El Condor

Saw this 36 years ago on Times Square in NYC. Got a tolerably Good VHS of it on Amazon.com for about $5.

It was directed by John Guillermin, and stars Lee Van Cleef, Jim Brown, Patrick O'Neal, Marianna Hill, Iron Eyes Cody, Elisha Cook Jr., and Dan Van Husen. It was made around the Blaxplotation Era, its not great but its not bad as far as an action flick goes. The score by Jaffe is nothing to get worked up about, Its supposed to take place at the end Maxamilian's Mexico reign (1867) , but all the Colts are vintage 1873 Peacemakers, so any historical reality is lost with this film at the git go. Check your brains at the door.

Its highlight for me (and the reason for any Lee Van Cleef fan to get this film) is Van Cleef's turn as a character named Jaroo.

Jaroo is as far from Van Cleef's Mortimer as you can probably go. Here he plays a somewhat shallow, alcoholic, happy go lucky Indian Trader, an Apachero so to speak, who has lived on and off with the Apaches. He's a dusty, scrawny looking saddle bum, his trademark hawk like face in this film is transformed more into a beady-eyed weasel. He wears a two bear claw necklace around his neck and a small poke that holds two gold nuggets. We first meet him as he guzzling down some whiskey in a bar.

But this is more a vehicle for Brown, and we meet him first at a prison camp, he plays a character named Luke & he is shackled to Elisa Cook Jr. Cook tells him about El Condor fort sort of the Ft. Knox of Mexico. Luke is summoned to the commandants office and offered a pardon if he would join up with General Sherman. But he escapes and heads for the gold of El Condor. Brown is average in this too.

Luke teams up with Jaroo since Jaroo can get Apache Chief Santana and an army of Apache Warriors to attack the fort for plunder rather than the gold and then Luke & Jaroo can split the Mexican Treasury.

Patrick O'Neal is the Mexican General in command of El Condor and knockout Marianna Hill his mistress. O'Neal is OK in the role and Hill does a full frontal striptease at a crucial plot point, wow. She's got quite the rack , and all of us Clint fans will recognize her from her role of town tramp Calle Travers from High Plains Drifter.

Now I know why we never see this film on TV, lots of bare flesh throughout.

There is a great sequence in a Mexican town where Jaroo has a scene with a small Mexican boy that is pretty touching. Later there is another good sequence when Jaroo gets "gold fever".

Shot in Almeria. Just treat this more as mindless entertainment, with a very good performance by Van Cleef. It could have been way better than it is but it was made to just cash in on the SW craze.

Its better than I remembered.

John Guillermin was a better than average director but even he can't save this movie from its clichés and predictable script. Of course, by 1970 the civil rights movement was well under way and the black lead had to make up in cleverness for what the white counterpart had in stupidity. So, Brown and van Cleef make a workable duo thanks to Brown's superior intelligence and strength, while Lee shoots and blows up anything that moves.

Acting is generally substandard. The stunning Marianna Hill, with a truly fantastic set of boobs, steals the show.

The script is explosive - not through its quality but through the constant explosions on the screen.

Photography is cheap color, unsteady at times.

Still, I carried on watching until the inevitable ending. Won't happen again.

El Condor is directed by John Guillermin and written by Larry Cohen and Steve Carabatsos. It stars Jim Brown, Lee Van Cleef, Patrick O'Neal, Marianna Hill and Iron Eyes Cody. Music is by Maurice Jarre and cinematography by Henri Persin.

Luke (Brown), an escaped chain-gang fugitive, and Jaroo (Cleef), a gold prospector, decide to join forces in an assault on a Mexican fort that is thought to house the gold reserves of Emperor Maximilian. Backed by a band of Apache Indians, the mission is on, but the fort is heavily armed and General Chavez (O'Neal) is a shrewd and ruthless leader of the Mexican defenders.

Ebert didn't like it, it's most divisive amongst genre aficionados, while the charge of it being a mindless action film carries some substance, but oh what raucous - riotous - rambunctious fun it is!

