Valdez Is Coming

Infobox Film
name = Valdez Is Coming


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director = Edwin Sherin
producer = Ira Steiner
Roland Kibbee (exec. producer)
writer = Elmore Leonard (novel)
Roland Kibbee
David Rayfiel
narrator =
starring = Burt Lancaster
Susan Clark
Jon Cypher
music =
cinematography =
editing =
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released = April 9 1971
runtime = 90 minutes
country = USA
language = English
budget =
gross =
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website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0067921

"Valdez Is Coming" is a 1971 western film starring Burt Lancaster, Susan Clark and Jon Cypher. The film is based on the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name.

Plot

Aging town constable Bob Valdez (Lancaster) is tricked into killing an innocent man by powerful rancher Frank Tanner (Cypher) after having his hired gun R. L. Davis (Richard Jordan) harass them by shooting up the hovel. When Valdez tries to raise $100 for the Indian's widow, Tanner treats him with utmost contempt. Tanner has El Segundo (Barton Heyman) and his men tie Valdez to a cross made from poles and he is pushed out into the desert. The central pole is so long that Valdez must walk bent over. He finds an oasis of green vegetation and two trees that he repeatedly tries to ram with the ends of the cross-pole. However, when it finally breaks, the ragged ends are driven into his back. Someone finds him and cuts the ropes without revealing his identity.

Crawling to his friend Diego's (Frank Silvera) ranch, Diego nurses him back to health. Unfortunately for Tanner, the rancher has picked on the wrong man - Valdez is a wily, experienced Indian fighter. He dons his old calvary uniform and sends Tanner a message via one of the rancher's wounded men: "Valdez is coming!"

The ranch is on alert. In the courtyard at night, El Segundo spots Tanner's woman, Gay Erin (Clark) on the balcony. "That woman - she never smile." He continues, "If she were MY woman, I would make her smile." Valdez sneaks into the rancher's compound and, during the ensuing gun battle and his escape, kidnaps Gay Erin on horseback. With her restrained and in tow, he then proceeds to systematically do away with the men sent after him with his long-range Sharps rifle. Valdez shows mercy to R. L. Davis who screams, "I cut you loose! I cut you loose!" after being wounded in a close encounter with a shotgun. Now he has two hostages.

Finally surrounded and captured, Valdez faces Tanner and his men in a surprise standoff: Gay Erin sides with Valdez ("I'd like to see Frank pay it! [the $100] ", R. L. Davis begs off and El Segundo calls his men aside against the rancher's orders, leaving Frank Tanner to do his own dirty work: killing Valdez - if he can.

While this film isn't technically a "Spaghetti Western", it was filmed in southern Spain in locales used by Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone in his avante-garde European Westerns. The desert-like terrain of this isolated region of Spain resembles the U.S. southwest and parts of Sonora, Mexico. However, you'll notice a distinct lack of many native North American desert plants such as cholla and opuntia cacti, yuccas and agaves (various species of century plants) in these Spanish-Western films. Occasionally, such plants are imported and placed around the "set" to pepper a scene to make it look more like an American-Mexican locale.

External links

*tcmdb title|id=94623