100 Rifles (1969)

A movie that opens with Burt Reynolds in a hotel room with a very nude Soledad Miranda, has Raquel Welch running around half naked for most of the movie, has a thumping original score by Jerry Goldsmith and has interracial sex and lots of guns and violence should not be boring.  But 1969’s 100 Rifles is boring.  I half to confess, halfway through I gave up and started playing games on the Ipad. 

I don’t know exactly what it is, but 100 Rifles wound up being just another formulaic B grade Western.  Set in the early 20^th century during the Mexican Revolution, 100 Rifles involves an outlaw named Joe Herrera (Burt Reynolds).  The son of an Alabama father and Yaqui Indian mother, Joe has robbed a bank in Arizona and used the money to buy one hundred rifles to arm the Yaqui Indians who are being systematically murdered and wiped out by the Mexican General Verdugo (Fernando Lamas). 

Joe is pursued into Mexico by American lawman Lyedecker (former NFL star Jim Brown).    Lyedecker’s plans to bring Joe back to Arizona and collect the reward money and get a permanent lawman job is thwarted by General Verdugo and his German Army advisor (Hans Gudegast).   Lyedecker and Joe wind up hooking up with the beautiful Indian revolutionary Sarita (Raquel Welch). 

Controversial and shocking for 1969 is the scene in which Lydecker is seduced by Serita.  A movie showing a black man and white woman making love was hot stuff in the late sixties, but watching it today, my primary emotion was, “that’s nice,” and it only made me take a momentary break from playing Ace Patrol on the Ipad.

The climax of the film comes when, Lydecker, convinced now to fight for the Yaqui’s, stages an ambush of the train carrying General Verdugo’s soldiers by distracting them by having Sarita get half naked and take a very suggestive shower in front of them.    Lydecker uses the train as the centerpiece of the big gun battle during which Sarita is killed but the Yaqui’s win their freedom.

The best summing up of 100 Rifles is from a review on the blog friar’s fires: “Of the lead cast, Reynolds and Lamas offer much.  Reynolds seems to recognize the ridiculous story he’s in so he goes into full smart-aleck Bandit mode, mugging and grinning as much as this movie lets him.  Lamas throws a big slab of ham on the grill and proceeds to chew whatever scenery he can sink his teeth into.  Brown and Welch aren’t exactly bad, but neither of them had developed yet into actors that can transcend the material, and this is material that desperately needs transcending.”