''The Deserter'' (), also known as ''The S.O.B.s'' and ''The Devil's Backbone'' is a 1970

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

- Yugoslav American

international co-production A co-production is a joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint vent ...

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

film produced by

Dino De Laurentiis Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis (; 8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010) was an Italian film producer and businessman who held both Italian and American citizenship. Following a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he moved into f ...

. It was directed by

Burt Kennedy Burton Raphael Kennedy (September 3, 1922 – February 15, 2001) was an American screenwriter and film director, director known mainly for directing Westerns. Budd Boetticher called him "the best Western writer ever." Biography Kennedy was b ...

and written by

Clair Huffaker Clair Huffaker (September 26, 1926 – April 3, 1990) was an American screenwriter and author of westerns and other fiction, many of which were turned into films. Biography Born in Magna, Utah, Huffaker wrote of his childhood in ''One Time ...

. Scripted during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

in the style of ''

The Dirty Dozen ''The Dirty Dozen'' is a 1967 war film directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Lee Marvin, with an ensemble supporting cast including Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, George Kennedy, Ralph Meeker, ...

'' (1967) with a party of professional or misfit soldiers going into an enemy sanctuary, it was designed as a vehicle for

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

n theater and film matinee idol

Bekim Fehmiu Bekim Fehmiu (; ; 1 June 1936 – 15 June 2010) was a Yugoslavian theater and film actor. He was the first Eastern European actor to star in Hollywood during the Cold War, and one of the internationally best-known ethnic Albanian actors. ...

. The film featured an

ensemble cast In a dramatic production, an ensemble cast is one that comprises many principal actors and performers who are typically assigned roughly equal amounts of screen time.Random House: ensemble acting Linked 2013-07-17 Structure In contrast to the po ...

of well-known American actors. Noted as the boy in ''

Shane Shane may refer to: People * Shane (name), a masculine given name and a surname, including a list of people and fictional characters with this name * Shane (actress) (born 1969), American pornographic actress * Shane (New Zealand singer) (born ...

'' (1953), actor

Brandon deWilde Andre Brandon deWilde (April 9, 1942 – July 6, 1972) was an American theatre, film, and television actor. Born into a theatrical family in Brooklyn, he debuted on Broadway theater, Broadway at the age of seven and became a national phenomenon b ...

appears in his last

film before his death in 1972.RememberingBrandon.net
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Plot

A United States Army cavalry unit returns from a two-week patrol to find the inhabitants of a

Christian mission A Christian mission is an organized effort to carry on evangelism, in the name of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries. Sometimes individuals are sent and a ...

near its home fort have been killed by

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

Indians. The savagely tortured wife of the patrol's leader, Captain Victor Kaleb, is still alive after being skinned alive. Kaleb has to kill her to end her pain. Kaleb believes part of the fault lies with the passive

fort A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from La ...

commander, Major Wade Brown, and loudly criticizes him in front of his command. Brown responds by asking whether it was the Apaches or him who shot his wife. Kaleb responds by shooting Major Brown in the leg and arm, then deserts. He wages a private one-man war of revenge against the Apache. Two years later, General Miles arrives at the fort with criticism of now Colonel Brown's military command and an offer of pardon for Kaleb. Scouts Natchai and Tattinger, old friends of Kaleb, are sent out to entice him (and his pet wolf-dog) back to the fort. With a bit of trickery they succeed. General Miles tells Kaleb that Apaches led by Chief Mangus Durango have gathered in Mexico, intending to cross the border and attack at any time. As the Army is prohibited from entering Mexico, the general, over Brown's objections, promises Kaleb amnesty in exchange for leading a select band of soldiers in plain clothes across the border to wipe out the Apache stronghold known as ''La Spina Dorsale Del Diavolo'' (the Devil's Backbone). In a reversal of ''The Dirty Dozen'', Kaleb has his pick of the soldiers at the fort for his mission. Those willing to go include dynamite expert and Army chaplain Reynolds, knife-fighting expert and military prisoner Corporal Jackson,

Gatling gun The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling of North Carolina. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon. The Gatling gun's operatio ...

expert Captain Robinson, grizzled Quartermaster Sergeant Schmidt and young Lieutenant Ferguson. A blustery Englishman, Crawford, sent by the British Army to study frontier tactics is selected by Kaleb's wolf dog. Kaleb also selects the post's surgeon Dr. Robinson. Most of the men hate Kaleb, especially Trooper O'Toole. Kaleb trains them in the desert for the mission. It is severe, and results in a death of one man. The band also encounters Apaches, whom they kill. On their return to the fort, Major Brown reveals that, despite the general's amnesty offer, he intends to arrest Kaleb for having shot him. In response the general orders Brown to accompany Kaleb on the mission. Natchai and Tattinger go along as well. They infiltrate the Apache stronghold by bringing their mounts and equipment up hazardous cliffs. After a successful smaller attack on part of the Apaches, due to one man's sense of morality the rest of the Apaches are alerted, leading to a fierce battle. Kaleb's elite force wins, in large part due to the advantages proffered by dynamite and machine gun fire. The survivors return to the fort, where an embarrassed General Miles explains that he has been ordered to arrest Kaleb. Colonel Brown suggests the resolution: they will all say Kaleb was killed in action. Kaleb rides away.

