Gunfighters of Casa Grande

Plot

Joe Daylight is on the run along with members of his outlaw gang, The Kid, Doc and Henri. After fleeing from a bank robbery, they manage to elude the posse chasing them after crossing into Mexico. The gang had agreed to meet up later to divide up the money, however Daylight instead tells them that he has used the money to buy a hacienda, the Casa Grande. Although several of them protest, the gang agrees to follow Daylight to the ranch. He also enlists a mystical Mexican gunfighter called ”Viajero” (Traveller) – who knows the neighbourhood and comes from a haciendero family (though few know this) – to help him fit into the role of a Mexican hacienda owner, a hidalgo.

In effect, Daylight has won the hacienda in a poker game and his plan is to keep the gang together and use the ranch as a cover to rustle cattle from his neighbors and sell them at inflated prices across the border. However, his comrades soon adapt to life on the ranch. The Traveller and The Kid meet two women named Dona Maria de Castellar and Pacesita, with whom they eventually fall in love.

Daylight's plans are temporarily threatened by another bandit gang led by Rojo, who begins stealing cattle from numerous ranches in the area including his own. Organizing the local ranchers against the bandits, they succeed in destroying Rojo and his men. This has an unintended consequence however as Daylight's men have decided to remain at Casa Grande. He and his men begin to argue and, during the course of events, shoots and kills Doc causing The Traveller to kill Daylight in turn. With their former leader dead, the men stay on the ranch and The Traveller and Maria begin a new life on the Casa Grande.

Cast

Reception

Gunfight at Casa Grande was released in Spain during early 1964 and premiered in the United States on April 1, 1964; it was later released in Europe between May 1964 and September 1965. Moderately successful, the film earned 19,939,562 ₧ (US: $189,608) during its initial run in Spain. As of September 1, 1965, the film was still running in American theaters and appeared in the New York-area as a double feature along with She.

The film was aired on television in the United States during the late 1960s until the mid-1970s and again during the early-to-mid-1990s. The film was released on DVD during the early 2000s, although this was on a limited scale and consequently remains one of the more obscure and hard-to-find westerns.

In his investigation of narrative structures in Spaghetti Western films, Fridlund writes that Gunfighters of Casa Grande basically conforms to the "Classical Plot" in Will Wright's analysis of US Westerns, and Traveller is a "Classical" hero who comes from the outside, saves society (first from Rojo and then from Daylight) and then stays inside. However, the cunning manipulator and unpredictable psychopath Daylight shows a close affinity to many main characters in the wave of Spaghetti Western films about to emerge on the screens.