Review of 100 Rifles (1969) by Donald W — 08 Apr 2011

This is an average to good western. I saw the first part of this movie when it came out in a little theater in Kiowa Oklahoma. We were visiting my grandmother that summer and my eleven year old sister and cousin wanted to go to the Friday night movie with the rest of the kids in Kiowa.

My parents didn't want two little girls going to the movie by themselves so as the older brother they made me go with them. When we got to the theater it was like a real life scene from the Last Picture Show.

My Dad asked the old man who owned the theater what the rating of the movie was and he said he didn't know. He had pushed the rating on the movie poster behind the frame so it couldn't be seen.

It turned out it was rated R. However, everyone there was under 17 and the old man didn't want to lose his customers. My sister and my cousin sat up front and I sat by myself in the center of the theater.

As the movie started I was starting to enjoy the movie. Raquel Welch was hot. And then they got to the hotel scene with Burt Reynolds with a naked girl. There was just enough nudity to get the R rating.

After the scene was over my sister and cousin came sliding down my row and said, "Are you ready to leave?" So I had to get up and walk them back to my grandmother's house. Years later when I was in college I saw the whole movie on TV.

Amazingly the nude scene was gone. I finally got to see the uncut version on DVD. I noticed the DVD was rated PG. Turns out that was the only nude scene in the whole movie. The movie is set just before the Mexican Revolution when the Mexican government tried to exterminate the Yaqui Indians.

When the Revolution started the Yaqui Indians joined Pancho Villa's army. Fernando Lamas plays the evil Mexican general. The movie has a German Lieutenant character as one of the bad guys. There were German spies in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution but there is no evidence that uniformed German officers participated in the Revolution.

It is a fact that the United States went to war with Germany in 1917 more because Germany tried to get Mexico to declare war on the United States than the sinking of American ships by German submarines.

President Wilson had sent General Pershing into Mexico to chase Pancho Villa after he attacked Columbus New Mexico in an attempt to steal weapons. Germany sent a telegram to the Mexican government offering to aid them in a war with the United States and to help them reclaim the territory lost in the Mexican War and the Texas Revolution.

The writer of this movie was alluding to the American advisors in the early days of the Vietnam War by including a German Advisor to the Mexican army. Although they wanted people to think they were making a statement about the war in Vietnam, the plot of the movie is just a chase through the desert with the Mexican army chasing the rebelling Indians with the 100 rifles Burt Reynolds character "Yaqui Joe" had purchased for them with the money he got from a bank robbery in the United States.

James Brown plays an American policeman trying to arrest Burt Reynolds. Raquel Welch is the love interest for Jim Brown and has a lot of sexy scenes. There are a lot of good battle scenes but no really good lines.