El Condor Review

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El Condor - View Database Page

Thanks to his work in Europe, Lee Van Cleef had become a star, but El Condor wasn't a spaghetti western and therefore he wasn't top-billed. The film was intended as a vehicle for Jim Brown, the former football player who had given up his sports career because Hollywood paid better than the NFL. In a prison camp, shackled to Elisha Cook Jr., Brown is told about a fortune in gold, once stolen by the Spaniards from the Aztecs, now stored in a federal Mexican stronghold, a fortress called El Condor. Brown escapes and teams up with Van Cleef, an alcoholic fortune seeker who once lived with the Apaches. Brown reckons the Apaches are the army he needs to attack El Condor, in order to lay his hands on the gold … and some other treasure kept within the walls of the fortress …

Brown is surprisingly good as the unflinching bruiser (with a brain), and the combination with Van Cleef works remarkably well. They quickly became good friends and would be reunited twice, for Take a Hard Ride and Kid Vengeance. In a contemporary interview Van Cleef told that his part was re-written on the set (*1). Brown had a very laid-back acting style, and if Van Cleef would have kept his usual cool, there would not have been enough contrast between the two leads. Instead of the grim and taciturn types Van Cleef is usually identified with, his fortune seeker is noisy and hyper-active. This is probably not how his fans prefer to see him, but he turns in an enjoyable performance.

The fortress was built especially for the movie (it was subsequently featured in several other movies, including Conan the Barbarian), and Larry Cohen was asked to rewrite the script so the focus would be more on the fortress. This wasn't a lucky decision: the two men arrive too soon at the fortress and after a boisterous, enjoyable start the film offers too many scenes involving Brown and Van Cleef going into the fortress and working their way out of it again. El Condor is one of those movies which eventually put all of their premises inside out and upside down: nothing is what it seems (not even the gold) and most characters have a hidden agenda. And only in the dying moments we learn why Brown was so keen on taking the fortress, and why the cruel but honourable general Chavez was so keen on defending it.


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El Condor, produced by the great Andre De Toth, was filmed in Spain, and is often called a "pseudo spaghetti". Some of Brown’s other movies, like Rio Conchos and 100 Rifles served as much as a model as Lee’s spaghetti westerns and both The Wild Bunch and The Professionals might have been sources of inspiration as well. El Condor isn't bad, but the combination of broad humour and wholesale carnage never really pays off. It also lacks good taste in some scenes (for instance Brown shooting a naked man in his behind). But, as one critic put it, “there’s enough gun play, explosions, bloodletting and body count for an East Asian campaign” (*2). It also scores high on the nudity barometer. The film is famous for a key scene with Marianne Hill performing a striptease, but it also stars British actress Imogen Hassel, who was often referred to by the knickname of the Countess of Cleavage. Both actresses are in top form.



Notes:

  • (1) Marco Giusti, Dizionario del Western all’Italiano
  • (2) Variety Movie Guide, eighth edition, New York, 2000

Cast: Jim Brown, Lee Van Cleef, Patrick O'Neal, Marianne Hill, Iron Eyes Cody, Imogen Hassel, Elisha Cook Jr., Dan Van Husen, James O'Rourke, John Landis - Director: John Guillermin


--By Scherpschutter

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