"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Chino

tn_chinoor “What I Did With Charles Bronson On My Summer Vacation”

CHINO is the last western by John Sturges. Here’s the director of GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL practically making a spaghetti western – it’s a Dino De Laurentiis production, but filmed in Spain. I guess I don’t really know what kind of noodle that would be. But he reunites with his MAGNIFICENT SEVEN / THE GREAT ESCAPE star Charles Motherfuckin Bronson in his prime.

Bronson plays Chino Valdez, a loner who ran with the Cheyenne Indians in his youth and now lives all by himself on a ranch catching wild horses, training and breeding them. One day this blond kid named Jamie (Dick Van Patten’s youngest son Vincent) rides by looking for work and Chino – first seen in scary silhouette – lets him sleep in his barn. He keeps calling him “boy” and is the opposite of friendly, almost scares him away by chopping meat in front of him, but then shames him into staying so he doesn’t look like a sissy.

Of course they form a sweet friendship as Chino keeps getting a little nicer to him. He talks gruff but offers him things like letting him borrow a horse to ride into town and help him with different tasks. He makes him smile by threatening to cut his ears off. After a couple days he admits he likes having the boy around and hires him, even though he’s Chino, for fuck’s sake, why would he need anyone to help him with anything? Ridiculous.

mp_chinoHe’s kind of a rough character for a Van Patten kid to be hanging around with. In one scene they’re riding a trail and see a whole bunch of Indians watching them from the hills. Chino gives the horses to Jamie, tells him to get out of the way, starts bleating out some kind of war cry, tears off his outer layers of clothing and throws them on the ground, gets on his knees. They come down the hill and charge him. He’s challenging them! Their leader makes a run at him, leaps off his horse at him, they roll around on the ground and Chino gets the full mount and pulls a fist up… what the fuck is he gonna do, beat this guy up and then go through them all one at a time?

Nah, they’re just fuckin around. They start laughing. It’s his old friend Little Bear (Florencio Amarilla, also in RED SUN and CHATO’S LAND). Chino and Jamie stay with them for a while. Jamie meets a girl (Melissa Chimenti?) and everything. Not bad. On the other hand he gets kind of annoyed that these guys have never seen a yellow hair before and are constantly fondling his head for good luck.

We can see that Chino has a heart hidden deep, deep inside that leathery, nearly impenetrable outer shell, and some people do seem to sort of be friends with him, but also they’re clearly terrified of him. The first thing he does when he gets into town is watch a proper lady (Jill Ireland) get out of a wagon and then punch a guy in the face for warning him not to. The guy is way taller than him and has just as awesome of a mustache but Chino grabs him and tosses him right into the poor kid, knocking him on his ass.

When Chino goes into an empty saloon the bartender immediately panics, gives him a whole bottle for free and begs him to leave since he just repaired everything from last time. (It doesn’t work.)

The owner of the wagon is Maral (Marcel Bozzuffi from THE FRENCH CONNECTION), who also it turns out is the owner of the land Chino has been living on. Chino only finds this out when he goes to chew the fucker out for putting up barbed wire that fucked up one of his horses. Whoops. And as you can imagine Chino has eyes on that Catherine lady that’s at his house.

But don’t worry! It’s not that guy’s wife, it’s his sister. But do worry! Because he’s just as possessive as you would expect him to be of a wife. She’s heard that Chino raises the best horses and wants to buy one, so she starts visiting him. When he finds out she rides side saddle he refuses to let her do that on one of his horses, so she shows up with a dress she’s sewn into pants and he starts teaching her how to ride like a man. This almost seems like a swipe at prescribed gender roles, but there are some things we’ll get to a little later that sort of invalidate that. And not just the part where he slaps her on the ass.

Before we get to that, let’s discuss the scene where she walks in on him taking a bath. There’s a real sudden cut to Chino, wet and naked, seen from the waist up, his hands down below and groaning orgasmically like he’s jerking off just below the frame. Which he may or may not be, but he might just be scratching his back against a brush on the wall. He’s real embarrassed and drops into the tub when Catherine walks in. Earlier she compared him to a horse and now she says “You even look like a horse,” which in this situation he should obviously take as a compliment.

But that’s definitely not the weirdest sexual scene in the movie. That would have to be the part where Catherine is sitting on a grassy knoll watching the horses and all the sudden one of them mounts another one and starts going at it. She just sits there and watches. Then Chino shows up and realizes what’s going on and then they kinda sit there and watch the horses fuckin and exchange uncomfortable glances. Gettin ideas?

