“Chato's Land” Movie Review

 

“Chato's Land”

 

Movie Review

 

The 1972 Western Technicolor movie "Chato's Land," starring Charles Bronson and Jack Palance, was directed by Michael Winner from a script by Gerry Wilson. The half-Apache Chato kills the local sheriff in Apache land out of self-defense and ends up on the run from a posse of ex-Confederates who rape his wife and use her as bait to catch him. Having set her free, Chato then employs his superior fieldcraft abilities to seduce each of the possessed into perishing. The movie can be categorized in the then-popular revisionist western genre since it dramatizes prejudice and makes veiled references to the Vietnam War.

The movie's plot is as follows: The sheriff humiliates the half-Apache Chato in a bar. In self-defense, he kills the sheriff with a gun before leaving town on his Paso Fino. Quincey Whitmore, a former Confederate captain, dons his uniform and collects a group of former Confederate troops and supporters. Always one step ahead, Chato shoots at the posse from a hilltop, forcing them to climb a challenging slope while he descends the opposite side and scatters their horses. He kills a rattlesnake and uses its skin to encase the rattle. The group begins to split due to tensions. They find some empty wickiups and enthusiastically set them on fire.

At their hogan, Chato welcomes his wife and offers his son the rattlesnake toy he made earlier. During the day, Chato resumes his practice of killing horses. As the posse finds his house, Elias, Earl, Hall, and Lansing savagely gang rape Chato's wife and uses her as bait to lure him into a trap by hogtying her outside the hogan. Along with his full Apache kin, Chato plans to rescue his wife by creating a distraction. The group hangs Chato's relative upside down and burns him alive after he is wounded. Whitmore shoots the burning man in the head out of disgust.

Chato dons native moccasins and a loincloth instead of wearing a European outfit. He starts by luring Earl Hooker, who is obsessed with Chato's wife, into a trap before moving on to the other posse members. The posse becomes more disorganized and starts to turn against one another after discovering Earl's dead body set out in the desert. Elias kills one of the posse members who turns around and chases the other, but Chato kills both of them. When Whitmore objects, Jubal kills him. Malechie and Logan, the remaining two members of the posse, then beat Jubal to death with rocks. While impassively watching from his horse, Chato murders Malechie and permits Logan to retreat deeper into Apache territory alone and without supplies.

 

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