Trailer
Plot summary
In 1860s Mexico, Luke is an escaped convict and Jaroo is a hermit and a loner who prospects for gold and, on the side, hunts down would-be claim jumpers for bounty. The two of them join a band of Apache Indians, and their aim is to capture a heavily armed fortress. Thousands of gold bars are said to lie inside it, rumored to be worth millions of dollars and to be the reserves of Emperor Maximilian. The fortress is commanded by Chavez, a sadistic man. His mistress is Claudine, and Luke is drawn to her the moment he sets eyes on her.
Cast
- Florencio Amarillaas Águila
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about El Condor (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Lee Van Cleef changed his mind about playing Jaroo after Alberto Grimaldi told him the character was ridiculous, and Larry Cohen persuaded him to stay by arguing it was a comic role like Humphrey Bogart's Charlie Allnut in The African Queen.
- Swedish actress Ewa Aulin, who had been in Candy, was cast as the female lead Claudine but quit rather than film nude scenes; Mariana Hill took the part after saying she would go nude "if it's done well".
- Writer Larry Cohen said director John Guillermin and producer Andre de Toth did not get along, partly because de Toth wanted to direct, and their conflict ended in a fistfight between the two.
- The production built a huge adobe fortress set in Almería, Spain, that was later reused in other films, among them Conan the Barbarian (1982) and March or Die (1977).
- After a fort and town were built in Almería, Spain, the studio decided it disliked its script and paid writer Larry Cohen to travel there and write a new film around the existing sets.
- El Condor was among the first movies to be rated R, a rating it earned for violence, explicit language and nudity.
- Larry Cohen said El Condor was successful and taught him he could talk to actors, and that, disillusioned by what others did to his scripts, as with Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, he decided to make his own films.
