The Deserter (1970)

Bekim Fehmiu is Capt. Victor Kaleb, who returns from a patrol to find his pretty young wife skinned alive. She’s dying, so he has to use a bullet to finish the job the Apaches started.

He tracks down and kills one of the Indians responsible, returns to his post, dumps the dead body at the feet of his commanding officer (Richard Crenna as Maj. Wade Brown), then wounds him for not providing his wife the escort he had promised.

Then Kaleb deserts, determined to learn the Apaches’ way of war in order to kill as many of them as possible.

When Gen. Miles (John Huston) arrives on the scene with orders to stop an uprising by Apache Chief Mangus Durango, he sends for the deserter. He wants to send a hand-picked group of men south of the Rio Grande, and thinks Kaleb is the perfect man to lead the expedition.

Kaleb picks his men, including dynamite expert Reynolds (Chuck Connors), a couple of gatling gun experts (including Patrick Wayne), ace scouts Natachai (Ricardo Montalban) and Tattinger (Slim Pickens) and a handful of others (including Woody Strode).

He trains them to kill Apache style, then leads them on their treacherous mission, prepared to fight foes inside and outside his small band. After all, Maj. Brown is along for the ride, and some of the others under his command wouldn’t mind seeing Victor Kaleb dead.

Review:

There have been worse variants on The Dirty Dozen (1967) theme than this Western, which was also clearly influenced by the Spaghetti Westerns of the period.

Erractic director Burt Kennedy serves up the attention-grabbing opening, with Kaleb finding his tortured young wife, then having to kill her in an act of mercy.

But the film also drags badly when Kaleb begins training his hand-picked men, and there’s an especially silly scene where Kaleb scares the truth out of a captured Apache by planting a stick of dynamite between his legs. Funny thing is, all of the good guys are standing nearby and don’t seem the least bit concerned about a possible explosion.

A heartthrob and star in his native Yugoslavia, Bekin Fehmiu traveled to the U.S. to star in “The Adventurers,” a 1970 film based on a Harold Robbins novel. This was his second U.S. film and his only Western.

Among all the familiar faces, the best performance comes, ironically, from a cast member who isn’t even part of the expeditiion — John Huston as Gen. Miles.

Directed by:
Burt Kennedy
Niksa Fulgosi

Cast:
Bekim Fehmiu … Capt. Victor Kaleb
Richard Crenna … Maj. Wade Brown
Chuck Connors … Reynolds
Ricardo Montalban … Natachai
Ian Bannen … Capt. Crawford
Brandon De Wilde … Ferguson
Slim Pickens … Tattinger
Woody Strode … Jackson
Albert Salmi … Schmidt
Patrick Wayne … Capt. Bill Robinson
Fausto Tozzi … Orozco
Mimmo Palmara … Apache Chief Mangus Durango
John Alderson … O’Toole
Doc Greaves … Scott
John Huston … Gen. Miles

Runtime: 99 min.

aka: “The Devil’s Backbone”

Memorable lines:

Capt. Victor Kaleb: “That’s what a dead Apache looks like. He’s wearing my wife’s dress.”
Maj. Wade Brown: “I know how you feel, Kaleb.”
Kaleb: “The hell you do. You and your damn army.”
Brown: “It’s your army, too.”
Kaleb: “Not anymore.”

Maj. Wade Brown: “Would you like to inspect the fort, sir?”
Gen. Miles: “Hell, no. How do you get a drink around here?”

Tattinger: “While you’re feeling so damn sorry for me, why don’t you try to get me out of here and back to the fort doctor before that main war party shows up?”
Kaleb: “I’m not going back.”
Tattinger: “Oh, you’d just let a poor, feeble old man out here to die, huh?”
Kaleb: “You’re made out of leather and iron, you big bastard.”
Tattinger: “Well, I’ll have that put on my tombstone.”

Tattinger: “Captain, you’re an uncivilized son of a bitch.”
Kaleb: “Like I said, I’m alive.”

Gen. Miles to Kaleb and Brown: “My God, if everyone around here fought Apaches the way you two fight each other, we wouldn’t have all this trouble.”

Doc Scott, questioning Kaleb after forcing the troop to run around the parade ground in the hot sun: “Are you trying to kill those men.”
Kaleb: “An Apache can run in the sun all day.”
Doc Scott: “Those are white men out there, not savages.”
Kaleb: “The men who cross the Rio border with me will be.”

Kaleb, after O’Toole falls to his death: “O’Toole made two mistakes. He didn’t test his hold …”
Capt. Crawford: “And he yelled when he was falling.”
Kaleb: “An Apache wouldn’t.”
Crawford: “Dammit, if a man is dying, he has a right to be a little disturbed about it.”
Kaleb: “Not if he cares anything about the men he’s with.”

Kaleb: “There’s a good chance he (Maj. Brown) won’t come back, general.”
Gen. Miles: “The price of glory.”