The Five Man Army might pale in comparison to a larger budget Western like The Magnificent Seven but it has an oddball charm which is helped immensely by Ennio Morricone's staccato score and some unpredictable plot detours along the way. For instance, where else can you see an enactment of a train robbery done with tacos? The scene in question has The Dutchman using his lunch to demonstrate how he plans to pull off his grand caper. Luckily, he's able to do this before Mesito eats everything in sight. The latter is usually seen chewing on a giant chunk of roasted meat or downing whole jugs of wine. But besides the eccentric humor, there's plenty of body-crunching stunts, rapid gunplay, a genuinely striking credit sequence which utilizes real photographs from the Mexican Revolution, and an ending which seems to be headed in the same direction as The Wild Bunch before throwing you a surprise curve.
Although former actor Don Taylor gets a screen credit as the director of The Five Man Army, there is a conflicting account which claims the film was finished by its screenwriter, Dario Argento, when Taylor returned to the United States sooner than expected to start work on a television project. Argento, of course, is well known to horror film buffs as the man behind such landmark Italian giallos as Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977). Another account claims the film was really directed by producer Italo Zingarelli, supposedly a pseudonym for Giulio Questi, the talented director of Death Laid an Egg (1967) aka Plucked!, a wild psychological thriller starring Jean-Pierre Trintignant and Gina Lollobrigida. Regardless of who really directed The Five Man Army, fans of spaghetti Westerns will find much to enjoy here.
Producer: Italo Zingarelli
Director: Don Taylor
Screenplay: Dario Argento
Production Design: Ennio Michettoni
Cinematography: Enzo Barboni
Costume Design: Enzo Bulgarelli, Luciano Sagoni
Film Editing: Sergio Montanari
Original Music: Ennio Morricone
Cast: Peter Graves (Dutchman), James Daly (Augustus), Bud Spencer (Mesito), Nino Castelnuovo (Luis Dominguez), Tetsuro Tamba (Samurai), Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (Mexican Officer).
C-107m. Letterboxed.
by Jeff Stafford
