Zapata Western - American Zapata Westerns

American Zapata Westerns

The term is also occasionally applied to the American Westerns with the same setting which were produced in rising number in the late 1950s and 1960s. These included Jack Conway and Howard Hawks's Viva Villa! (1934), with Wallace Beery, Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! (1952), with Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn, Robert Aldrich's Vera Cruz (1954), with Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster, The Treasure of Pancho Villa (1955), Robert Mitchum in Bandido (1956) and The Wonderful Country (1959), The Professionals (1966), with Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode. Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) and Mitchum again in Villa Rides (1968) though these films rarely dealt with significant political themes, as did their later Italian counterparts.

By contrast to political ideas, the films featured American soldiers of fortune going South to Mexico hiring themselves out to factions in Mexican Revolutions. As the Wild West of America became more settled, action seeking filmgoers could see the Americano's use of technologically advanced automatic weapons and explosives taking such a high body count of Mexicans that the genre was nicknamed "chili con carnage" by critic Jenni Calder. The popularity of the genre may have been a factor in the Frito-Lay corporation adopting the cartoon Frito Bandito as a television advertising spokesman. Complaints from the Mexican American community led to the replacement of the Frito Bandito with the Muncha-Bunch and W.C. Fritos cartoon spokesmen.