The western underwent a brief but vibrant revisionist period in the early to mid ‘70s, just before a lengthy hibernation period. “The western is dead,” these movies proclaimed, “long live the western!” This is a time when even the mighty Spaghetti Western was on its Italian way out, and those which remained questioned their forebears.
A brief detour (already?!): Westerns traditionally are defined by a very narrow setting, the untamed American West. Amongst film genres, this is perhaps the most limiting. With increasing distance from the historic setting, there is less and less relevance in the western as historical fiction. Its codes have been adopted by other forms, with many modern action films utilizing old western language – it’s what it evolved into. I’m thinking e.g. of Die Hard. In fact, as the western loses its historical importance, it gains tonal importance, becoming closer to forms like comedy, drama, etc. Codes remain, notions of freedom, heroism, honor, lawlessness, violence, applicable to any story in a frontier setting, up to and including outer space. Hence No Country for Old Men is a western, in a contemporary setting; looking backwards, the old Kurosawa samurai epics are westerns, though they predate that era.
Anyway, back to the ‘70s. In the death spasms of the traditional western, a great number of revisionist efforts pulled the form this way and that: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Jeremiah Johnson, High Plains Drifter, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, El Topo, so very many more. This was the environment of the final Magnificent Seven sequel, The Magnificent Seven Ride!, part of a series that was always more classical than revisionist. Such an effort would be even more anachronistic in 1972 than Guns of the Magnificent Seven was in 1969. For this reason it is a good thing Ride! appears in a minor revisionist mode, consciously closing the book on the Magnificent Seven saga by questioning many of that franchise’s rules.
One awkward through-line in all the Magnificent Sevens is the question of “Why do they fight?” This has grown increasingly overt in the sequels. Rather than continue to plug in that shoehorned notion, Ride! changes the mode of inquiry: “What if they didn’t fight?”
As ever, the connective tissue which makes Ride! part of a series are as following: Elmer Bernstein’s eternally kickass score, the number 7, and gunslinger Chris Adams. Once again, Chris is recast, now played by verifiable legend Lee Van Cleef – second only to Clint Eastwood, another veteran of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly just as Eli Wallach was in the first Magnificent Seven. Due to thoroughly unclear contract stipulations, Van Cleef here plays a role originated by Yul Brynner, while Brynner takes Van Cleef’s headlining role in the second of the Sabata trilogy, Adiós, Sabata.
It’s tough to think of Van Cleef’s “Chris” as Brynner’s “Chris,” so it helps just to think of him as his own man. It’s not like the series ever made him more than an enigma anyway, a leader three times over of seven-man posses. That history is enough to inform Van Cleef’s version, an older Chris anxious to forget his adventurous past. Retirement for such a roustabout involves acting as U.S. Marshall in an Arizona frontier town, and enjoying honest-to-goodness marriage to his wife Arilla (Mariette Hartley, from TV). And when Chris’ former friend (whom we’ve never seen before) Jim Mackay (Ralph Waite, from TV) arrives with a request that Chris join him to defend a Mexican border village under attack by a renegade band of 50 banditos…Chris refuses. Good thing, too, since there would be absolutely zero series variation had he gone.
This may be called The Magnificent Seven, but the first half is almost completely devoted to Chris alone. As a reticent frontier legend in his autumn years, Chris enjoys the company of a biographer named Noah Forbes (Michael Callan, from TV). This is a familiar revisionist tactic, a self-conscious examination of myth, so well utilized in Unforgiven. And under the corrective gaze of Mrs. Adams (i.e. Arilla), Chris hopes to uncharacteristically embrace the beatific halls of nonviolence. To this end, he releases 18-year-old robber Shelley Donavan (Ron Stein, from TV). This turns out to be a mistake, as Shelley “celebrates” his release by seriously wounding Chris, robbing a bank, and running off with Arilla. How many other movies can you name that are this quick in condemning nonviolence?!
Chris rides out to capture Shelley, accompanied by Noah. This major plot thread, which has nothing directly to do with the standard “Seven” setup, is a result of the greater thought process which caused Chris to reject his latest adventure in the first place. Things are about to get much worse for Chris. They find (well, Noah finds) Arilla raped and murdered, in that order, early along Shelley’s trail. Now it’s a revenge flick! Chris, violating all Noah’s ill-conceived notions of honor, tracks down Shelley’s partners-in-rape – which includes a frighteningly young, shaggy, be-mulleted Gary Busey. Chris learns where Shelley has gone…then kills them! In cold blood! No one does that like Van Cleef.
