The Treasure of Pancho Villa

The Treasure of Pancho Villa is directed by George Sherman and adapted to screenplay by Niven Busch from a story written by J. Robert Bren and Gladys Atwater. It stars Rory Calhoun, Gilbert Roland and Shelley Winters. Music is by Leith Stevens and cinematography by William Snyder.

It's 1915, Mexico, and two adventurers are in the throes of revolutionary greed, loyalties and plain stubbornness...

It's all rather dull, really, a film not without a good action quotient, yet it drags itself through the slumber with weak characterisations. Winters is shoehorned into the pic as a sort of love interest, but ultimately her character achieves nothing more than under developed dressage, while Calhoun and Roland are saddled with some dire passages of chatter that come off as weak willed time filler. There's some sturdy machismo on show, especially when Calhoun lets fly with his Lewis Machine Gun, the location photography at Morelos (Technicolor/SuperScope) engages the eyes, and the last hurrah battle excites, but this is one that quickly fades from memory, sadly. By this point even the buzzards have had enough... 5/10

Disappointing film.

This film fails to deliver across every aspect, the characters are unappealing, the visuals are flat and lifeless (at least the version I saw), the acting is completely dialled in (excluding Winters, who still seems a little disinterested) and the audio is blah.

The worst part is the actual story....deliver gold....that's pretty much it.

Save your time, after writing this I'm not sure why I gave it a 4?

So here it is a film set around the time of the revolution of Pancho Villa yet features a Coca-cola advertising board!! Once you get past that this is not a bad movie at all. A movie of a simple premise where a train is robbed of its haul of gold by a band of guerrillas to support the revolutionary Pancho Villa and the trials and trails of greed an honour that the money breeds between men. At the centre of the story are two men. The American mercenary Tom Bryan who is essentially torn between his greed and doing the right thing, and his counter part Mexican revolutionary Juan Castro who has no deigns on the gold and will give everything for Villa's revolution. The story goes through many twists and turns with the standard female love interest (Shelly Winters) capturing the affections of both men. It is refreshing to see a film from this era not afraid to show Americans in a less than glorious light and a lead character with a great deal of moral ambiguousness whilst it is the Mexican who has the hero traits. Whilst not particularly well acted there are no poor performances and if you are a fan of the western then this film is worth checking out. Would I watch it again? Perhaps but only if I was bored and had nothing else to amuse me.

It's 1915 Mexico. Tom Bryan (Rory Calhoun) is a mercenary with plenty of gold but encircled by soldiers. He recounts his story. After doing a bank robbery, he takes a job with revolutionary leader Colonel Juan Castro (Gilbert Roland) despite getting tired of the work. Castro plans to blow up a bridge to rob a government gold train. They find local supporters like Ruth Harris (Shelley Winters) who are willing to fight for Pancho Villa.

This is an American western shot in Mexico. The production seems big. The vista is grand. There is one or two good leads. In the end, it is no more than a B-movie. The directing is inferior. It doesn't have style and neither is it that realistic. The imagination is not really there. It's a second tier western.

Great film for Gilbert Roland fans. He goes the full nine yards in sartorial fetishism. The thigh-high multi- buckled leather boots, the narrow wrist thongs to emphasise his thewed hirsute forearms, the double flap-pocketed and epauletted safari shirt diagonally crossed with a bullet-laden bandoleer, the mandatory trouser belt above the matching holster belt (if the revolution succeeds, gringo, everyone in "May-he-co" will be able to dress like theece). This ensemble is topped off with the classical Gilbertian contest between his moustache and his cheroot as to which was thinner. In this period he starred in any film in which he appeared notwithstanding his actual billing which was dictated by him being Mexican rather than WASP(apart of course from his waist).