The Savage Guns

The Savage Guns (1961)

Tierra brutal

The men who carry the savage guns!! The women who carry the savage hungers!

This Western is set in the Mexican valley of Sonora not that far south of the state of Arizona. It's just after the American Civil War, and a former Confederate officer, Mike Summers has taken refuge in a small town in the valley. He has married and is hoping to live in peace the rest of his life. Instead, he and his wife and the rest of the town are suffering the depredations of a brutal gunman, Danny Pose, and his gang of outlaws. Summers holds off picking up a gun because of his personal vow of non-violence. But the situation deteriorates and a new ally comes into the picture, Steve Fallon, a wandering gunslinger who may not be able to handle the bad guys alone.

Date of release
1961-11-01
TMDB
5.0 / 10 (4)
Runtime
1h 23m
Genres
Western, Drama, Romance
Director
Michael Carreras

Casting

Interesting facts

The Savage Guns is a 1961 Eurowestern film, an international co-production by British and Spanish producers. Based on a specially commissioned screenplay, The San Siado Killings, written by Peter R. Newman and directed by Michael Carreras, the film is credited as the first traditional Spaghetti Western.

Production

Having formed an independent film company, Capricorn Productions, with writer and director Jimmy Sangster, this was Carreras first film since breaking away from Hammer Studios. By 1960, Hollywood studios had drastically cut down on producing western films and problems with distribution left European countries in short supply.

Carreras had soon developed a unique idea for producing a European western using the desert location of Almeria, Spain as an alternative to the southwestern United States. Successfully organizing a collaboration between Capricorn and the Madrid-based production companies Tecisa and CEA Studios, he also gained financial backing from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which recognized the vastly reduced cost of filming in the area.

Like Carreras, the actors selected for the leading roles were all Hammer Studio regulars. His partner Jimmy Sangster was largely responsible for signing American actors Richard Basehart, Don Taylor and Alex Nicol. Of the three, only Nicol would appear in a second Spaghetti Western, the 1964 film Gunfighters of Casa Grande.

Their Spanish counterparts, veteran actors José Nieto, Fernando Rey and Paquita Rico, were also given prominent supporting roles in the film; this was also the film debut of Maria Granada. She would star in two other Spaghetti Westerns, Gunfighters of Casa Grande (1964) with Alex Nicol and Son of a Gunfighter (1965) with Fernando Rey, being cast as father and daughter in the latter film.

Rey would also go on to star in a number of other Spaghetti Westerns, most notably Navajo Joe (1966) and Compañeros (1970), while Nieto appeared in Outlaw of Red River (1965) and The Hellbenders (1967).

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