There have been actors and musicians that exuded cool…Steve McQueen would be one of the top ones…and he was just starting in this movie…and not the star.
This cast is just incredible… Along with McQueen, you have Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Eli Wallach, Robert Vaughn, Horst Buchholz, Brad Dexter, and the great Yul Brynner. We are not talking about cameos here…Brynner is the unquestioned leader of this band of mercenary gunfighters…but money is not the most important thing to most of them. They believe in Brynner’s character and the adventure.
I could go through talking about each actor, but I won’t…there are a few I’ll touch on. Eli Wallach… did a masterful portrayal of Calvera. He is one actor that I would have loved to have met. His personality was so big in films, but he didn’t over act…he was just that good.
The actor that caught my attention the most in this was the newcomer of the seven. Chico, played brilliantly by Horst Buchholz. His character was young, impatient, cocky, but a nice kid who you saw grow in the movie. He wanted to join the six fighters, but he wasn’t accepted until he persisted and wore Chris Larrabee Adams (Yul Brynner) down.
John Sturges directed this movie and also The Great Escape plus Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. This movie was not shot on some studio backlot somewhere. It was real locations and it showed.
A brief look at the plot. A gang of bandits terrorizes a small Mexican farming village each year. They ride in and take what they want like the village is their own personal store. Several of the village elders send three of the farmers into the United States to search for gunmen to defend them. They end up with seven, each of whom comes for a different reason. They must prepare the town to beat an army of thirty bandits who will arrive wanting food. In came the Magnificent Seven to defend the village and teach the farmers how to fight.
A little trivia about the movie. Yul Brynner had a major role in casting, and he wanted Steve McQueen in the movie. At the time McQueen was in a television western called Wanted: Dead or Alive.
They ended up not getting along because McQueen supposedly was trying to upstage Brynner. When McQueen was dying of cancer he called Brynner and made up with him for the trouble in the film. McQueen said: “I had to make it up with Yul ’cause without him I wouldn’t have been in that picture.”
It’s not only a great western, it has comedy, drama, and most of all…all the characters are real. There is a reason some of them were huge at the time and others went on to be not only popular but legends.
CAST
Yul Brynner … Chris Larabee Adams
Eli Wallach … Calvera
Steve McQueen … Vin Tanner
Horst Buchholz … Chico
Charles Bronson … Bernardo O’Reilly
Robert Vaughn … Lee
Brad Dexter … Harry Luck
James Coburn … Britt
Jorge Martínez de Hoyos … Hilario (as Jorge Martinez de Hoyas)
Vladimir Sokoloff … Old Man
Rosenda Monteros … Petra
Rico Alaniz … Sotero
Pepe Hern … Tomas
Natividad Vacío … Villager (as Natividad Vacio)
Mario Navarro … Boy with O’Reilly
slicethelife 
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I haven’t seen this version in years. I think the last time I saw it was when I was a kid in the late 70s. I need to watch it, again. I’ve seen the remake about three times in the last two years. It’s good, too. I see you added that trailer.
Oh, those actor egos…
It was a great…not a regular western…plus you have all of those actors what is really cool.
I like the ensemble casts.
I do also unless they just make cameos…I hate those usually…in this one they were all important.
Eh. I don’t mind cameos…if they are well placed and germane to the story line.
That is what I mean…if they are important then yea…
Great pick, Max. It’s been a while. Yet another movie my dad introduced to me. I didn’t know that about Yul and Steve. So sad, funny, and true that it takes a death bed to make amends. Looking forward to a revisit of this one because I didn’t like the remake that much, haha!
Man it’s really great…some of these actors were at their peak during this time.
Great Clash theme song too (joking). Sounds interesting and certainly a great cast. Eli Wallach stole the show in ‘The Holiday” with Jack Black and Kate Winslet , playing a very old movie writer or director who’d been essentially “put out to pasture”
I just saw that movie with Wallach last Christmas…yes I do remember him…this is a great movie Dave.
Very very difficult to pick a favorite actor out of the cast as I adore them all (the ones I know anyway.) Something struck me about the trailer: Yul Brynner in this looks exactly how he looks in Westworld, which is another really good Western. I saw a really good doc on Steve McQueen a few years ago where it talks about all the things he did to get noticed one way or another when he was just getting started in acting. He was hungry for stardom and willing to do whatever it took to get there.
They say this is a western-style remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film, Seven Samurai.
I’ve read/heard that, too…that it was based on Seven Samurai.
Westworld wasn’t really a Western, tho. It was a Michael Crichton Sci-Fi/Thriller about a Wild-West themed amusement park where all the androids went nuts…followed by Futureworld. Just sayin’…
Got it!
😀
I read that also about this movie. Coburn is really good in this movie also…very cool.
Common ground (of course) Max. The theme music is also great. I did one of my first takes on this film back before CB a his throng (six) of followers
“We deal in lead”