Une fille nommée Apache

Al Cliver won't go down in history as the greatest actor ever, or even the most adequate actor ever. He's just kind of there, staring at things. Apache Woman requires Cliver to just sort of stare at things anyway, and therefore it might be the best film he's appeared in as the leading man.

Al is part of a Yankee squad out to capture some Apache tribesmen who have escaped from a local reservation, and by capture I mean slaughter, including the women and children. These brave fellows manage to hold their own up against these unarmed mothers and kids, but when the actual Apaches braves show up they hightail it, leaving one dead Sargeant behind and one unconscious Al Cliver, who never ever fired a shot.

Some time later, Al wakes up to find to everyone dead except for one lady Apache and one passing salesman who is stealing the boots and jewellery from the corpses who figures that he can sell on the squaw as a sex slave. This lady is no pushover though so when two other dodgy cowboys turn up and try and put the moves on her, she headbutts one of the them and hightails it with Al.

You see, this is a messed up love story in a nihilistic mid-seventies way as Al and the Apache woman grow closer despite cultural and linguistic differences (requiring Al to do a lot of staring). A love story where the protagonists realise that their forbidden love will cause them to turn their backs on their respective societies so they can stare at each other over a campfire. A love story where every single white person cannot even see a human when they look on the Apache, including so called men of God. This paragraph was supposed to end on a joke but that doesn't seem so funny after all.

If you're in a foul mood and want to hate the human race a little more, this film will do the trick nicely. It's another twilight Spaghetti Western with a dark, dark heart.

"Apache Woman" is a low budget Italian rip-off based quite obviously on Ralph Nelson's "Soldier Blue", but it is not a bad movie. Al Cliver has hardly been in many better ones, and he stars as the soldier who is lost in the wilderness and tries to get back to his comrades. However, he falls in love with an Indian woman (Yara Kewa), the only survivor of a massacre, and that is a really complicated relationship! They don't trust each other, they don't understand a word of the other's language, but they can only survive together. Even though "Apache Woman" can't resist some nudity and brutality (director McRoots alias Mariuzzo is known for working with zombie expert Lucio Fulci), it has a lot of subtle moments, too, especially when the soldier and the woman have to communicate with nods and smiles. It fortunately takes the necessary time for a few peaceful moments and thus develops the characters a bit. So, more than you'd expect from the advertising and one of the better films from the end of the spaghetti western era, because it successfully imported elements of the depressive American post-western, when the Django avenger pose had become obsolete. (Note: I have watched the Italian language print, running 85 minutes. It seemed to have a few censorship cuts for violence.)

After several Apache families escape from their reservation a cavalry squadron is sent out to take them back. Unfortunately, because of the intense hatred that they harbor toward them the soldiers decide to kill them instead. Yet after killing almost every man, woman and child they encounter an ambush by several warriors who had formed a hunting party prior to their attack. Meanwhile, back in the village one female Apache named "Sunsirahe" (Clara Hopf) and a slightly wounded cavalry soldier by the name of "Tommy" (Al Cliver) are left behind and together they form an uneasy alliance in an effort to somehow get back to Fort Cobb alive. What they don't count on is the hostility from both white settlers and those same Apache warriors seeking to avenge the murder of their families. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a low-budget spaghetti western which suffered from a crude plot and a rudimentary script. In addition to that, I also didn't care for the rather annoying background music either. Having said that, I must admit that Clara Hopf was quite attractive but even so her presence wasn't nearly enough for me to rate this picture any higher than I have. Below average.

At some point someone should compile a survey of the 1970s "Injun Atrocity" sub-genre of adult themed Western exploitation films. A nasty lot, they can usually be traced back to the unprecedented popularity of 1970s SOLDIER BLUE. Which in itself is a pretty tepid film save for the infamous scenes where the US cavalry massacres an entire Native American village in a Technicolor display of gore that probably made Sam Peckinpah blush.