It would be folly to argue about the acting being great here, it simply isn't, with both Cleef and Brown getting by on charisma, screen presence and light airy by-play. Yet Guillerman and producer Andre De Toth knew how to make an action film, and how to make the action impact with as much force as possible. The spectacle on show here is quite something, from the Technicolor photography that brings Andalusia vividly to life, to the magnificent adobe fort - and to the incredibly large cast members indulging in brutal and bloody battles, El Condor knows exactly what it needs to do to entertain the viewers.

There's also the sizzle factor, brought about by some nude scenes that ensured the picture would get the highest classification upon its original release. Yet regardless of these scenes being tame by today's standards, they surely are not in the film for gratification sake anyway, there's a simmering sexuality in the movie from the off. What with its wrought machismo and breaking down of racial boundaries, it makes up for what it lacks in subtlety with high temperature atmospherics. Anyway, in spite of what you might have heard about Hill's "full monty" scene, it is beautifully erotic and it's no stretch to believe that she could, in that moment in time, stop an army in its tracks! Attagirl.

Maurice Jarre has a grand old time scoring the picture, blending stirring boom time with japery laced tinkles, it's a most appropriate musical accompaniment. So with that comes the observation that El Condor is not successful in making any deep meaningful observations on either the human condition or politico posturing. What it does do is have a bloody good time, with its bloody brutal action sequences, a body count via gun-play that would fill out a war movie and the sexually charged atmosphere, El Condor is mindless but pure unadulterated entertainment. So Amen to that! 8/10

Extremely enjoyable western adventure in the classic style of the late 60s and early 70s. The plot concerns a pair of rogue adventurers who team up with a tribe of Apache Indians to steal a fortune in gold from a huge fortress in Mexico during the mid 1860s. The heroes are extremely well portrayed, with Jim Brown as Luke, in a pioneering performance for African American actors in the early 70s; a non racially specific heroic role. Brown displays the cool confidence he showed in 'The Dirty Dozen' and '100 Rifles', showing once again that he was one of the most underrated action heroes of the 60s and 70s. Lee Van Cleef is also superb. Going against his usual casting as a polished, cool villain, Van Cleef plays a scruffy ne'r-do-well named Jaroo, who is first seen spitting whiskey into the camera. In spite of Jaroo's greed and unsavory habits, he is still a very sympathetic character. Just watch the great scene where he gives a Mexican boy one of his prized gold nuggets. Other characters of note are Iron Eyes Cody as Santana, the Apache Chief, and Patrick O'Neal as Chavez, the cruel yet honorable commandanté of the Fortress of El Condor. Mariana Hill is stunning (and totally naked at one point!) as the mistress of Chavez, a fickle beauty with the power to make men or break them. The battles are truly epic in scope, particularily the scenes of the final assault on El Condor, with hundreds of Mexican soldiers and Apaches clashing in the courtyard of the immense fortress. The music by Maurice Jarré is wonderful. One of his best scores, along with 'Lawrence of Arabia' and 'The Professionals'. No one can say that 'El Condor' is a message movie, or socially relevant or challenging, but if you want an action packed western with larger than life heroes and villains, beautiful women and impossible odds, El Condor is the film for you! I have watched this film literally dozens of times since first sneaking into the living-room to catch it on the late show as a kid in 1979, and I never ever tire of it. I watch this film more often that 'The Wild Bunch', 'The Magnificent Seven' or 'The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly'! Buy a copy RIGHT AWAY!

I enjoyed this film which I saw on television, but I did see it originally at the cinema long before IMDB or its directors were in existence.

Vintage Lee Van Cleef and Jim Browm acted out their parts well. I always like these type of Westerns, they never date, but then I grew up on them. The stories always have the same theme but, coupled to the acting and stunning western scenery, they always capture me. Having been fortunate enough to visit the scenery in the US in Arizona, New Mexico and California, the films give me added pleasure. Hope they go on remaking them so as to benefit from the new technology