After a man, known in the script only as Prisionero Escapado (Rogelio Guerra) escapes his prison stake, he has to ride like hell. When he loses his horse as a distraction, he makes good a foot race escape, finds a town, trades his stolen pistol for a new horse, rides like hell, trades the exhausted horse for a new pistol in a completely different town and then goes about his business of seeking vengeance. However, his quarry has moved on. Still Escapado beats tar out of everyone associated with the missing man, getting into no less than four fistfights before another armed fellow, Esposo Abandonado (Pedro Armendáriz, Jr.), shows up to announce he’s looking for the same quarry. Why? To kill the son of a bitch.
The two join forces and follow their remaining lead, winding up in another fistfight (this time fighting tag team), which lands them in a bar where El Pistolero (Jorge Rivero) has paid for all the women in the place to be his for the night. After years in prison, Escapado wants a little action and winds up in a fistfight with El Pistolero, but never fear: After it’s over, they become fast friends, sharing drinks and even women. Of course, Escapado is so worn out from escaping, riding, and fighting, he falls asleep before he can do anything but ogle.
The three men set out together, and Esposo hires El Pistolero to find their quarry and kill him. As it turns out, the man who has wronged Esposo and Escapado has become a Sheriff (Quintín Bulnes) in a small town, secreting himself in an old hacienda transformed into a fortress. These three bad men must find a way in to kill him, and if they succeed at that there’s no guarantee of getting out alive … Friendship, betrayal, and bad men on twisted yet righteous roads populate René Cardona, Jr.’s Guns and Guts (1974).
You’ve got to appreciate the audacity and economy of a movie that features a prison break and no less than four fistfights in the first eight minutes of screen time. One flows into the next into the next with a peculiar film grammar that makes complete sense and yet feels utterly wild, free spirited. This is a western that is not interested in replicating the steady charms of classic fare like High Noon (1952). Instead, it’s looking to find the next new thing, feeding from Spaghetti Westerns and Peckinpah epics like The Wild Bunch (1969). This is a western for audiences hungry for violence, a bit of burlesque, and a few choice laughs. It’s also one uninterested in simple moral quandaries, tackling the topic of antagonists turned into protagonists. Bad men seeking a worse one in order to gun him down in a righteous fury. Guns and Guts, therefore, is another example of the revenge story set against the six guns and saddle sores period of the mythic west.
But Guns and Guts is not all moody meditations on violence and vengeance. It is a surprisingly funny flick, a picture where one of the characters has a voice over narration to talk about his preference for whores over “respectable women,” which starts a whole litany of “And that’s why I prefer my whores” conversations from a character who pooh poohs marriage yet hopes to earn enough cash to buy a brothel stocked with ladies of the evening who will service only one customer: Him. Guns and Guts is a picture with at least two different scenes of cowboys peeing, one of which includes an interruption that causes one of our protagonists to piss on his pal’s leggings and boots.
And this is also a picture where fistfights are prolonged and played at regular speed but a single gunshot victim can take upwards of thirty interminable seconds to groooooooan and diiiiiie thanks to high speed photography. It’s also a movie that builds to an impossible gunfight with a horde of baddies trying to kill our “heroes” while contesting ownership of a gatling gun. It’s a movie that owes Peckinpah a few cervezas for his infamous western, and it never once tries to hide its affection for The Wild Bunch. It explores and exploits that affection as often as possible.
The production is a low budget affair by American standards. Apparently, the filmmakers had access to two cameras and about three different lenses, but they still went to town and made themselves a memorable piece of exploitation cinema. Is it the best western ever? Of course not. Is it an energetic picture with some memorable moments, a few laugh out loud bits of dialogue, and some impressive homages/rip-offs of other flicks? You bet. My favorite exchange follows the fisticuffs introduction of El Pistolero, when the two battered opponents stumble to the bar after fighting over a girl, and El Pistolero pours them both drinks, saying, “You can share my booze, but don’t touch my women!” and his opponent says, “Okay!” This is iron age comic book material given the life of moving pictures, and so unexpected it’s funny.
Audiences who need named characters to invest their emotions will find themselves stymied. No one introduces himself, and not one single character mentions anyone else’s name. Readers with an inkling of Spanish who look at the names above will see they are simply roles: El Pistolero is a gunslinger for hire, Esposo Abandonado is an abandoned brother, Prisionero Escapado is simply an escaped prisoner … Yeah, this is a movie where people are named for what they do, not achieving any identity outside of that. It makes things kind of strange and conversations especially cagey when no one seems capable of mentioning a single character’s Christian or given identity.
Likewise, folks looking for a strong female presence will be sorely disappointed. There are numerous fallen women, a plethora of colorfully dressed and fetchingly nekkid prostitutes and a woman (Gladys Vivas) who left Esposo Abandonado in favor of the rotten Sheriff (named Esposa Infiel, aka “Unfaithful Wife”). There is no room in this story for any upstanding or even vaguely complicated female characters.
And yet, given the lack of character names, the cast does a fair job of inhabiting these roles. Often, they play things quietly, inviting the audience to fill in their own expectations and emotions. Yet Rogelio Guerra is still the aggressive jackass who fights dirty in order to win, Pedro Armendáriz, Jr. is the man of few words who wants revenge but has a hard time committing to pulling a trigger. Jorge Rivero is the charming whoremonger and gunfighter who plays long games that involve casual betrayals—no commitments, not even to friends. They do a fine job.
However, Quintín Bulnes really steals the show as the antagonist. He’s always got a revolver in his hands, cycling the cylinder as a nervous tic and turning it into an on screen masturbation metaphor. His character is an unsexed, evil man, who can give wicked smiles and stab his employees in the back without a care. He’s got a girl, but he never once touches her—one wonders if his character would know what to do with her if he actually dared make physical contact. He’s either the shallowest character of the bunch or the deepest. Bulnes plays his role as an enigma, and he makes the character a pleasure to watch even as we hiss and await his inevitable destruction.
Guns and Guts is an odd but intriguing western. Thank goodness it has a sense of humor to break up the long strings of violence and vague conversations. Otherwise, it would be a tad tedious. The film is a love letter to the sorts of poetic violence Sam Peckinpah explored in his biggest films, but it manages to have an individual identity as well.
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Guns and Guts is available in DVD and VOD editions. The Blu-ray release from Vinegar Syndrome is a double feature, which also includes the mean, Mexican-western-meets-gothic-horror flick, Hot Snake (1976).
Next week, we take a look at a film that has gotten very little love over the years. However, Vinegar Syndrome released it on Blu-ray, appealing to that audience hungry for cult fare. It is the animals gone amok movie, The Birds II: Land’s End (1994). It is available in VHS and Blu-ray editions.
Writing for “Bad Men on Twisted Yet Righteous Roads: Guns and Guts” is copyright © 2022 by Daniel R. Robichaud.
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