Well, maybe not because when he takes his coat off and she stands up and it’s obvious that they’re both thinkin the same thing she suddenly turns and tries to make a run for it, he chases her and grabs her, they slap at each other, he pins her down, holds her wrists down, it’s fucked up. But as often happens in some of the older westerns and Japanese films the attempted rape is all innocent foreplay and she decides instead of fighting for her life to be in love and kiss him. It looks like she’s willing and he’s cradling her head gently but if you look closely he’s holding her by a fistful of hair.

And as they get into it the camera pans up and there’s the horses there:

still_chino2

You can’t really tell for sure if they were really still fuckin in the same shot as Bronson and his wife kissing. I hope not because jesus you guys.

Please don’t think I’m a prude for saying this, but I don’t get the orgy or swinger party thing, the appeal of fuckin when there’s two or more other people nearby also fuckin. But I really don’t get the appeal of fuckin when there’s horses right there fuckin. Maybe you had to be there. In the old west or Enumclaw.

Anyway they fall in love and the brother forbids it but they meet in secret and Chino decides he wants to marry her. He tells the boy all about it, he’s gonna fix the place up to be more girl friendly, buy her a stove to bake with, and a laundry wringer. I’m sure he will still let her wear pants but he clearly doesn’t expect her to join in the family business.

This would be a happy ending of course, but who the fuck wants to see Charles Bronson settle down? Especially when he’s playing Chino, a man who has been repeatedly compared to wild mustangs, and has a way with them, can make them come to him just by whistling. He’s like a horse, but one that can’t be broken. So when things end up in a big shoot out, and he does not get married, and doesn’t even keep the kid around, and instead burns down his house and hits the road, that’s a pretty satisfying ending. I mean, I feel bad for the kid, but you also get a sense that this has been a man-ifying experience for him just like Chino’s days with the Cheyenne, and he’s got to strike off on his own and figure out what to make of himself. Maybe some day they’ll run into each other on a trail, charge each other, fake wrestle and have a laugh.

I found this on a pretty shitty, watermarked “Laser Light Special Edition” double feature DVD and was very surprised when it ended and suddenly there’s a be-gloved Tony Curtis gripping onto a bar for dear life and saying “I hope you enjoyed our Charles Bronson program”:

still_chino3

Then there are pretty extensive credits for that sequence.

For a second I thought it was a horror host like Zacherly. The white coat and black gloves kinda look like a mad scientist. Turns out the menu has an intro too with him talking about Bronson’s career, but the movie auto-plays without it when you start the disc.

Due to this presentation I don’t know how nice the movie could actually look, but there are some good filmatistical touches, like an amazing POV shot of a real horse-lassoing.

still_chino1
And I really like the music. There’s a great, appropriately bittersweet folk theme song that it turns out is called “Freedom Rainbow.”

And the rest is kinda mariachi-ish guitar, kinda happier sounding than many westerns. Good stuff by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, sometimes credited as “Oliver Onions” on other movies, which I can respect.

This was the fifth and final collaboration between Sturges and Bronson, and the only one where Bronson got top billing. It was a great time in his career, his project released right before MR. MAJESTYK (the movie, not the regular commenter here) and DEATH WISH (the movie, not the thing that reckless people have). For Sturges it was late in the game; he followed it up with McQ and THE EAGLE HAS LANDED before retiring.

It’s adapted from a novel called The Valdez Horses by Lee Hoffman. Screenwriter Clair Huffaker also wrote 100 RIFLES, THE COMANCHEROS and the novel that was the basis for FLAMING STAR, that western starring The King.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2014 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Reviews, Western. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

13 Responses to “Chino”

  1. Funny that I came to the site to mention that The Woman Chaser is due to hit NetFlix on Monday, but got sidetracked by a new review that just so happens to feature a Zoo reference. Small world.

  2. Thanks for the shoutout, Vern. I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t gotten around to watching this one yet, even though I’ve had it on my shelf for a few years. The number of Bronson movies I have yet to see is finite and I’m trying to stretch them out as long as I can. I’m doing the same thing with Elmore Leonard novels.

