Valdez Is Coming

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Valdez Is Coming
Directed by	Edwin Sherin
Produced by	Ira Steiner Roland Kibbee (exec. producer)
Written by	Elmore Leonard (novel) Roland Kibbee David Rayfiel
Starring	Burt Lancaster Susan Clark Jon Cypher
Release date(s)	April 9, 1971
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

Valdez Is Coming is a 1971 western film starring Burt Lancaster, Susan Clark and Jon Cypher. The film is based on the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name.

[edit] Plot

Aging town constable Bob Valdez (Burt Lancaster) is tricked into killing a man by powerful rancher Frank Tanner (Jon Cypher). When Valdez tries to raise money for the widow, Tanner treats him with utmost contempt. Unfortunately for him, the rancher has picked on the wrong man; Valdez is a wily, experienced Indian fighter. The lawman kidnaps Tanner's wife, Gay Erin (Susan Clark), and proceeds to do away with the men sent after him. He sends Tanner a message, "Valdez is coming."

While this film isn't technically a "Spaghetti Western", it was filmed in southern Spain in locales used by Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone in his avante-garde European Westerns. The desert-like terrain of this isolated region of Spain resembles the U.S. southwest and parts of Sonora, Mexico. However, you'll notice a distinct lack of many native North American desert plants such as cholla and opuntia cacti, yuccas and agaves (various species of century plants) in these Spanish-Western films. Occasionally, such plants are imported and placed around the "set" to pepper a scene to make it look more like an American-Mexican locale.