Take a Hard Ride | |
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Directed by | Anthony Dawson |
Written by | Eric Bercovici Jerrold L. Ludwig |
Produced by | Harry Bernsen |
Starring | Jim Brown Lee Van Cleef Fred Williamson |
Cinematography | Riccardo Pallottini |
Edited by | Stanford C. Allen |
Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
Production company | Bernsen-Ludwig-Bercovici Production |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
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Running time | 103 min |
Countries | Italy United States |
Language | English |
Take a Hard Ride is a 1975 Italian-American Spaghetti Western film directed by Anthony Dawson and starring Jim Brown, Lee Van Cleef, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly. This was the second of three films Brown, Williamson, and Kelly would star in, following Three the Hard Way and preceding One Down, Two to Go .
Pike, a stone-faced cowboy, meets up with Tyree, a dishonest gambler. The duo attempts to transport $86,000 across hundreds of miles of Western wasteland to deliver it to the widow of Pike's former employer. [1]
Co-financed by Italian and American producers, filming took place on location in the Canary Islands.
On June 21, 2011, the film was released on DVD through Shout! Factory as part of a double feature with Rio Conchos (1964). [2]
Pike (Jim Brown), the right-hand man of cattle rancher Bob Morgan (Dana Andrews), is entrusted with a mission to deliver $86,000 across the border to the Morgan Ranch in Sonora, Mexico after his boss dies. Pike teams up with dishonest gambler Tyree (Fred Williamson) and they are forced to trust each other while being pursued by various outlaws and gunmen trying to possess the money, including the ruthless bounty hunter Kiefer (Lee Van Cleef) and corrupt sheriff Kane (Barry Sullivan).
Along the way, the duo comes across a prostitute (Catherine Spaak) in need of rescuing and Kashtok (Jim Kelly), a mute Indian scout skilled in martial arts, as well as Chico, an orphaned Mexican boy. After numerous gun battles and chases, Pike and Tyree reach the end of the line at an abandoned mine, where they duke it out over the money, yet finally settle and work together after getting word of the approaching gunmen.
They give the money to the boy, then tell Kashtok to give safe passage to Chico and get the money safely to the ranch. Pike and Tyree devise a plan to escape by using explosives to blow up the mine shaft behind them, killing all their pursuers except for Kiefer, who decides to forgo his bounty and let the men continue their quest to reach the ranch.
Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef Jr. was an American actor. He appeared in over 170 film and television roles in a career spanning nearly 40 years, but is best known as a star of Italian Spaghetti Westerns, particularly the Sergio Leone-directed Dollars Trilogy films For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). In 1983, he received a Golden Boot Award for his contribution to the Western film and television genre.
High Noon is a 1952 American Western film produced by Stanley Kramer from a screenplay by Carl Foreman, directed by Fred Zinnemann, and starring Gary Cooper. The plot, which occurs in real time, centers on a town marshal whose sense of duty is tested when he must decide to either face a gang of killers alone, or leave town with his new wife.
For a Few Dollars More is a 1965 Spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone. It stars Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef as bounty hunters and Gian Maria Volonté as the primary villain. German actor Klaus Kinski plays a supporting role as a secondary villain. The film was an international co-production between Italy, West Germany, and Spain. The film was released in the United States in 1967, and is the second instalment of what is commonly known as the Dollars Trilogy.
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The Tin Star is a 1957 American Western film based on a short story, directed in VistaVision by Anthony Mann and starring Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins, in one of Perkins' first roles. The film became one of the few low-budget westerns to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Writing, Story or Screenplay. Since its release, the film has become one of the classics of the genre. The supporting cast features Betsy Palmer, Neville Brand, John McIntire and Lee Van Cleef.
Three the Hard Way is a 1974 action film directed by Gordon Parks Jr., written by Eric Bercovici and Jerrold L. Ludwig, and starring Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, and Jim Kelly.
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Catherine Spaak was a French-Italian actress, singer, model, and media personality. A member of the Spaak family, she was known as an iconic "It girl" in Italy during the 1960s, becoming a star of commedia all'italiana films, before later becoming prominent as a talk show host and media personality.
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Lawman is an American Western television series originally telecast on ABC from 1958 to 1962, starring John Russell as Marshal Dan Troop and Peter Brown as Deputy Marshal Johnny McKay. The series was set in Laramie, Wyoming, during 1879 and the 1880s. Warner Bros. already had several Western series on the air at the time.
Rio Conchos is a 1964 American Cinemascope Western film directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Richard Boone, Stuart Whitman, Anthony Franciosa, Edmond O'Brien, and in his motion picture debut, Jim Brown, based on Clair Huffaker's novel "Guns of Rio Conchos" published in 1958.
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Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s, when the combined momentum of the civil rights movement, the Black power movement, and the Black Panthers spurred black artists to reclaim power over their image, and institutions like UCLA to provide financial assistance for students of color to study filmmaking. This combined with Hollywood adopting a less restrictive rating system in 1968. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood NAACP branch. He claimed the genre was "proliferating offenses" to the black community in its perpetuation of stereotypes often involved in crime. After the race films of the 1940s and 1960s, the genre emerged as one of the first in which black characters and communities were protagonists, rather than sidekicks, supportive characters, or victims of brutality. The genre's inception coincides with the rethinking of race relations in the 1970s.
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One Down, Two to Go is a 1982 American blaxploitation action drama film written and directed by Fred Williamson and starring Williamson, Jim Brown, Richard Roundtree and Jim Kelly. This is the third film to star Williamson, Brown, and Kelly, following Three the Hard Way and Take a Hard Ride. Williamson, Brown, and Roundtree would reunite nearly fifteen years later in Original Gangstas.
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