Villa Rides

Villa Rides is a 1968 American Technicolor Western war film in Panavision directed by Buzz Kulik and starring Yul Brynner as Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and Robert Mitchum as an American adventurer and pilot of fortune. The supporting cast includes Charles Bronson as Fierro, Herbert Lom as Huerta and Alexander Knox as Madero. Sam Peckinpah wrote the original script and was set to direct, but Brynner disliked Peckinpah's harsh depiction of Villa and had Robert Towne rewrite the script, with Kulik brought on as director. The screenplay is based on the biography by William Douglas Lansford. Plot Lee Arnold has to unexpectedly land his biplane in Mexico due to technical difficulties and here he hears both the Mexican army and the local peasant view on Pancho Villa: one seeing him as an outlaw, the other as a hero. A local family take him in and repair his plane and Arnold finds the daughter Fina attractive. Mexican soldiers arrive and beat the men and rape the daughter. The father is taken to the village square and is to be hanged alongside a handful of other men, allegedly for helping Villa. Captain Ramirez chastises the crowd as he kicks the supporting stools from beneath each man in turn. He is interrupted by the father humming La Cucaracha and the crowd joining in the refrain. But suddenly a maxim gun starts firing from a rooftop into the soldiers - but the father is not rescued from death. It is Pancho Villa and his men. Villa is puzzled by Arnold's presence. He discovers that he has been running guns to the soldiers and whips him with his money-belt. Arnold is placed with the "Colorados" the junior Mexican soldiers (the seniors have already been hung). They create a game where one of Villa's men Fierro (Bronson) tries to shoot them as they run in small groups to try to escape over a wall... all in the test are killed. Arnold tries to persuade Villa both to quit the game and make use of his plane. Villa lets one soldier escape and kills the rest.