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A sequel to Apachen from the previous year, however this movie can be
understood without having seen the other movie first.
Ulzana (Gojko Mitic) chieftain of the Mimbreno Apaches, proudly shows his
progress in agriculture & irrogation to General Crook (Amza Pelea), the
military commander-in-chief of Arizona & a friend of the Apaches. But while
Crook is quite impressed by the Indians' efforts, the businessmen of the Tucson
Ring - who make big bucks from delivering gouvernment sponsored relief packages
to starving Indians - & their ally within the army, Captain Burton (Rolf
Hoppe) are less than pleased to see the Indians now being able to sustain
themselves, even harvesting in some surplus to sell to the army.
So, their first plan is to blow up the irrogation system, but since this
system is fully replaceable, Burton & the Tucson Ring device a plan on a
much larger scale: First, they lure the general away to Washington, &
meanwhile have some congressmen favourable to their cause order a resettlement
of the Apaches to San Carlos, a dry & barren land. That Ulzana is shot
while the resettlement takes place proves to be an advantage as well, since the
leaderless Apaches are easy to control.
But Ulzana survived the attack on him & soon, with a group of his
warriors, breaks out of the reservation to start guerrila warfare.
Leona (Renate Blume), Ulzana's Mexican wife, meanwhile seeks help from
Captain Burton, ignorant to the fact that he is in cahhots with the Tucson
Ring, & since Burton has a soft spot for her, he decides to take her to
Tucson as hostage and/or mistress. Leona gets some unexpected help though from
a crooked coachdriver, who wants to use her as safeguard when riding through
Indian country, but he hasn't taken in to account how determined the Apaches
would be to save her, & instead of having a safe passage, he would
eventually end up going over a cliff with his coach while Leona is reunited
with Ulzana - but not for long ...
While Ulzana leads his whole tribe out of their San Carlos-reservation &
into a maze of Canyons in the Sierra Madre, Burton recaptures Leona, to keep
her in the fort as hostage/mistress, & when she refuses his approaches
again, he invites some soldiers to gangrape her, but she is saved by a
messenger who informs Crook of the Mimbrenos breaking out of San Carlos, which
leads the general to immediately send his troops after them, leaving only
Burton, Leona & a few guards at the fort.
In the maze of canyons though, the American army proves to be no match for
the cunning warfare of the Apaches, & while they seem to do nothing more
than hunting phantoms & shadows, Ulzana & a small group of warriors
attack & burn down the fort. Burton tries to get away using Leona as a
shield, but eventually shoots her.
Ulzana takes violent revenge on him ...
From the late 60's on, East Germany started to produce its own
Western-movies, but, to differentiate them from the Western Western mvoies
called them Indianerfilme instead (which would translate 'movies about
[American] Indians'), & they would invariably tell the tale of the White
Americans exploitation (& extinction) of the native Americans.
However, one must not make the mistake to overemphasize on that basic
message & see it as an anticapitalist statement. The West German Winnetou-movies
which the DEFA-Indianderfilme are modelled after, have pretty
much the same plot of the noble Indian versus the evil White Man. To emphasize
on that, Gojko Mitic, who played the lead in most of the DEFA-Indianderfilme
even started his career as a supporting actor in the West German Winnetou-movies,
& he would consequently be dubbed Winnetou of the East (as in East
Germany, that is). His career would eventually come full circle in the
1990's when he would play the original Winnetou-character in a
series of Open Air stageshows in Bad Segeberg, inheriting the role from Pierre Brice himself - the Winnetou
of the West, who played the character in all the 1960's Winnetou-movies.
(During his long run at Bad Segeberg, Gojko Mitic was eventually also
directed by Pierre Brice, who apparently couldn't really let go of the role.)
As a movie itself, Ulzana, despite clearly taking the side of the
oppressed Native Americans, resembles pretty much the American B-Westerns of
the 1930's & 40's, relying mainly on (competently staged) action with plenty
of explosions & shoot-outs, great outdoor scenery (with Yugoslavia
impressively doubling for Arizona), & the cinematography making good use of
it. The only real point of critique is that some of the actors - above all Rolf
Hoppe as the lead villain & Renate Blume as leading lady - are clearly too
(East) German in both looks & dialect to really work as Americans/Mexicans.
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