Chato's Land (1972)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

Michael Winner

Writer:

Gerald Wilson (written by)

Release Date:

30 June 1972 (Denmark)

Genre:

Western

Tagline:

The scream of his victims is the only sound he makes.

Plot:

After Pardon Chato, a mestizo, killed a US marshal in self-defense, a posse pursues him, but as the...

Plot Keywords:

Posse | Rape | Beans | Corncob Pipe | Vulture

Cast

Charles Bronson	...	Pardon Chato
Jack Palance	...	Capt. Quincey Whitmore
James Whitmore	...	Joshua Everette
Simon Oakland	...	Jubal Hooker
Ralph Waite	...	Elias Hooker
Richard Jordan	...	Earl Hooker
Victor French	...	Martin Hall
Sonia Rangan	...	Chato's woman
William Watson	...	Harvey Lansing
Roddy McMillan	...	Gavin Malechie
Paul Young	...	Brady Logan
Raúl Castro	...	Mexican scout (as Raul Castro)
Lee Patterson	...	George Dunn
Roland Brand
Peter Dyneley	...	Ezra Meade

Runtime:

110 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Australia:M | Singapore:PG | West Germany:16 (f) | New Zealand:R16 | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 (1972) | Sweden:15 | USA:PG | UK:18 (cut)

Filming Locations:

Almería, Andalucía, Spain

Company:

Scimitar Films

Trivia:

This is the first film out of six that Charles Bronson and Michael Winner made together.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Several times as the posse rides through the desert, the saguaro cacti props in the background can be seen jiggling and flapping their arms in the wind.

Quotes:

[on the Civil War]
Capt. Quincey Whitmore: Hell, it was a good war.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in My Best Friend's Birthday (1987)

Fairly Good For A Winner Film

CHATO`S LAND was shown alongside DEATH WISH on BBC1 tonight as a tribute to the late Charles Bronson . To be honest this isn`t much of a tribute down to the simple fact that Bronson has very little dialogue and only a few scenes in a film that concentrates more on the posse than their pray . A far better tribute would have been that Bronson movie that contains the classic line " Put down those melons "

On its own merits CHATO`S LAND is a fairly entertaining and intelligent film featuring a ( White ) posse on the trail of an ( Apache ) fugitive . It`s one of those Vietnam allegories as seen in TOO LATE THE HERO , ULZANA`S RAID and THE CRAZIES . Don`t believe me ? , well check out the scenes with the Mexican being the surrogate South Vietnamese and Ezra Meade a metaphor for the anti war movement and just to hit the audience over the head with the point there`s a sequence of a village being burned to the ground

Michael Winner is hardly the greatest film maker who`s ever lived ( Check out the very obvious day for night filming ) but he does deserve some credit for casting someone who actually looks like an Indian in the title role and it`s not often you see a couple of Scottish characters in a western who give a very , very accurate description of rain soaked Greenock