Trilha Sangrenta

Even though he only appears in the movie for scant minutes and scarcely says a word, this has to easily qualify as Joel McCrea's worst film. His otherwise notable career is tarnished by his appearance in this dreadful mess (a favor, one has to assume, for his son who produced the disaster.) The story, if one can even call it that, concerns a band of repugnant, annoying, filthy drifters who terrorize and mostly kill off a small family of Indians. They keep one girl alive so that she can show them to a place where gold exists. The audience can tell that Jody McCrea (utterly lacking in any screen charisma) is the "good guy" of the piece because instead of raping, butchering or torturing any of the Indians, he sits on a rock and watches it all. He develops sympathy for the female hostage as the gritty group fights amongst itself on the way to the gold. Two of the actors in the film also directed and assistant directed it. Starrett apparently couldn't say goodbye to all his extended scenes of himself overacting and meandering around meaninglessly. The whole film has a plethora of shots of people walking or riding endlessly. Meanwhile, a lone Indian, who had been away during the slaughter, tracks the group. This tall native has an interesting outfit. He wears a long-sleeved peasant blouse over a very narrow loincloth that shows practically all of his behind. He lurches through the terrain with all the style and grace of say.......a filling station attendant at a Boron gas station in Columbus, Ohio. One hilarious sequence has him careening into a violent river. The film is uncomfortable to watch for various reasons. The opening scenes are sadistic and thoughtlessly cruel. The bulk of it is just amateurish and badly written, shot and directed. The one rather interesting aspect is the choice of revenge that the lone Indian chooses for his enemies. It is only in these various depictions of the payback he gives each of the men that the movie shows any amount of creativity or life. It is also rewarding for the audience since, by the time the Indian catches up to them, these characters have become positively unbearable. Henley, during his final sequence, is so agonizing that one wants to reach through the TV and kill him personally. The music is also abominable in the movie. The whole thing is ludicrous, trashy, cheap, choppy and worst of all boring.

Some movies make you wonder how you got to this place in your life. Sitting there on your couch, the sun shining outside as you watch 80 minutes of empty boredom on your TV. I do say this with the understanding that a lot of people just try to steer clear from the movies that are unknown, boring, or just badly rated. Still, anyone who has watched their fair share of films knows this feeling. I'm going to call it "The Empty" and it is rampant in Cry Blood, Apache.

What seemed to be basically a revenge film, where the Apache woman takes her would be killers on a wild goose chase looking for gold, all the while setting traps and killing them all, actually didn't feature any of that. Cry Blood, Apache is about an old cowboy reminiscing about the one time, he and a few of his ne'er do well friends shot, killed and raped their way through an Apache camp. During this time they stomped on a pot and found gold inside it. They then murdered all the people until one of the women gave in and told them she would lead them to the gold. Our "Hero" then remembers how they wandered a long time while being followed by an Apache warrior, who also had his eyes on the woman they captured. I'd like to give some specifics, but very little happened for most of this film. Long shots of them walking, watering horses, and constant inane voice dubbing of the "religious guy" who literally spoke some sort of BS scripture about God instead of having dialogue. Wait...wait there was a standout moment where two of the outlaws including the religious one, watched the woman clean herself in the water. They actually giggled at the sight of seeing a woman naked, or at least topless. So yeah, that's a scene...

Cry Blood, Apache takes way too long to get going, and never satisfies in any way. The story, characters, and direction just dry up any interest in this film. Leaving it just a dusty old western.

Poor Joel McCrea who couldn't leave the screen on a high note like Randolph Scott in Ride the High Country. He had to come back to play a cameo in a film his son Jody produced and starred in.

Jody had a minor career in the 60s in those beach films. He had gotten a break playing a deputy in a short-lived television series called Wichita Town that starred his father as a sheriff. He never really established himself and I guess Cry Blood, Apache was a last effort.

IT's just bad all around, bad acting, bad directing, lousy script that god awful music that punctuates all foreign made westerns.

Joel should have just stayed on his ranch.

The major theme of Cry Blood Apache is the worthlessness of human life outside of civil society. This nihilistic tale takes place in the mythic old west, around the time of the goldrush, and is about as inaccurate as possible. Nevertheless, the story fermented some interesting ironies and a few fairly predictable but entertaining plot twists. Unfortunately, only the Native American characters are in any way sympathetic and even the Euro-American protagonist is more of a survivor than a hero.

Amoral cowboys rape, pillage and massacre a small Apache village, leaving two survivors, a raped woman and her vengeful brother. The woman becomes attached to the one cowboy who is decent toward her (McLure), but out there in the wild somewhere her brother awaits his opportunity to attain vengeance.

Cry Blood Apache is one of two films released by the late profilic b-movie director Jack Starrett (Dukes of Hazzard, First Blood, etc) in 1970. Starrett also managed to act in at least one film per year during the 1970s, including a memorable performance in Blazing Saddles. Although Starrett's directing is often heavily criticized in reviews of this film, I believe that the film's budget had much more to do with its generally poor reception than the directing did. The film was obviously rushed through production and some of the acting (including star McLure) left much to be desired. Lastly, Cry Blood Apache was made at a time when the hallmark of western films was exquisite and often lavish cinematography - and Cry Blood Apache has neither. Despite all of this, the method of storytelling and the story itself had some merit. Had the film been better-supported, it might have fared better.

Recommended for hardcore western addicts. Not recommended for others.

Released in 1970 and directed by Jack Starrett, "Cry Blood, Apache" is a low-budget American Western about a group of white dirtbags with gold fever who murder a camp of Apaches while allowing a squaw (Marie Gahva) to live in order to take 'em to a gold mine. Meanwhile a relative of the captive, a silent brave (Marcus Rudnick), tracks them down and gets vengeance one by one. Jody McCrea plays the only redeemable person of the bunch while the director plays the hypocritical Bible-quoting nutjob. The burly bearded guy was Leif Garrett's father, believe it or not.

This is actually a late 60s/early 70s exploitation thriller in disguise. Some of the Apache's torture methods, like hanging a person upside down in a stream and placing a bag with a deadly snake over someone's head, are rather chilling without being overly graphic. "Cry Blood, Apache" is a barbaric revenge yarn produced by the protagonist Jody McCrea, who enlisted his dad, Joel McCrea, from retirement to play the old-aged version of his character in the prologue and epilogue for (I guess) name recognition.

The director went on to better things, like 1975's "Race with the Devil," but here he was obviously hampered by the low-budget and the movie comes across inept in some ways (like some of the editing, acting, dubbing & dialogue), which will spur a lot of viewers to hit the 'stop' button (or switch channels). But the film has some rewarding elements despite the tediousness and meaninglessness of it all. For instance, you can't beat the gritty realism. The main characters come across as a group of degenerates with gold fever in the desert, with the questionable exception of Pitcalin (McCrea). Their disheveled and torn clothing looks right. And Rudnick is quite credible as the laconic, merciless and torturous Apache warrior. The obvious question is: Why is Pitcalin riding with these moral-less swine? I suppose because he's desperate and needs the money. While he obviously laments the needless murders, he probably "writes them off" as expected collateral damage.

The eight descriptive words in my title blurb are all fitting for "Cry Blood, Apache." It's also unforgettable.

The film runs 82 minutes and was shot in Arizona and Sequoia National Forest.

GRADE: C