/Hercules" actor Brad Harris plays the secret agent who rides into a bloody landscape torn apart by Comanche raids on frontier settlements as reprisal for having traditional Native lands taken away by a would-be oil baron who sets up the U.S. Cavalry to take the fall for him. Or any other caucasians who happen by, the story opening with a massacre which would have been wholly unacceptable for American audiences in 1965. The film is brutally violent yet it's cartoon violence rather than the bloody carnage of a Peckinpah. The look mimics the American productions which inspired the Italian, French and German filmmakers who churned these things out for a decade until the fad dried out once it devolved into self-parody.

This one may not have the style or panache of a sumptuous Sergio Leone or Corbucci epic, instead still rooted in the Experimental era of the EuroWestern form prior to the grubby unwashed look of the Classic era productions. These helped set the tone, and gets the job over and done with quickly, with little time for remorse for the dead or character development. They are archetypes, roles crafted to check off list items on the formulary of Western films. Harris' tough-guy persona is well served by the role he plays, a youngish Horst Frank is enjoyable as his counterpart, and Euro Horror actor Tony Kendall is just swarthy enough to be cast as an Indian Chief without eliciting too many guffaws.

For that matter the Native Americans are regarded with surprising sympathy by the filmmakers, scoring plot points by having the Cavalry and despotic white men who drive the plot as the bad guys, their savage reprisals somehow understandable. The establishment of the Anti Hero was the great contribution by the Euro's to the idiom, and indeed contemporary viewers will be surprised at how "modern" the film feels in this unblemished English version presented by the awesome Wu Tang Collection of restored European produced Westerns.

The results may lack the sweeping epic feel of the "Winnetou" fans but was skillfully filmed in widescreen and has a passable twangy electric guitar vibrato music score which will please those who admire such things. Not as plaintively mournful as a Paella-flavored Spaghetti Western score and closer to popular music forms than an operatic Morricone concoction. In fact I'll say that the film is charming just by having less at stake than a grim, sweaty Italo Western, instead playing a cool, calculated and streamlined game of make-believe which reminds me so much of playing Cowboys & Indians as a kid. That's why we watch em, period authenticity be damned.