Navajo Joe (1966)

Although this isn’t one of Sergio Corbucci’s best Westerns, it does have enough going for it to make it well worth seeing. It’s half a story of an aggrieved Indian (the title character, played by Burt Reynolds) trying to get revenge on a gang of scalphunters. The other half of the story is about the scalphunters’ attempt to rob $500000 from a town. The story is least interesting when focussed on the hero and his revenge quest – he doesn’t really have much characterisation beyond his (understandable) hatred for the scalphunters and his stealthy Indian ways of fighting. The last third of the film drops off a bit in quality as the focus shifts to Joe saving the day.

The most interesting side of the story is the interaction of the gang and the townspeople. Duncan, the leader of the gang (Aldo Sambrell) is pretty much unremittingly evil and mostly driven by his anger at the whole world (hence he starts shooting the townspeople in cold blood even when it’s largely pretty clear he isn’t going to get the gold). The townspeople themselves are various degrees of bad (and do little to justify Joe’s attempts to save them). The local doctor sells out the town to the bandits for a share of the gold. Most of the rest of them are really just amoral, somewhat racist (but prepared to consider Joe’s help when it becomes clear that he’s their only hope), only really interested in saving the town’s money, and largely pretty spineless. A half-Indian girl (Nicoletta Machiavelli) is the exception here in that she goes out of her way to help Joe, although she doesn’t have too big a role in proceedings.

The quality of film-making is somewhat mixed: there’s some nicely chosen shots and interesting locations (mostly Almeria I think, although filmed at a grassier time of year than usual and using some lesser seen parts of it), but also some dubious day-for-night footage. Morricone’s score is another high point.

The UK DVD is OK but unexceptional. There’s also now a Blu-Ray version.

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