This may be the most disillusioned of the disillusionment years Westerns made between 1970 and 1976 or so, an almost overbearingly pessimistic tale of the West at a time when There Were No Good Guys Anymore crossed with the trusted Injun Atrocity idiom spawned by the success of 1970's SOLDIER BLUE. That film was marginally interesting, with it's main draw of course being an extended massacre scene where the US cavalry enacts My Lai on an Injun settlement, raping and killing their way into infamy in some mass catharsis treatment for the Vietnam war guilt complex. In it's like there were a dozen or so repellent, violent low-rent Westerns made that cashed in on the idea of the evil Americans being paid back for their inhumanity: CRY BLOOD APACHE (1970), APACHE WOMAN (1976) and Bruno Mattei's SCALPS (1987) come to mind most readily.
I happened to catch this on the same afternoon I subjected myself to APACHE WOMAN, an ultra low budget Italian made later era Spaghetti Western that tells almost exactly the same tale as this film, which I saw under the somewhat dubious re-title APACHE MASSACRE. Both films feature a somewhat iconoclastic journeyman who has become disillusioned with his life of violence (ala Peter Strauss from SOLDIER BLUE) who intervenes on behalf of a fetching young Injun squaw spared from a slaughter of her tribe by drooling, scummy evil white guys who have one thing on their minds: Rape.
Of the two this is the more original hodgepodge, with Cliff Potts giving a very believable performance as a sort of "Billy the Kid" type of gunslinger who may be a killer but has no stomach for watching others suffer. He crosses paths with the young squaw of mention (embodied by Xochitl del Rosario, a stuntwoman by trade who has no spoken lines in the entire film), befriends her, helps to heal her of injuries and disgrace from having barely escaped a full gang rape at the hands of the US cavalry who murdered her tribe, losing all of her clothes in the process. She spends the bulk of the movie either topless, bottomless, or completely naked, and the middle section of the film details how she and Potts eventually become lovers in a false natural Garden of Eden type setting that of course doesn't exist. Once they give into temptation hell always strikes, leading to events that put Billy on a one way course with his own doom as he seeks revenge for her brutalization.
It all leads to as depressing a conclusion as one can ask for, though if you ask me Billy screws up on three specific occasions that no seasoned gunfighter would ever have neglected to predict. Once you let your guard down you are toast in that kind of profession, a point that bookending cameo actor Harry Dean Stanton makes clear not just once but twice, all to no avail. Perhaps what appeals to be about the story arc is the inevitability of how one event leads to the next, with even a second cameo by Woody Chambliss as a prospector who nearly pleads with Potts to just get on with his life if he has any plans on seeing another birthday. He doesn't, and if you think I just gave away the ending you haven't seen your fair share of disillusionment era American made low budget Westerns. NONE of them have a "happy ending", almost as if it was a prerequisite for the times.
In the classic era of the Western Potts would have of course just teamed up with Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and maybe Duke Wayne and sought justice before a nice jaunty closing song performed by Frankie Laine, but sadly this was 1972 and There Were No Good Guys Anymore. CRY FOR ME BILLY is actually very well made, with only a silly romantic interlude with another silly romantic folk ballad to intrude on the film's nonstop disillusionment, pessimism, dystopia and paranoia. It may not be everyone's cup of tea but for fans of sleazy, violent 1970s exploitation Westerns this might be the best American made example aside from DIRTY LITTLE BILLY, which this movie reminded me of continuously. Which I think was kind of the point.
6/10
I happened to catch this on the same afternoon I subjected myself to APACHE WOMAN, an ultra low budget Italian made later era Spaghetti Western that tells almost exactly the same tale as this film, which I saw under the somewhat dubious re-title APACHE MASSACRE. Both films feature a somewhat iconoclastic journeyman who has become disillusioned with his life of violence (ala Peter Strauss from SOLDIER BLUE) who intervenes on behalf of a fetching young Injun squaw spared from a slaughter of her tribe by drooling, scummy evil white guys who have one thing on their minds: Rape.
Of the two this is the more original hodgepodge, with Cliff Potts giving a very believable performance as a sort of "Billy the Kid" type of gunslinger who may be a killer but has no stomach for watching others suffer. He crosses paths with the young squaw of mention (embodied by Xochitl del Rosario, a stuntwoman by trade who has no spoken lines in the entire film), befriends her, helps to heal her of injuries and disgrace from having barely escaped a full gang rape at the hands of the US cavalry who murdered her tribe, losing all of her clothes in the process. She spends the bulk of the movie either topless, bottomless, or completely naked, and the middle section of the film details how she and Potts eventually become lovers in a false natural Garden of Eden type setting that of course doesn't exist. Once they give into temptation hell always strikes, leading to events that put Billy on a one way course with his own doom as he seeks revenge for her brutalization.
It all leads to as depressing a conclusion as one can ask for, though if you ask me Billy screws up on three specific occasions that no seasoned gunfighter would ever have neglected to predict. Once you let your guard down you are toast in that kind of profession, a point that bookending cameo actor Harry Dean Stanton makes clear not just once but twice, all to no avail. Perhaps what appeals to be about the story arc is the inevitability of how one event leads to the next, with even a second cameo by Woody Chambliss as a prospector who nearly pleads with Potts to just get on with his life if he has any plans on seeing another birthday. He doesn't, and if you think I just gave away the ending you haven't seen your fair share of disillusionment era American made low budget Westerns. NONE of them have a "happy ending", almost as if it was a prerequisite for the times.
In the classic era of the Western Potts would have of course just teamed up with Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and maybe Duke Wayne and sought justice before a nice jaunty closing song performed by Frankie Laine, but sadly this was 1972 and There Were No Good Guys Anymore. CRY FOR ME BILLY is actually very well made, with only a silly romantic interlude with another silly romantic folk ballad to intrude on the film's nonstop disillusionment, pessimism, dystopia and paranoia. It may not be everyone's cup of tea but for fans of sleazy, violent 1970s exploitation Westerns this might be the best American made example aside from DIRTY LITTLE BILLY, which this movie reminded me of continuously. Which I think was kind of the point.
6/10
