The Violent Ones

"The Violent Ones" is a film directed by and starring Fernando Lamas. The plot is incredibly simple...and after a while it just seems like the story is being stretched out a bit too much. It's as if there is about 50 minutes worth of material in a 95 minute movie.

The story is set in some town in some American state where the locals are all Hispanics. One of them is beaten and raped and before she lapsed into a coma, she said a white man had done this to her. So the sheriff (Lamas) starts arresting white strangers...and eventually there are three in his jail. In the meantime, the locals are all in the mood for a lynching and the sheriff is worried they'll kill his prisoners....which is odd since the sheriff is more than willing to beat the prisoners to get them to talk. So why wouldn't a cop like this just give them to the mob? The film mostly consists of a long chase scene out in the Mojave Desert...and it goes and goes and goes until inexplicably one of them admits to the sexual assault.

The story is just too slim to support the film and the sheriff makes little sense as one moment he ignores civil rights and due process and the next he's trying to save these men from the mob. Overall, a slow and inconsistent story...one that is watchable but not much more.

Fernando Lamas did a good job, both as a director and as an actor. The other actors, Rodolfo Acosta, in the role of the raped and killed girl, Lisa Gaye, in the role of the nurse, plus David Carradine, Aldo Ray and Tommy Sands, in the roles of the 3 villains (of which only one is really the perpetrator), are convincing . Worth seeing!

Fernando Lamas directs himself in this low-budget melodrama taking place in a New Mexico border town where one of three jailed white men is the assailant in a rape case involving a local girl (seems the last word the victim said before losing consciousness was "gringo"). There's the Polish troublemaker (Aldo Ray), the dishonorably discharged soldier (Tommy Sands, with impossibly black hair), and the smart-talking drifter (David Carradine). Deputy sheriff Lamas fears the townspeople will turn into a lynch mob after the victim dies, but all we see are extras running across the street and half-heartedly breaking into the police station. This is the laziest riot in the annals of B-movie cinema! Still, Lamas manages to move the story along, and it's rather enjoyable despite a poor car chase and clichéd dialogue throughout ("You've got a wrap-sheet as long as your arm!"). The location shooting is quite good, despite sloppy editing which repeats some footage, and the acting is solid by each of the principals. ** from ****

Although this Western isn't very good, its interesting for one of David Carradine's early performances. He plays one of three men accused of raping a young girl in a small New Mexico town. Fernando Lamas overplays the Mexican sheriff that has to find out who raped the girl, because the town's people are vengeful and ready to go a-lynchin'. Carradine shows that bad-guyness was one of his strong points as an actor even in his early years: at one point he keeps referring to the sheriff as "Mex," clearly getting under the poor man's skin. The film itself is kind of a bland drive-in type picture that would've played better on television. Aldo Ray also stars.

Hey, Grimey feel of this movie is classic for me, also it's hard too find there's no official DVD release, that being said if you like movies that get too the point without useless dialogue this is a must see, a true Grindhouse collector's must have.