Navajo Joe, the lone survivor of a massacre, promises payback for the outlaw gang that slaughtered his Indian tribe. He soon gets to avenge his people when the citizens of a small Western community appeal to him for protection from the same marauding gang. Joe quickly accepts their offer of one dollar for each outlaw scalp delivered and goes to work eliminating his enemies one by one, saving the outlaw leader until last.

After the surprise success of A Fistful of Dollars (1964), producer Dino De Laurentiis decided to produce his own spaghetti Western with an American actor who could rival Clint Eastwood in popularity. For the lead in Navajo Joe (1966), De Laurentiis needed someone who could pass as a Native American and Burt Reynolds was the ideal choice. Not only was the actor part Cherokee but he had also convincingly played other minorities on two popular TV series; in Gunsmoke, Reynolds played Quint Asper, a half-breed who worked as the town blacksmith, from 1962-1966 and in Hawk (1966-1976), he was cast as a full blooded Iroquois Indian working as a cop in New York City. Although Reynolds had his doubts about a Western in which he killed about a hundred men single handedly, De Laurentiis convinced him to sign on to his first and only spaghetti Western.

Although Navajo Joe is considered one of the better spaghetti Westerns by fans of the genre, it fared poorly in the U.S. where it was block-booked without fanfare as a second feature at drive-ins and less discriminating movie houses. Reynolds was particularly unkind about the film and often said it was the worse movie he ever made. In fact, the actor remarked that it was "so awful, it was shown only in prisons and airplanes because nobody could leave. I killed 10,000 guys, wore a Japanese slingshot and a fright wig." Obviously, Reynolds had no appreciation for this unique genre and ignored the obvious virtues of Navajo Joe: the rousing music score by Ennio Morricone (credited under the pseudonym Leo Nichols), Silvano Ippoliti's unconventional cinematography and Sergio Corbucci's tightly paced direction. Corbucci, who had helmed some of the most successful Italian sword and sandal epics like Duel of the Titans (1963) with Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott, would go on to direct two of the most influential and acclaimed entries in the spaghetti Western genre - Django (1966) and The Great Silence (1968).

Producer: Luigi Carpentieri, Ermanno Donati
Director: Sergio Corbucci
Screenplay: Fernando Di Leo, Ugo Pirro (story), Piero Regnoli
Cinematography: Silvano Ippoliti
Film Editing: Alberto Gallitti
Original Music: Ennio Morricone
Principal Cast: Burt Reynolds (Joe), Aldo Sambrell (Duncan), Nicoletta Machiavelli (Estella), Simon Arriaga (Monkey), Fernando Rey (Rattigan), Tanya Lopert (Maria), Cris Huerta (El Gordo), Franca Polesello (Barbara).
C-89m. Letterboxed.

by Jeff Stafford