Cry for Me Billy

Typical revivalist Western of the 70's. Plays out like a cross between 'Soldier Blue' and 'I Spit on Your Grave'. Very much a sign of the times, with the down-trodden Indians and evil white men, used as an anti Vietnam war statement (no doubt). That said it's a pretty accomplished work and with Harry Dean Stanton, so I haved racked up the rating to an eight.

This film had some good plot going, how a gunfighter who is "tired" of life finds meaning when he saves, then falls in love with a Indian girl wanted by a racist Army Sergent and his men, yet the movie is padded with endless footage of Billy (Cliff Potts, looking like a young Gary Busey) chasing and catching and chasing again, and feeding, and horseback riding with the Indian girl, who sepnds 90 percent of the film completely naked! When the sergent finally catches up with them, the usual revenge stuff happens, but the ending is nihilistic, and rather the payoff to the viewers is bad. Harry Dean Stanton is actually quite memorable as Billy's friend, but he is only in the beginning and the end. Good example of non studio werstern of the 70's.

The precedent user gave a good review of the film.I saw the movie on a Luxemburg channel at prime time which is very strange ;besides the warning concerned only the children under 10.There IS "strong graphic violence" "pervasive strong language" and a lot of sexuality (to put it mildly:actually there's a rape scene depicted in lavish details ) not to mention the complete nudity of the Indian girl most of the time.

This is a film which reflects the early seventies zeitgeist:a return to nature which was also the subject of such superior works as "Jeremiah Johnson" or "Deliverance" . Sam Peckinpah trying his hand at updating "broken arrow" best describes its violence.The long ride of the pair Billy/Flower makes me think of Taylor/Nova in "planet of the apes" (1967)

William A.Graham directs this fascinating and trippy,long lost western.A gunslinger Cliff Potts wants out of the killing business.He rescues,then falls in love with an Indian girl,the beautiful Xochitl,then is hellbent on revenge after she is attacked and gang-raped by a cruel-hearted sergeant Wilbanks and his cavalry soldiers."Cry for Me,Billy" is perhaps one of the gloomiest and most nihilistic westerns of early 70's.It features the massacre of Indians and fairly graphic gang-rape scene.The climax is wonderfully bleak and pessimistic.The tragic love between gunslinger and his Indian squaw is portrayed with believability and compassion.I'm a big fan of western genre and I wasn't disappointed with "Cry for Me,Billy".8 out of 10.