Burt Lancaster(who I just thought was great, though he battled with the accent just a bit..a minor squabble)portrays Bob Valdez, a former Apache hunter for the Calvary now a constable who accidentally shoots an innocent black man claimed to have murdered the husband of Gay Erin(the beautiful redheaded Susan Clark). Gay's lover is Frank Tanner(Jon Cypher), the leader of a band of cutthroats who lead the crusade to take out the black man who was mistaken for being the one who killed Gay's husband. Valdez tried to smooth things over by consulting with the black man, but hothead RL Davis(Richard Jordan..a bucketful of energy and spunk)open fires before the constable to get the honest proof of the victim's innocence. Valdez ends up killing the innocent man and desires all who fingered him to pay for the man's pregnant squaw to have passage home. This is an insult to Frank who is a racist pig who loathes the sight of "greaser" Valdez. When Valdez persists, in kindness and gentle-care, Frank to pay $100, he is is attacked and roped to a wooden cross..they send him into the desert this way to perish. RL Davis is sent on his way when he is told by Frank that he couldn't shoot straight. RL, in his only moment of kindness in the film, releases Valdez from his ropes after an incident when Bob tried to break the wood roped to his arms. After being lent help and rest by his friend, Valdez will seek revenge for what Frank and his cronies did to him. What Frank and co. doesn't know is that Valdez is a great shot and smart tactician. He knows the mountains and is a wily problem for Frank to solve. Still Valdez has a problem when RL tells Frank of Bob's friend's helping him and this act of betrayal proves once and for all that RL is a greedy lowlife simply desiring to be one of the guys. Still Frank will continue to underestimate Valdez who knows the entire country all too well. Before it's over, Frank will, without a doubt, know that..Valdez is coming. The film is a blast to watch. It's one of those vendetta entertainments that often frequent the multiplexes in the 60's and 70's when the rules, thanks in large part to Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch", were starting to be broken. We were actually seeing the men act and talk the way they did in those days. The mean behavior exhibited by crooked men who lived for wealth and prestige. In this film Frank seems to be one mean sonofabitch and finds that he is slowly losing his men one by one to a superior enemy he misjudged because of different skin color. He automatically looked at him as a weak peasant instead of a great gunfighter and that theme works greatly here in this short and satisfying western.
Review of Valdez Is Coming