    If you want some weird Bronson from around the same period (pre-DEATH WISH when he was a cult favorite in Europe and among filmmakers who liked things from Europe), I recommend LOLA, Richard Donner’s second feature film. It’s about this middle-aged American writer of erotic fiction (Bronson, obviously) who accidentally falls in love with this 16-year-old English girl (Susan George, also obviously) so they decide, fuck it, let’s get married. Bronson shoots exactly zero people. Never seen anything like it. It’s strange, sweet, and entirely inappropriate. Majestyk says check it out.

  3. This is one of the Bronson films I could never get into, partly because it’s been floating around in shitty public domain versions for as long as I can remember. Not entirely fair since I liked HONOR AMONG THIEVES (ADIEU L’AMI) and COLD SWEAT just fine in spite of deficiencies in their presentation. I might give this another try if someone like the Japanese released a properly licensed DVD.

  4. Vern, if I understand you correctly you think that there should be different swinging scenes for humans and horses? I can support that.

    Mr Majestyk, LOLA (or TWINKY as it’s called) wouldn’t have been half as creepy if Richard Donner hadn’t filmed Susan George as if he was making a Japanese Commercial for a gentlemens club. And it looks like nobody told Bronson that it was supposed to be a comedy.

  5. Bronson always acted like he was in the same movie on repeat. But he was still the man. Woody Allen could have cast him in one of his whimsy musicals and he’d just stroll right through it like a walk through Central Park. Or a musical DEATH WISH sequel. That would not have been unwelcome.

  6. When they were making THE EAGLE HAS LANDED Sturges revealed to Michael Caine that he only made movies to get money for fishing trips. He never took any part in the cutting or promoting of the films. I don’t when that started, but the man made excellent movies right up to the end. And he’s one of the few who directed both Eastwood and Bronson.

  7. Mr Majestyk, I’m curious to know what unseen Bronson movies you have left on your shelf?

  8. In addition to CHINO, I still haven’t seen LOVE & BULLETS, COPOBLANCO, SOMEONE BEHIND THE DOOR, THE VALACHI PAPERS, COLD SWEAT, and RED SUN. Oh, and a Rat Pack western called 4 FOR TEXAS where he plays the heavy. (There are other Bronson movies I haven’t seen, mostly oddities, westerns, and TV movies, but I don’t own them.) The crappy condition of a lot of these transfers has definitely contributed to their low placement on the Bronson priority list. I’m looking forward to SOMEONE BEHIND THE DOOR the most because I’m also an Anthony Perkins fan.

  9. RED SUN is a good one. Bronson vs Mifune. The most wrinkled face in the west vs the most wrinkled face from the east. Been awhile since I saw COLD SWEAT so I can´t say how good it really is. I remember liking it when I saw it. LOVE AND BULLET is pretty good. It ends pretty great with Bronson boobytrapping the coffin of Rod Steigers wife. It became the Twix of funerals. Two for one.

  10. I would love to be in your situation. There are some really great movies on that list. COLD SWEAT, RED SUN and LOVE & BULLETS are, at least in my book, some of his best. And SOMEONE BEHIND THE DOOR is perhaps his best acting job ever. I don’t know if you’ve seen RIDER ON THE RAIN, but it’s a tie between those two, dare I say, Oscar wise. CABOBLANCO and THE VALACHI PAPERS both have their moments, but 4 FOR TEXAS is a must. It has Bronson doing mega acting!

  11. This is from an 8/27/1977 blurb about an upcoming interview with Charles Bronson

    “When actor Charles Bronson was a kid, his family never hung up a Christmas stockings. One year he heard about the custom from a school chum. On Christmas Eve he carefully put up a stocking. In the morning it was still empty. Maybe that’s why Bronson is such a tough guy.”

  12. Another famous story about his childhood is that they were so poor that he had to wear one of his sister’s dresses to school.

  13. Was actually listening to the commentary for this movie the other day. It’s by the guy that wrote the Bronsons’ Loose books. He knows his shit when it comes to Bronson. Apparently they were pressured to add a sex scene. The strange horse scene and Bronson and Jill is what they came up with. The weird scene with her catching him while taking a bath and doing whatever he was doing was also added later in re shoots later. The commentator estimates that about 75% of the film was directed by Sturgis. The rest was another guy. The script it seems was being revised almost daily while filming. This is far from being my favorite Bronson movie but I still enjoy it. Although the comment is from years ago I’m glad to be reminded of the movie Lola. What a strange movie indeed. Need to watch it again.

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