Review of Captain Apache (1971) by Rick R — 30 Dec 2009

Captain Apache (1971).

Wow! This is another nail in the coffin of the Spaghetti Western from the early 70s. This movie, based on S.E. Whitman's (is that Stuart Whitman's?) novel, has Lee Van Cleef singing the theme songs, "Captain Apache" and "April Morning". Filmed in Spain with an international cast.

The director, Alexander Singer, probably should have stuck to doing TV series, because he did a terrible job making this movie. It's very poorly made and edited. The movie that I saw was full screen from a wide screen original, so people's faces tend to run off the edge of the scenery.

The movie starts out really, really bad and, with time, becomes curiously watch-able. Captain Apache (Lee Van Cleef) is a native American Army officer, investigating the murder of an Indian Affairs Commissioner. What's curious is that the Commisioner's dying last words were april morning, and somehow that's so important that everyone who seems to know what april morning means is killed before they're able to tell the Captain.

Somehow this is all tied together with the local sheriff's deputies, a gun runner named Griffin (Stuart Whitman), some of his men (of dubious loyalties), as well as some Mexican calvary, and some beautiful young ladies, Maude (Carroll Baker) and Rosita (Elisa Montés).

Somehow, I think that this movie could have been done so much better than it was, but Lee Van Cleef makes it reasonably watch-able.