Fri 13 Aug 2010
SHALAKO. Cinerama Releasing Corporation, 1968. Sean Connery, Brigitte Bardot, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Peter Van Eyck, Honor Blackman, Woody Strode, Alexander Knox, Valerie French, Donald Barry. Based on the novel by Louis L’Amour. Director: Edward Dmytryk.
An all-star cast. Make that an international all-star cast. To little or no avail, alas. Not that any western isn’t worth watching, if filmed in color and with a large enough budget, as this one very definitely is, and even on occasions when not.
The movie takes place in the 1880s, supposedly in New Mexico but actually in studio lots in England and on location in Spain. (The vegetation is therefore generally wrong, but the mountain and rough terrain vistas are very fine.)
The basic premise of the film is simple. An aristocratic hunting expedition from Europe, complete with fine silver, champagne (unchilled), butlers and other assorted servants, wanders into Apache land, and it’s up to an Army scout names Shalako (Sean Connery) to warn them off, and when that fails, to get them to safety before they all die.
The warning fails, naturally enough. The blame here goes to the nominal leader of the group, Baron Hallstatt (Peter Van Eyck), who has enough arrogance and stubbornness to hold off any number of Indians, if that were all it took, and it isn’t.
I imagine this movie, when they were putting together the cast, was designed primarily for the pairing of Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot (Countess Irina Lazaar) as the two leading characters, but they seldom have much screen time together and when they are together, it’s not particularly a match made in heaven.
I think more sparks would have been kindled if Honor Blackman (who plays Lady Julia Daggett) had played Miss Bardot’s part instead, but she does all right in her role as a woman frustrated by her dry stick of a husband (Jack Hawkins) and who rides off with the the villainous Bosky Fulton (Stephen Boyd) instead. A bad choice, as it turns out, but she didn’t listen to me, either.
We do get to see Miss Bardot in a skinny dipping scene, but all in all, it’s a totally gratuitous one, since even though Shalako gets an admiring view, the plot doesn’t seem to depend very much upon it.
August 14th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Considering how much I loved the book by Louis L’Amour the film was a major disappointment. No one seemed to be in the same film or to much care for the film they were in.
Hawkins throat cancer was pretty advanced by this stage and I think someone else had to do his voice, though it is so scratchy it’s hard to tell.
Eric Sykes has a nice bit as a valet who proves to have more on the ball than the aristocrats he serves, and it is always nice to see Don Barry in one of these.
Stephen Boyd, who had worked with Bardot before and had an affair with her — she tended to have affairs with most of her leading men in the Dietrich and Patricia Neal manner — claimed to step aside to give her a shot with Connery, for the good of the film as much as fairness, but there is precious little in screen time or charisma between the two to suggest his sacrifice was worth it.
The brief nude scene did at least inspire a nice photo layout in PLAYBOY, showing a bit more than the film does, though the European cut is likely more explicit and less violent.
The best performances in the film are Blackman and Boyd’s roguish bad guy.
Some of this was shot in the states or Northern Mexico because at one point they were all in Las Vegas, though it certainly looks as if most of it was filmed in Spain.
I know Woody Strode had a good deal of Native American blood, but he was a damn unlikely Apache chief in this one. That made this one even harder to swallow since the big hand to hand combat between he and Connery was the film’s climax. He fared better against Jock Mahoney in TARZAN’S THREE CHALLENGES as an Thai prince.
It didn’t help either that this was loosely based on the same incident that inspired W.R. Burnett’s novel ARROWHEAD, and the film of that name with Charlton Heston and Jack Palance. The similarity of the endings, based on an incident in the life of Congressional Medal of Honor winning chief of scouts Al Sieber (the man who hunted down Geroninmo — also played by Robert Duvall, John McIntyre, and Richard Widmark on film) tends to remind you how much better a film the Charles Marquis Warren directed ARROWHEAD is.
One interesting note is that the Shalako character is a Brit in the book too, an ex British soldier who had served in Crimea. That much is fairly historically accurate as a good many Brit soldiers served in the Civil War and the West as either observers or soldiers (and Ben Thompson, one of the great gunfighters was British and one of the great cattle barons was actually a Scottish baron). George Macdonald Fraser covers this in FLASH FOR FREEDOM and FLASHMAN AND THE REDMAN.
