"Chingachgook, die grosse Schlange" or "Chingachgook: The Great Snake" or "Der Wildtöter" is an East German movie from 1967, so this one has its 50th anniversary actually this year. And maybe some already realize from the title that this is another one of these GDR western films that were a bit of an equivalent to the West German Winnetou franchise back then. It runs for a bit under 90 minutes (without credits) and features German actors mostly, which is not too common really for back then as many of these films had a half German, half Yugoslavian cast. The exception is of course Gojko Mitic (still an infinitely better actor than Brice in my opinion) who plays the protagonist as always, even if his performance was maybe not in the center of it all here as in other films because there is also big focus on Römer's character and also 2-3 others. Besides that, it is a really generic western as they always were back then. Visually it is fine in terms of landscapes, makeup and costumes of course, but story-wise and when it comes to characters' shades, there is nothing really well-done here. 100% good or 100% bad is the general route (also in Winnetou films) and this one here is no exception. But the story is also not a failure and those who really enjoy the western stuff from back then will maybe have a good time watching. It's probably not worse than what Reinl did around that time. The major difference is perhaps that these films never try to make a comedic impact at all while in the FRG films characters existed solely for the purpose of comedy next to Brice and Barker. So yeah, as a whole I did not enjoy the watch a lot and that's why my general verdict is negative. I prefer the Italian/American westerns from that time.