The trail leads the duo (a duo?! In a Magnificent Seven?!) along past Kirk’s Rock to “Mexico,” where Jim and the men of Magdalena (Jim’s town) ready an ambush for the bandits. Ah hah, the old thread returns! Shelley has joined this bandit band, headed by the dreaded and forever unseen Juan De Toro. Chris advises Jim that, without Chris’ help, their potential ambush is instead a suicide mission. And still Chris refuses to aid Jim, considering it fruitless in this predicament, and rides on in hopes to somehow find Shelley some other way.
Gunfire quickly brings Chris and Noah back to the sight of Jim’s ambush, which has itself been ambushed, Shelley specifically having sold these men out to De Toro. All this death, all a result of Chris’ decisions so far. That’s not all! Shelley is dead at Jim’s hands, and vice versa. So even the potential for Chris’ selfish revenge is gone.
Chris doesn’t learn this immediately, as instead he first travels to Magdalena to search for the missing Jim. Instead he finds the town ravaged by De Toro’s forces, which have already moved on to spread their message of thoughtless violence and cruelty to Texas – which could surely benefit from it. In De Toro’s wake are the town’s women and children, and hints (first subtle, then…er, less so) indicates that the former were raped – 17 women to 40 or 50 Mexicans. That is to say, repeatedly. And what’s amazing is this isn’t even among the more nihilistic of revisionist westerns!
Chris starts a relationship of mutual recovery with Laurie Gunn (Stefanie Powers, from TV), newly a widow just as Chris is newly a widower. To leap ahead a tad, it’s not surprising that romance springs up between these two. What is surprising is how inevitable and necessary this romance is, because Chris’ story has gone from one of apathy to revenge and now to redemption. Which is a lot of work to justify Chris’ actions in the second half of the story, but it gives the eventual climax far more context than Guns of the Magnificent Seven could ever wish for.
Even with De Toro et al long gone, their return is nigh, as De Toro intends a second rape spree as he returns from violently decimating Texas. In other words, Magdalena needs defense even now, after Chris has failed to defend it. Intent to do them right by any means necessary, Chris (and Noah) heads out collect five more men, to together create the titularly-necessitated seven.
I’d expended much effort up ‘til now incorrectly trying to identify the eventual Seven. Well, when the Seven do appear, they’re mostly entirely new, whom we’ve never seen before. For The Magnificent Seven Ride! “borrows” ideas from The Dirty Dozen (itself a variation on The Magnificent Seven), namely that the gunmen are culled from the local prison population. This is a sudden dump of heroes, but we must forego the traditional recruitment montage in favor of a stronger storyline for Chris.
With that in light, there isn’t humongous effort put into distinguishing these five newbies…though their little character moments still make them as distinct as those in Guns. It’s okay, since they’re in essence a group character, five prisoners allied against Chris. In answer to the eternal question “Why do they fight?,” Ride! suggests these warriors have little choice. Chris promises his team parole should they succeed, in true Dirty Dozen fashion. And should Chris die beforehand – that is, should they kill Chris in retaliation for imprisoning them – then, well, no parole! That still leaves open the question of what they’ll do once in Mexico, where they’d be free of the U.S. penal system, but we’ll get to that. Chris assures us (through Noah) that it’s under control.
Meanwhile, I guess we’d best give the five a cursory glance…Hmm, we got Pepe Carral (Pedro Armendariz Jr., from TV), Walt Drummond (William Lucking, from TV), Captain Andy Hayes (James Sikking, from, yup), Scott Elliott (Ed Lauter, from TV), and Mark Skinner (Luke Askew, from…well I’ll be, Easy Rider).
The idea now is for these men to secure and defend Magdalena from the inevitable incursion of rape-hungry banditos. Because this is an action movie, there must be a simpler early mission to attend to, and verily Chris has arranged one. With De Toro off spreading his Mexican apocalypse throughout the Lone Star State, Chris et al descend upon De Toro’s lightly-guarded headquarters, for weapons. And at this stage, Ride! marks itself out as a surprisingly thoughtful franchise closer, exclamation point excepted. In marked contrast to Guns, Ride!’s warriors do not simply ride in without hesitation. Rather, they carefully plan their assault, working out tactics with a forethought not oft seen with murderous bounty hunter types. What follows is a pretty good shootout, all things told, with certain caveats to be covered at the end.
