Seven Guns for the MacGregors Review

From The Spaghetti Western Database

< Sette pistole per i MacGregor

• 1966

• Dir: Franco Giraldi

• Cast: Robert Woods, Agata Flori, Alberto Dell’Aqua, Leo Anchoriz, Fernando Sancho, Jorge Rigaud, Nazzareno Zamperla, Perla Cristal, Manuel Zarzo, Julio Perez, Cris Huerta, Harry Cotton, Pierre Cressoy, Antonio Molina Rojo, Margherita Horowitz –

• Music: Ennio Morricone

The first film produced by Jolly Films after they were left by Sergio Leone. As director Franco Giraldi was appointed, assistant-director to Leone for the previous Jolly production A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari). One year earlier, Giraldi had declined the offer to take over from Albert Band as director of Massacre al Grande Canyon (and had put forward the name of Sergio Corbucci instead) because he preferred to do a comedy. The story about a Scottish family way out West seemed more appropriate to him, but both producer Sabatello and the public required a strong dose of violence. As a result Seven Guns is one of oddest and most confusing spaghetti westerns in history: while nearly as corny as many of those seventies parodies, it’s at the same time more graphically violent than most of the early spaghettis. It could have also had dramatic consequences for the history of the genre, since Fernando Sancho was nearly beheaded in one particular scene …

The film begins with a scene that sets the tone for the entire movie with its combination of tough action and cute silliness. The ranch of the Scottish family the MacGregors is attacked by Mexicans. Since the seven sons are having fun in the fields, it’s up to the older family members to defend the ranch. They do so with heart and soul, using at one point a shooting device – they call it a piece of furniture – that will remind most of us of the shooting organ in Carnimeo’s Light the Fuse … Sartana is coming (1970). Eventually the sons are alarmed, by means of Queen Anne, a canon (so it seems) from the days of Bonny Prince Charley, and the Mexicans are all killed. The family thinks the attack on their ranch was masterminded by a villain called Santillana (I understood Santa Anna at first) and unlike in those Agatha Christie whodunits, the most likely suspect is the perpetrator here. The oldest son (Woods) infiltrates his gang in No name style, and for the rest of the movie, we see him running from one camp to another, gathering information among the Mexicans and informing his brothers about them afterwards. At one point, when changing sides, he is shot by both the Mexicans (who want to cover him) and his own brothers (who want to deceive the Mexicans). Most scenes are played for fun, but, as said, some of the violence is quite strong. The body count is high, a man is dragged through fire alive and a half naked Woods is severely whipped after he is unmasked by the Mexicans. The wonderful opening scene, with the sons rescuing their older family members, is echoed near the end, when the juniors are trapped and threaten to run out of bullets, so they must be rescued by the seniors, who arrive just in time, in true cavalry style, accompanied by a genuine Scottish piper and blowing all opponents away with the infamous Queen Anne.

Although four screenwriters are credited the script was nearly entirely written by Fernando di Leo and Enzo dell’Aquila, from an idea by Duccio Tessari (the director of the Ringo movies, who said he was inspired by the title (so not the contents) of the western musical [b]Seven Brides and Seven Brothers[/b]. The script is full of great lines (A woman to her husband: MacGregor, some horse-thieves want to talk to you!) and events (the Mexicans trying to rob a bank that has been robbed minutes before by the brothers, informed about the robbery by Woods), still the film has mainly become famous for two great scenes: the knife fight on a waterwheel between the oldest of the MacGregor sons and villain Santillana, and a truly exciting train assault, that must have inspired Massimo Dallamano to the rather similar train assault in Bandidos (1967). It is during this train assault that Fernando Sancho nearly lost his head (and we one of the most colourful villains of the genre). Shot near Guadix, Sancho climbed on the train the moment it passed the iron bridge present in a lot of movies shot in the area (1). The moment was filmed and used for the movie. It’s a bit painful to watch, even if you know Sancho wasn’t hurt. Still the production wasn’t completely safeguarded from accidents: both Manuel Zarzo and Alberto dell’Aqua broke several ribs but were forced to carry on due to the tight working scheme. Most probably safety standards were rather low, like in most Italian productions of the time (You’ll remember how Clint, in one of the extras of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, tells us how he advised Eli Wallach not to do anything dangerous).

With most actors being either stuntmen or circus performers, the action scenes are very spectacular. Performances are adequate throughout. Robert Woods was a nice surprise to me in an unusual light-hearted role, but the film belongs to the villains, Leo Anchoriz as the evil Santillana, and Fernando Sancho as his clumsy right hand Miguel. In this movie Anchoriz is the spitting image of Jim Groce, so I expected him to tell every minute that he was bad bad Leroy Brown, the baddest man in the whole down town. A problem, especially to Scottish viewers, could be the way people talk in the movie: while the older family members speak with a broad accent (no idea if it’s genuinely Scottish) the seven sons, or the voice actors doubling them, all speak with their own accents, mostly American. But it’s not wise to take anything seriously in the movie, so I guess most people won’t mind. Ennio Morricone’s makes full use of drums and bagpipes for one of the oddest scores in his career. The title song is a wonderful march that puts De Sousa to blame. The film was shot in the months of august and September 1965, for most part in Colmenar Viejo (near Madrid) and Guadix. According to a recent study by Carlo Gaberscek, The MacGregor ranch was built in Dehesa de Navilvillar, at seven kilometers from Colmenar Viejo, and used in several other movies.

Seven Guns for the MacGregors was an immediate success so a sequel was planned shortly afterwards. Despite very bad experiences with producer Dario Sabatello, Giraldo accepted to do the direction. Sabatello was said to be so avaricious that he preferred the certainty of a small loss to the possibility of a large profit. Robert Woods did not appear in the sequel: apart from his avarice, Sabatello also had a fiancée who couldn’t act but desperately wanted to be in her friends productions: Agata Flori, Woods’ love interest in Seven Brothers. Woods, who bought the American rights for Columbia for the movie, said Seven Brothers was the best thing of his career, and Flori the worst: he never wanted to see her again. Being not at all ugly, she really must have been a pain in the a… Mario Giusti however, says he didn’t like her either when he first saw the movie as a kid: she had a bit of a moustache. Could be, I didn’t notice it.

1- http://garringo.cool.ne.jp/around%20guadix2.htm

--By Scherpschutter