While that film's mixture of graphic gore and Western themes may have scandalized audiences at the time it nonetheless created an idiom unto itself where sleazebag white cowboy types would slaughter innocent, unarmed and topically fashionable Native Americans ... then have their inhumanity paid back in kind, usually with Injun killing tricks or some other aspect of having the battleground turned against you. While SOLDIER BLUE's inspiration was no doubt the clamor of dismay from reports Vietnam era atrocities by American soldiers, the subsequent knock-off films only looked to reap the vicarious sadistic urges that SOLDIER BLUE brought to the surface.

APACHE WOMAN is one such film, a later era Spaghetti Western filmed on the ultra-cheap without any (as yet then) big named stars, the central focus of which is a shapely Injun Squaw played by Yara Kewa, the stage name for a German actress named Clara Hopf who's dusky appearance loaned itself to the role of a foxy Native American hottie who's rather smallish tribe is murdered for no apparent reason by US soldiers at the very beginning of the film. In true proprietary spirit of SOLDIER BLUE, one of the soldiers (future zombie/exploitation specialist Al Cliver) becomes disillusioned with the carnage, breaks ranks, and later helps the squaw to find safety while pursued by a gang of even scummier cracker hicks, who's sole motivation to exist in the film is to rape and murder attractive young Native American women. Beats working for a living, I guess.

So this is another entry in the "There Are No Good Guys Anymore" kind of Western that predominated after the brilliant success of THE WILD BUNCH. Every character in the movie is a murderer, a thief, a rapist, or just a sadistic cretin, up to and including the family of a traveling minister who predictably turns out to be the most sadistic monster in the whole film. There quite simply is no safe haven for the two as they fight off all comers together, saving each other's lives or virtues again and again before eventually becoming lovers. And if you have seen any pessimistic dystopian existentialist genre films that can only lead to one possible conclusion.

The film is violent, sleazy, voyeuristic, cheaply made, mean spirited, somewhat unpleasant, and reeks of simply a chance to send audience members heart rates pumping by either the thought of the squaw being animalistically raped OR putting out voluntarily, depending on the needs of the plot, and for better or worse the plot does not disappoint. Though none of it is very original: It's actually almost identical in plotting to a superior 1972 depression years western called APACHE MASSACRE (or CRY FOR ME BILLY) which at least has the distinction of a Harry Dean Stanton performance. Or Bruno Mattei's SCALPS, which has the distinction of boasting the actual gore quotient that SOLDIER BLUE suggests.

But it's not a "bad" film, the locations are all gorgeously photographed in a mountainous region that doesn't look familiar. Part of my low rating may have to do with missing whatever philosophical message the film might try and weave into it's tale: I have only seen it by way of a Spanish language DVD that had a great picture but no English language translation, whatever nuances the plot may have are not understood by this Gringo. Not that what was going on is too hard to figure out: If the film has one fault it's that it's rather simple minded, which in this case is a plus. You don't need to understand what anyone is saying, just be repulsed by the sleaze, violence, degradation and nihilism. On that level of consideration this might be a minor masterpiece of the later years of the Western craze, when it apparently wasn't supposed to be fun anymore to suggest some sort of social weightiness or message. And here the message is that Injun squaws could be foxy as hell under them deerskins. How charming.

4/10

APACHE WOMAN is a gritty Italian exploitation western that comes across as an obvious copy of the dark and downbeat US western SOLDIER BLUE. The film sees regular go-to guy Al Cliver as an old-fashioned soldier with a good heart who finds himself in possession of the titular character, an Apache as played by Clara Hopf who after a couple of film roles in the 1970s became a make-up artist. Short-term director Giorgio Mariuzzo is best known as the guy who later wrote Fulci's famous horror films including THE BEYOND.

The two characters then work their way through an embittered and hostile landscape in which every supporting character is a sleazebag or criminal of some sort. Violence and degradation are the name of the game here and I found this a surprisingly suspenseful little movie in places, with the bursts of intermittent violence proving a shock to the system. Cliver is a good choice for lead and Hopf is sufficiently sympathetic. Although the version I watched managed to excise most of the nudity, APACHE WOMAN is still an exploitation film through and through, but one which overcomes clichés to offer engrossing, if gruelling, entertainment.