Cast

Production

who had starred as

Ulysses Ulysses is the Latin name for Odysseus, a legendary Greek hero recognized for his intelligence and cunning. He is famous for his long, adventurous journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, as narrated in Homer's Odyssey. Ulysses may also refer ...

' 1968

television miniseries In the United States, a miniseries or mini-series is a television show or series that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes. Many miniseries can also be referred to, and shown, as a television film. " Limited series" is ...

'' L'Odissea'' had recently starred in Paramount's '' The Adventurers'' (1970). The film was shot largely on location in

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

and

. Many exterior scenes were filmed at the Fort Bowie set built in the

Province of Almería Almería (, also ; ) is a province of the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. It was named after the Arab ruler of Taifa, Banu Al-Miri. It is bordered by the provinces of Granada, Murcia, and the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital is the homony ...

, where the desert landscape and climate that characterizes part of the province have made it a much utilized setting for Western films, among those ''

A Fistful of Dollars ''A Fistful of Dollars'' (, (''For a Fistful of Dollars'')) is a 1964 spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood in his first leading role, alongside Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Si ...

'' (1964), ''

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'' (, literally "''The good, the ugly, the bad''") is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood as "the Good", Lee Van Cleef as "the Bad", and Eli Wallach a ...

'' (1966) and later ''

800 Bullets ''800 Bullets'' () is a 2002 Spanish film directed and produced by Álex de la Iglesia, who jointly penned it alongside Jorge Guerricaechevarría. The cast features Sancho Gracia, Ángel de Andrés, Carmen Maura, Eusebio Poncela, Terele Pávez and ...

'' (2002). This same set was also used in the films '' Blindman'' (1971) with

Ringo Starr Sir Richard Starkey (born 7 July 1940), known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, songwriter and actor who achieved international fame as the drummer for the Beatles. Starr occasionally sang lead vocals with the group, us ...

and '' A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die'' (1972).

Reception

In his investigation of narrative structures in

Spaghetti Western The spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's filmmaking style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...

films, Fridlund writes that ''The Deserter'' mainly follows the "Professional Plot", as described by Will Wright in his analysis of American Westerns, that is the cooperation of a group of professionals fulfilling a mission.Fridlund, Bert: ''The Spaghetti Western. A Thematic Analysis''. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company Inc., 2006 pp. 209–210.

Home media

Video

''The Deserter'' was originally released on

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

in the United States by

Paramount Home Entertainment Paramount Home Entertainment (formerly Paramount Home Media Distribution, originally Paramount Home Video, and operating as the namesake film studio since 2022) is the home video distribution arm of Paramount Pictures. The division oversees Para ...

, on September 9, 1992. Paramount has not released the film as a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

in North American Region 1. It was available at one time in DVD

Region 0 DVD region codes are a digital rights management technique introduced in 1997. It is designed to allow rights holders to control the international distribution of a DVD release, including its content, release date, and price, all according to t ...

by East West Entertainment LLC in standard non-

widescreen Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratio (image), aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ...

VHS conversion and Region 4 by Reel Corporation, Australia.

Soundtrack

The score for ''The Deserter'' had music composed and conducted by

Piero Piccioni Piero Piccioni (; December 6, 1921 – July 23, 2004) was an Italian film score composer. A pianist, organist, conductor, and composer, he was also the prolific author of more than 300 film soundtracks. He played for the first time on radio in ...

. Originally a practicing lawyer securing movie rights for Italian film distributors, he was eventually credited with scoring over 300 films. Piccioni was influenced in his use of jazz by 20th century classical composers and American cinematography and this is apparent in ''The Deserter'' soundtrack. Piccioni's score was released on CD in Italy in 1997 on the Legend label, as CD 28, 14-tracks under the title ''Piero Piccioni: La Spina Dorsale Del Diavolo''. Recent discovery of the stereo master tapes of the original session, with an extra 25 minutes of music, is featured on the limited 1500 unit special edition Legend CD 32 DLX, released July, 2010, as a 26-track 74:34 CD.

References

External links

* * *
Fort Bowie/Spanish on-location set
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deserter, The 1970 films 1970 drama films 1970 Western (genre) films 1970s American films 1970s Italian films 1970s English-language films American Western (genre) films Italian drama films Yugoslav drama films Western (genre) cavalry films Apache Wars films English-language Italian films English-language Yugoslav films English-language Western (genre) films Films about deserters Films directed by Burt Kennedy Films produced by Dino De Laurentiis Films shot in Almería Films scored by Piero Piccioni Films shot in Italy Films shot in Yugoslavia Paramount Pictures films