NOTES: Nick Adams joined Boris Karloff, John Carradine, and Jeffrey Hunter as Hollywood actors brought to Mexico by Luis Enrique Vergara in the late 1960s (well, Karloff didn't actually travel to Mexico for Vergara, shooting all of his scenes in the USA). Los asesinos was probably Adams' last film, since production began on 7 December 1967 and ran for about 5 weeks, and Adams died on 7 February 1968. According to Emilio García Riera, this picture was shot in both English and Spanish versions, which seems likely since the Mexican cast is top-heavy with performers who spoke English (Armendáriz Jr., Cárdenas, East, and imports Chabot and Anderson). Adams himself has limited dialogue in the Spanish-language version, but this was probably because his character was obviously modeled after Clint Eastwood's tactiturn "Man with No Name" (Adams even wears a poncho and smokes a cheroot).

Los asesinos is what I call an "Anglo-name" film: a Mexican movie set in the United States with U.S. characters (sometimes there is a token Mexican, but often all the characters are supposed to be Anglos). Many of these were Westerns, but there are also "Anglo-name" crime films, dramas, and so on. In some cases there are logical reasons for this: for example, Westerns are generally set in the USA (although there are certainly "Mexican" Westerns in which the characters have Mexican names), even "spaghetti Westerns" and those made elsewhere around the world. And in the case of Los asesinos, plans for an international release made the Anglo-names (and the signs on stores, etc., in Golden City) even more desireable. Whether this picture ever got an international release is questionable (it wasn't unknown for a Mexican Western to be shown elsewhere, as Alberto Mariscal's El sabor de la venganza proved, but it was pretty rare).

Víctor and his henchmen travel to Golden City to capture Silas Cuper, an outlaw with a price on his head. Silas works for the Nelson family, which has driven off most of the honest gold miners and now has a stranglehold on the town. Another stranger in town is Shannon, who steps in to defend Sara King, Cuper's girlfriend, when she is accosted by Víctor and his men in Tom Foster's saloon. Sara and Angela Nelson both try to seduce Shannon and thus win him over to their side of the dispute.

Víctor kidnaps Linda, Foster's daughter. Shannon exchanges himself for her. The bounty hunters strap some dynamite to the stranger but he is freed by Foster before the TNT explodes. The Nelsons and Víctor's gang face off; Shannon steps in and kills Víctor, saving Joseph Nelson. Sara convinces Silas to rob the Nelsons' administrator, Talbot. Another battle breaks out; the Nelsons and Sara are killed. Shannon leaves town with Silas as his prisoner. Ironically, Shannon was only in Golden City to avenge the death of his friend, the town sheriff who had earlier been murdered.

Since it has been many years since I last saw this movie, the preceding synopsis is mostly based on the one in García Riera's Historia documental del cine mexicano. And I have to admit that I don't really remember anything specifically about Amedee Chabot's participation in this film! If I get the chance to see Los asesinos again, I'll certainly update this review.

Back to the Amedee Chabot Filmography.

Review posted 16 April 2000 by David Wilt (dw45@umail.umd.edu).