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Having escaped a bunch of outlaws, Captain Kingsley dies in Winnetou's (Pierre Brice) arms - but not before entrusting the Indian chieftains with the location of his (now abandoned) fort's gold. Back East, it's believed that Kingsley has taken off with the gold, but at an inquiry his daughter Mabel (Karin Dor) asks the court for 60 days to retrieve the gold and prove her father's innocence - which is granted, especially since Old Shatterhand (Lex Barker) vouches for her. And soon, she and Shatterhand and a trio of soldierscoming along as witnesses, head out west, soon followed by Murdock (Rik Battaglia) and his band of cutthroats, who of course want the army gold more than anything else. Soon, they are joined by Winnetou, and series regulars Sam Hawkens (Ralf Wolter) and Lord Castlepool (Eddi Arent), and have to endure many a threat, from wild bees to a valley of snakes to Sioux captivity - which is of course resolved when Winnetou beats the Sioux chieftain Red Buffalo (Vojo Govedariza) in a battle to the death at the end of which he of course spaer Red Buffalo's life. Eventually our heroes make it to the Valley of Death, where the treasure is buried, but Murdock's men finally catch up with them and take Mabel hostage to force the others to retrieve the gold. But then the Sioux attack Winnetou and company, but as the Valley of Death is filled with natural gas, their attack leads to multiple explosions, seen by the Sioux as a sign from Manitou, so they ultimately switch sides to fight the baddies along with Winnetou and company - and of course our heroes come out of this victorious.

Back in 1964, when rival studio Rialto was riding high on the wave of the success of the Winnetou series, CCC-Filmkunst eagerly jumped the bandwagon by hiring the leads of that series to make their own Old Shatterhand - to which Rialto promptly reacted by adding an exclusivity clause to the contracts of Pierre Brice and Lex Barker (and possibly Ralf Wolter). However, the Winnetou series had pretty much run its course for Rialto with 1966's Winnetou und das Halbblut Appanatschi/Half Breed, and thus the exclusivity clause was voided - and thus CCC-Filmkunst attempted to make a Winnetou movie even closer to the well-established formula by their competitor than Old Shatterhand and hired not only Brice, Barker and Wolter, but also repeat guest stars Eddi Arent, Karin Dor and Rik Battaglia in front of the camera and director Harald Reinl, cinematographer Ernst W. Kalinke and composer Martin Böttcher behind it, and made sure to film in the exact same Croatian locations as the Rialto-films (with an anachronistic scene with stand-ins filmed in the Grand Canyon though), plus the resulting film, Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der Toten, would "borrow" from many earlier films, especially the very first, Der Schatz im Silbersee/Treasure of Silver Lake. And in its best moments, Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der Toten really manages to evoke the classic Winnetou spirit, especially on a visual level - it's just in all not a very good movie. The reason for this of course are manifold, but the two most obvious are:

• In the 6 years since Der Schatz im Silbersee, much water has run down the western river, most notably the emergence of the spaghetti western (a direct consequence of the European success of the Winnetou series, actually), that shifted the tone of the genre as a whole and thus makes Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der Toten feel pretty outdated in its innocent adventure attitude, and
• the script really wasn't any good. Now by 1968, writer Herbert Reinecker was already a veteran when it came to screenplays, having started out in Nazi Germany, but still a year or so away from carving his niche in German crime TV. Problem is, he might have been many things but certainly not western-savvy, his plot about some randomly hidden gold hasn't got the proto-mythological quality that usually graced the better films of the Winnetou series, and his script is often far-fetched and contains many leaps of reason, paired with heavy-handed dialogue - and it's true, the last point often plagues his crime shows as well.

In all, I wouldn't go so far as to say Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der Toten is the worst thing of the series, above-mentioned Winnetou und das Halbblut Appanatschi and Winnetou und sein Freund Old Firehand sure got a lead on this one in that race, but in comparison to Harald Reinl's other Winnetou movies, it's certainly a disappointment, and it's no wonder that CCC-Filmkunst did not pick up the series after this one.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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