Army deserter Capt. Viktor Kaleb is offered a pardon and reinstatement in the cavalry if he agrees to lead a special forces group in a raid against an Apache stronghold into Mexico.Army deserter Capt. Viktor Kaleb is offered a pardon and reinstatement in the cavalry if he agrees to lead a special forces group in a raid against an Apache stronghold into Mexico.Army deserter Capt. Viktor Kaleb is offered a pardon and reinstatement in the cavalry if he agrees to lead a special forces group in a raid against an Apache stronghold into Mexico.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaWhen Burt Kennedy came on board, he wanted Henry Fonda, Martin Balsam, Ernest Borgnine or Martin Landau or Karl Malden for the part of Gen. Miles. Malden looked for $250,000 plus $1,500 a day expenses. A much cheaper John Huston got the part.
- GoofsAt 38:50, the captain says to be there at daybreak. Yet the next scene when they are preparing to depart, the height of the sun is at least 10 am.
- Quotes
Captain Viktor Kaleb: O'Toole made two mistakes. He didn't test his skills...
Cpt. Crawford: And he yelled when he was falling.
Captain Viktor Kaleb: An Apache wouldn't.
Cpt. Crawford: Damn it! If a man is dying, he has a right to be a little bit disturbed by it!
Captain Viktor Kaleb: Not if he cares anything about the men he was with.
This one starts off with our hero Captain Kaleb of the US army discovering that his wife has been raped and flayed by a bunch of Apaches. After putting her out of her misery, Kaleb goes nuts at his superior officer as they were supposed to be guarding the mission where his wife was working. After shooting his superior officer in the leg, Kaleb heads off for the wilderness to go rogue and kill loads of Apaches.
Two years later, General John Houston turns up and demands that they find Kaleb for a special mission (They haven't seen him in that time, but it takes about five minutes to find him!) and promises him a pardon if he'll take a team of men over the border and wipe out a certain Apache army that's been troubling the US – but who will make up this Dirty Dozen-or-so? There's Chuck Connors (explosives expert, smoking), Ricardo Montalban (Native Indian, overblown philosophy), Woody Strode (Engineering, punch ups), Slims Pickens (good ol' Southern hospitality, tobacco chewing), Ian Bannen (Sarcasm, full of Buckfast) and some other guys. They all do what a Dirty Unspecified Quantity always do – start training! This being the seventies and not the eighties, we get a fairly long training scene instead of a montage.
After all that crap, it's time to go on the mission, but wait, Kaleb's superior officer has something to tell them, and I'd love to tell you what that is, but just as he's about to speak the Mill Creek version of the film immediately cuts to the Dirty Group heading for their destination. Thanks Mill Creek! Thanks also for the bit where Kaleb tells the group to shut up and ride in silence when no one was talking.
As you'd expect from films like this, this lot don't get on very well and have a few punch ups on the way, and not everyone will make it to the epic battle at the end. In tone this plays out a lot more like an American Western than an Italian one (although it's as violent as an Italian one!), which means it wasn't quite as daft, although I loved that bit where they are hoisting a donkey up a cliff face when the Apaches ride by, causing everyone to dive for cover and leave the donkey hanging there, looking genuinely perplexed.
- Bezenby
- Oct 21, 2017
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- The Deserter
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 40 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1