A very simple, old-fashioned Western about a man of peace destroyed on a trail of vengeance, with no particular nuance or grace and nothing to mark it as a product of the early 70s except lots of blood squibs. Still, DEADLY TRACKERS reminds us that in Hollywood, anything can happen. Even a Richard Harris-Al Lettieri buddy movie.
Rod Taylor is a happy surprise as a brutal killer, unregenerate and nasty, unrecognizable from the pretty Englishman in GIANT who goes fishing for Elizabeth Taylor and ends up hooking - do you remember? - Carolyn Craig. William Smith's vicious idiot, Schoolboy, is perhaps his best acting work outside that monologue as Conan's father, and his fellow war hero Neville Brand is weird and big enough to wear a piece of train track instead of a hand, which is at least interesting, if unlikely. But Harris pretty much walks through this one, apparently numbed by all those underperforming Westerns that preceded it (though he can't make it all the way through this one without his MAN CALLED HORSE headband); maybe he saw that his career was headed for the rickety CASSANDRA CROSSING. And the wonderful Al Lettieri is handcuffed by a nice-guy role that disallows his greatest strengths: sadism, menace, barbarity.
Gabriel Torres' photography is okay, but the story (by original director Sam Fuller and Lukas Heller) moves along in fits and starts, probably because its multiple other directors were fired by Harris, who manages not to appear drunk through most of the picture. TV director Barry Shear does a decent job with the final product; I'm not a big fan of Sam Fuller anyway and am not certain that the movie would have been better if he had been allowed to finish it. But Shear's (perhaps unwilling) choice of opening with a terrible, unnecessary V.O. scroll and dialog over "still" photos of town life, is a bizarre and not very good one. Then the action starts, and it's true 70s violence, with children's heads stomped by horses and women shot in the face so close to camera that blood spatters the lens. This is the kind of movie that made the MPAA rethink some of its decisions and reduce the violence quotient in PG pictures.
The best thing about this movie is the music it appropriates from THE WILD BUNCH (a choice likely made by Warner Brothers due to budgetary concerns after the numerous headaches associated with its difficult star), and this great music isn't even appropriate - Jerry Fielding's epic score, itself reminiscent of Elmer Bernstein's work on MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, is ill-suited to an intimate, low-end quickie that would have been better served by a dirge.
Rod Taylor is a happy surprise as a brutal killer, unregenerate and nasty, unrecognizable from the pretty Englishman in GIANT who goes fishing for Elizabeth Taylor and ends up hooking - do you remember? - Carolyn Craig. William Smith's vicious idiot, Schoolboy, is perhaps his best acting work outside that monologue as Conan's father, and his fellow war hero Neville Brand is weird and big enough to wear a piece of train track instead of a hand, which is at least interesting, if unlikely. But Harris pretty much walks through this one, apparently numbed by all those underperforming Westerns that preceded it (though he can't make it all the way through this one without his MAN CALLED HORSE headband); maybe he saw that his career was headed for the rickety CASSANDRA CROSSING. And the wonderful Al Lettieri is handcuffed by a nice-guy role that disallows his greatest strengths: sadism, menace, barbarity.
Gabriel Torres' photography is okay, but the story (by original director Sam Fuller and Lukas Heller) moves along in fits and starts, probably because its multiple other directors were fired by Harris, who manages not to appear drunk through most of the picture. TV director Barry Shear does a decent job with the final product; I'm not a big fan of Sam Fuller anyway and am not certain that the movie would have been better if he had been allowed to finish it. But Shear's (perhaps unwilling) choice of opening with a terrible, unnecessary V.O. scroll and dialog over "still" photos of town life, is a bizarre and not very good one. Then the action starts, and it's true 70s violence, with children's heads stomped by horses and women shot in the face so close to camera that blood spatters the lens. This is the kind of movie that made the MPAA rethink some of its decisions and reduce the violence quotient in PG pictures.
The best thing about this movie is the music it appropriates from THE WILD BUNCH (a choice likely made by Warner Brothers due to budgetary concerns after the numerous headaches associated with its difficult star), and this great music isn't even appropriate - Jerry Fielding's epic score, itself reminiscent of Elmer Bernstein's work on MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, is ill-suited to an intimate, low-end quickie that would have been better served by a dirge.