The battle concludes with Chris ensuring his men’s loyalty, no matter what. He steals the real prize, De Toro’s unnamed woman, and sends a single messenger off to tell De Toro that he and his assorted associates have taken her back to Magdalena for a characteristic and systematic raping. Chris isn’t that cold, of course, but it guarantees his prisoners’ allegiance, as the only way to escape De Toro’s wrath in Mexico is to kill De Toro. Very clever of Chris, very clever in general, this is a much more thoughtful Seven than most. I like this movie!
With a surprising minimum of plot arbitration, we’re now at the expected Magnificent Seven scenario: Seven guys defending a helpless town from invasion. Even at this late stage, The Magnificent Seven Ride! distinguishes itself from the lesser sequels by being surprisingly smart about it. Strategy again becomes the central focus, second only to Seven Samurai itself. The Seven work out a specific, detailed ambush involving several outer trenches, traps, explosives, and rifles of assorted ranges. Actually, this nicely answers one question even the mighty Magnificent Seven avoided: How does one adapt the Seven Samurai defensive strategy to gun warfare?
The limited running time is nearing an end. Yet even with the scramble to fortify Magdalena, there’s time for genuinely involving character scenes, as the Seven and the town’s women all make heartfelt connections, each of them damaged and broken and tired by their difficult lives. Credit for this goes to screenwriter Arthur Rowe (from TV), who thoughtfully provides the Magnificent Seven deliverables with a lot of unexpected meat.
Credit, however, probably does not lie with director George McCowan (ditto from TV), and here we come to my major caveat. Consider the background of nearly every member of the film, excepting the omnipotent Van Cleef…That’s right, The Magnificent Seven Ride! has all the earmarks of a made-for-TV movie, including budget-conscious off-the-shelf western sets, an overdependence upon Vasquez Rocks, and a distractingly static camera. The end result is eons better than most television movies, in terms of sheer spectacle, and that’s including the best examples of that defunct format, such as Duel or Brian’s Song or The Day After. Given the progressive devolution of quality with former Magnificent Seven sequels, this is a necessary budgetary fallout.
Actually, considering how horribly crippled The Magnificent Seven Ride! was in its mere conception, an unwanted third sequel to an outdated western remake of a Japanese art house effort, it is far better than it has any right to be. Perhaps with those lowered expectations, it had the freedom to move away from the “sequel as remake” trap the other sequel Sevens succumbed to. At any rate, Ride! is a respectful follow-up, actively deconstructing and reconstructing the formula and delivering some mighty fun western action. If you have the capacity to forgive some less-than-stellar technical merits, The Magnificent Seven Ride! has a lot to offer.
Thus did the Magnificent Seven film franchise come to a close in 1972, somewhat parallel to the western genre as a whole. But recall how unlikely it is for a western to have three sequels to begin with, in the non-sequelizing climate of cinematic oaters. Most western serialization belongs to television, and did even prior to The Magnificent Seven. So it’s no great surprise that what little life was left in the Magnificent Seven name found its outlet on television.
“The Magnificent Seven” aired on CBS – ah, so that’s why I’ve never heard of it! It was a Michael Biehn vehicle, and really he’s not a bad choice to play a leader of divergent badasses (see also Aliens). Being a TV show, “The Magnificent Seven” told mostly isolated adventures, like the old “Gunsmoke” and “Rawhide.” The classic story of the seven ridding a town of bandits is reduced to the two-part pilot, which is a shame when one considers how a newer TV show might stretch that notion out into an entire season – as length and patience benefits Seven Samurai, so might it in this format. It wasn’t to be, though, and “The Magnificent Seven” ran it its serialized form for two seasons, from 1998 to 2000.
This evidently concludes the legacy of The Magnificent Seven. But it was just one of many movies owing their existence to Seven Samurai. Appropriately, seven more official remakes await us (many unfindable and thus unwatchable), and we shall see just how malleable this “men defend village” concept really is.
RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• No. 3 Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969)
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