Though they were no where near the Apaches, when the Czar went buffalo hunting with Buffalo Bill he did travel much in the extravagant manner shown here. Cody and his men made sure the Czar got a good kill every day because to celebrate he always opened a case of champagne that night back in camp.
Among Brit celebrities who toured the American West were Oscar Wilde (Wilde’s lunch with Wild Bill Hickok was interrupted by one of the most famous of Hickok’s gun fights), Robert Louis Stevenson (though no celebrity at the time), Charles Dickens, and Sir Richard Francis Burton. . I don’t think Conan Doyle got farther west than Chicago, but quite a few others did.
August 14th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Incidentally the Czar was only a Grand Duke when he went hunting with Buffalo Bill.
I forgot, but L’Amour includes a note at the beginning of the film mentioning many of the European expeditions to the West and Burton, Wilde, and Dickens forays out west.
The Dickens trip inspired a notable episode of BONANZA with Jonathan Harris playing Dickens lecturing in Virginia City, and upset to find his works widely available in illegal editions.
In retrospect, I’m not sure any actual filming was done in the US, but I do recall reading a story at the time with the cast in Las Vegas, which was the first time Connery had been back since he famously decked mobster Johnny Stompato and had to be quietly got out of the country while filming ANOTHER TIME. ANOTHER PLACE.
August 14th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
I saw this on it’s original release and I don’t remember a darn detail about it, except how disappointing it was…and that Sean Connery seemed to be trying to pretend he wasn’t there.
August 14th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
David
There’s nothing on IMDB that says that any shooting took place in or around Las Vegas, but you can take that for what it’s worth.
But IMDB does confirm that Jack Hawkins’ voice was dubbed by Jack Hawkins is dubbed by Charles Gray.
Some other interesting bits of info:
Brigitte Bardot was an early choice to portray Tracy (Mrs. James Bond) in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but she do it since she was busy filming Shalako with Sean Connery, who’d taken a short leave from the Bond movies at the time.
Senta Berger and Henry Fonda were first cast in the two leading roles.
Honor Blackman was cast at short notice replacing Ingrid Pitt, who dropped out.
This was Peter van Eyck’s final film.
Rick
I didn’t see this movie in 1968 — I had to wait until just this past week — but in 1968, I’d have been disappointed in not seeing more of Miss Bardot in the movie.
— Steve
August 16th, 2010 at 6:19 am
You’re right about Connery looking embarrassed; he seems not so much a westerner as just a guy in an ill-fitting cowboy hat.
July 12th, 2011 at 8:04 am
Can anyone explain what happens to Ms Blackman’s character? (SPOILER ALERT!) The print I saw on UK television seems to have been cut slightly. She falls to the ground as the Apaches attack, pretending to be dead but one notices she’s possibly alive and starts to tease her by pouring dirt over her face. Suddenly more Apaches appear and they all ride off and we never hear anymore about her! What happens to her in other prints of the film? Is she drowned in dirt?!
July 12th, 2011 at 9:50 am
It’s been a while since I saw this movie, but from the synopsis at the American Film Institute website, they say:
“Meanwhile, the Apaches, led by Chato, the chief’s son, attack the stagecoach and kill Lady Julia by forcing her to swallow her own diamonds.”
It sounds as though this small but striking bit was cut from the print you saw.
January 2nd, 2013 at 6:12 pm
Well, time has moved on a bit since this was raised, but in case anyone Googles to here…
After Chato (the Apache) pours dirt on Lady Julia’s mouth and makes her show she is alive, a group of Apache start pushing her around, gradually tearing off most ofher clothes. Eventually she falls down near Chato, and he kneels astride her, pouring more dirt into her mouth. She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a diamond necklace, and offers them to him (presumably in order to get him to stop). He looks at the diamonds then gets an idea. He forces Julia’s mouth open by gripping her chin and pushing it down. She is screaming “No, no” but he gets the diamonds in then clamps her mouth shut. She chokes on the diamonds.
January 3rd, 2013 at 10:47 am
Thanks, John!
July 1st, 2017 at 8:25 am
I saw parts of that movie in 1974 and never forgot that scene with Lady Julia. I was a teenager living in Japan. My friend was babysitting, and I went over to keep her company. This movie was on the TV, dubbed in Japanese. This scene and another (which I am not sure really happened the way I thought it did — no “rewind” function back then — have haunted me since.
I’m almost afraid to watch it again to find out for sure. Very violent.