She Came to the Valley

With good cast (Stockwell, Glenn, and Blakely) and singer freddy Fender playing Pancho Villa, this got to be a intresting film, but it isn't. Stockwell and Blakely plays a couple who lives in Texas, but Pancho Villa and Glenn effect their lives. Glenn gives a very deadpan performance, as if he didn't want to be in this. Fender chews up the role as Villa, but telly Savalas did it better in the 1971 film. The title song is sunged by Fender. The film seems to be on several diffrent video labels, so they must be a copyright problem or something. The seems to be re-done as the US subtitles (on Mexican dialogue) look like it was on video optics.

This film begins with a man by the name of "Pat Westall" (Dean Stockwell) who has a dream about buying some land out in a desolate part of Texas in Webb County and moving his wife "Willy Westall" (Ronee Blakely) and young child there to start a farm. Unfortunately, just prior to actually traveling there Pat suffers from an accident which leaves him badly hobbled and delays their departure for some time. When they get there they do the best that they can but after a couple of years they decide to move to the Rio Grande Valley with the encouragement of a friend by the name of "Bill Lester" (Scott Glenn). What they don't realize is that there is quite of bit of political turbulence in that area revolving around two separate groups of people. The first involves German attempts to cause unrest with America while the other group is led by none other than-"Pancho Villa" (Freddy Fender). Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film essentially suffered from a certain lack of cohesion and character development which impacted the plot from start-to-finish. Likewise, none of the actors seemed quite able to dominate the screen in any way which is sometimes necessary for a film of this type. Be that as it may, while this wasn't a bad Western by any means, it definitely had room for improvement and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Skip the movie. It's a really poor adaptation of a darn good book. Read it.

I first saw this thing several years ago on cable at 3 in the morning. One viewing of this dud will show you why it was on at 3 in the morning. Director Albert Band specialized in cheap Italian westerns in the '60s, and this has the look, feel and sound of one. Only the fact that it was shot in English in Texas, instead of in Italian in Spain, distinguishes it from the stinkers that Band put out back then. His filmmaking skill haven't improved, either. What this film actually looks like is a home movie on a slightly bigger-than-average budget (for a home movie, that is). For some reason Band was able to attract a pretty decent cast, but he doesn't do anything with them. Scott Glenn looks embarrassed, as well he should be, you get the feeling from his "performance" that he wishes he were somewhere else. Freddy Fender, while a good singer, overacts outrageously as Pancho Villa. Ronee Blakeley, another country singer, is a bit better as a pioneer woman caught up in the swirling atmosphere of the Texas/Mexico border during the Mexican Revolution early in this century. It's a good premise, but Band isn't good enough of a director, and the budget is much too low, to do anything interesting with it. A couple of haphazard gun fights and a few flimsy huts set on fire, are just about it for the "action" in the picture. There's a lot of talk, most of which has been said in countless westerns before it and a lot of which makes no sense at all, the photography is poor, the sound is awful, and it apparently was edited with hedge clippers. If you're a fan of Blakeley, Fender or Glenn, don't waste your time on this dud. If you're a western fan, don't waste your time on this dud. If you have seen every movie ever made in the history of mankind except this one, don't waste your time on this dud. Poor in all departments. Avoid it like the plague.

I just watched this movie on one of those $1 DVDs you get near the checkout at WalMart. I guess it was worth a dollar, mainly because it was packaged with another movie that was much more enjoyable. Still, I'm not sorry I watched it, even though it was hard to sit through. It was an experience. I agree with most of the reviewers here that the cast was a good one, and they tried really hard to make the seemingly pointless material come alive. On a more positive note: the movie is an unusual Western that deals with some real, late nineteenth century-early twentieth century history that most Westerns don't portray. And I'll say this for it... the script is so artless it actually makes the story more believable in a quirky sort of way. It has a kind of Reality TV feel to it. A lot of Dean Stockwell and Ronee Blakeley's family life was hard to watch though, because you just knew something was bound to go wrong to mess up their happiness. And besides that, Stockwell's character gets a crippling load dropped on him, and later gets run over by a car. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.