Apache Woman (1976)

Al Cliver is Tommy, a new recruit separated from his cavalry troop during an attack on a mostly defenseless Indian village.

Yara Kewa (Clara Hopf) is Sunsirahe, the Apache woman of the title. She escapes the massacre, then escapes capture by Honest Jeremy, a trader who wants to sell her to a whorehouse.

They find one another in the woods and head off together. Tommy is searching for Fort Cobb, determined to get back to his troop and his noble job of protecting the settlers.

He’s not quite sure what to do with the Apache woman. He clearly can’t take her back to the fort. She tags along just the same. And since Tommy can’t pronounce her real name, he calls her “Apache.”

During their journey, they meet a prospector who wants Sunsirahe as a replacement for his mule, a preacher who wants her for the $10 bounty he can get for her scalp and are briefly reunited with Tommy’s cavalry unit.

The sergeant wants to kill Sunsirahe on sight. Because, after all, the only good Apache is a dead Apache.

By that time, Tommy’s pretty sure that isn’t the case. Sunsirahe has helped treat the wounds on his feet; she’s even saved his life at one point. In fact, before long, he’s contemplating a life outside with Army, with Sunsirahe as his wife.

But is that even possible in a West filled with savagery?

Review:

The poster for the film screams 1970s sleaze and, in fact, there’s a bit of nudity here and there featuring our fetching leading lady.

But director Giorgio Mariuzzo also had a point to make: That savagery in the West certainly wasn’t a one-way street, a fact reinforced by every white person that Tommy and “Apache” stumble upon. The very white folks that Tommy’s noble cavalry is supposed to be protecting from the savage Apache.

As a result, this comes off as sort of a low budget Soldier Blue (1970) with Tommy slowing coming to the realization that the cavalry is more about might makes right than protecting anyone and eventually rejecting his former occupation altogether.

In some ways, it’s even more effective, relying on an ending filled with surprising plot twists rather than blood and guts to make its point.

Directed by:
Giorgio Mariuzzo

Cast:
Pier Luigi Conti … Tommy
as Al Cliver
Clara Hopf … Sunsirahe
as Yara Kewa
Federico Boido … Keith
as Rick Boyd
Rocco Oppedisano … Frankie
Corrado Olmi … Honest Jeremy
Piero Mazzinghi … Preacher Masters
Ely Galleani … Master’s daughter
Frank Warner … Master’s son
Robert Thomas … Master’s son
Eugen Bertil … 1st Sergeant
Henry Kalter … Palmer
Mario Maranzana … Snake

aka:
Una donna chiamata Apache

Score: Maria Maglioni
Song: “Apache Woman,” sung by Judy Hill

Memorable lines:

Keith: “Frankie, you’re an old whorehound. Would you pay for a piece of Indian tail?”
Frankie: “You out of your mind?”
Keith: “I guess you’d sure have to be.”

Snake, about Apache: “Wonder why I didn’t shoot her dead yet? C’mon. Ask me.”
Tommy: “Alright, why didn’t you?”
Snake: “Well, if you want to know, because I had a mule. Beautiful. So sweet. Poor mule went and died on me. That’s a fact. After that, my horse is all that’s left. Only a horse ain’t no fun. I mean, men need company, don’t they? Huh? Well then, an Injun gal ought to be as much fun as a mule.”

Preacher Masters: “This female idolatress parades half naked around men to corrupt
them. She’s a beast. All Indians are beasts, There’s not one word in the Bible mentions an Indian. Even the dear Lord considers them beasts.”

Trivia:

The provocative poster was the figment of an artist’s imagination. There’s no such scene in the film. Though at one point, a barely clad Yara Kewa, hands tied in front of her, hops aboard a horse and rides off to escape her captors.

Yara Kewa’s real name is Clara Hopf. She appeared in just one other movie, a Spaghetti Western called Hallelujah to Vera Cruz, then went on to become a makeup artist.

This marked the only Spaghetti Western for Al Cliver, who appeared in the popular horror film Zombie four years later, sparking a string of roles in similar films. They included “White Cannibal Queen,” in which he plays a doctor who loses an arm and a wife to a tribe of cannibals. Years later, he returns to rescue his daughter, only to find she’s been made a queen of the tribe.