General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

100 Rifles

100 Rifles is a 1969 American Western directed by Tom Gries, starring Jim Brown, Raquel Welch, and Burt Reynolds, in which an Arizona lawman pursuing a bank robber across the Mexican border joins a Yaqui Indian rebellion against a despotic general. It was produced by Marvin Schwartz for Twentieth Century-Fox, based on the 1967 novel The Californio by Robert MacLeod, and released in the United States on March 26, 1969.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Tom Gries; screenplay by Clair Huffaker and Tom Gries, from the novel The Californio by Robert MacLeod (Greenwich, Connecticut, 1967)¹
Principal cast	Jim Brown (Lyedecker), Raquel Welch (Sarita), Burt Reynolds (Yaqui Joe Herrera), Fernando Lamas (General Verdugo), Dan O'Herlihy (Steven Grimes)²
Release	March 26, 1969 (New York opening), distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.; 110 minutes, DeLuxe Color, Westrex sound¹
Filming	Shot in Spain, at locations in Almería, Guadix, Granada, and the Madrid area²
Music and photography	Score by Jerry Goldsmith; cinematography by Cecilio Paniagua in DeLuxe Color, widescreen 1.85:1²
Box office	US rentals of $3,500,000, more than any other picture with Jim Brown as leading man³
Notoriety	Remembered for an interracial love scene between Brown and Welch, described as the first major Hollywood production to offer one⁴

Spoilers

Plot

The story is set in 1912, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. Half-Yaqui bandit Yaqui Joe holds up an Arizona bank and escapes into Mexico, where General Verdugo, the governor, is carrying out an annihilating campaign against the Yaqui people with help from a German military adviser, Von Klemme. Lyedecker, a Black American deputy sent to bring Joe back to the States, intervenes when Verdugo orders Joe shot and is himself arrested. The two men escape to the hills and join Sarita, a Yaqui revolutionary. Joe reveals that he used the stolen money to buy 100 rifles for the Indians; Sarita leads an attack on Verdugo's hacienda to free the men and the weapons. After Verdugo takes Yaqui children hostage, Lyedecker joins the cause, ambushes Verdugo's train while Sarita distracts the soldiers aboard by taking a public shower under a water tank, and finally defeats the general by filling the train with dead bodies so that the Yaquis can attack from behind.¹

The film's background draws on the deportation and persecution of the Yaqui people by the Mexican government in the early twentieth century, with the railroad as an economic interest pressing for their removal.⁴

Production

Tom Gries directed the film shortly after making his name with the Western Will Penny (1967).⁵ Although an American production, it was shot entirely in Spain, using locations in Almería (including Polopos, Cortijo del Cambronero, and Boca de los Frailes), La Calahorra in Guadix, the Sierra de Huetor in Granada, and sites near Madrid.² This practice was common for Hollywood Westerns of the late 1960s, and the film shares locations and character actors with Italian Westerns, including Aldo Sambrell and José Manuel Martín.⁴

Credits dispute. Screenwriter Clair Huffaker, a veteran Western writer, requested that his name be removed from the credits, according to the AFI Catalog, though he and Gries remain the credited screenwriters.¹ Much of the film's action was invented by the screenwriters rather than taken from MacLeod's novel, including the concept of the 100 rifles, Sarita's shower scene, and the taking of children as hostages.⁵

Akim Tamiroff filmed scenes as General Romero that were deleted from the released version, leaving him among the film's uncredited cast.² A production anecdote holds that John Wayne's frequent stand-in was brought in to double for Brown in a wig and blackface, and that Burt Reynolds objected and refused to work unless a Black stuntman was hired, which the studio required Reynolds to pay for.⁶

The interracial love scene

The film's promotional and narrative focal point was the love scene between Jim Brown, the former NFL star turned actor, and Raquel Welch. A dissertation on Brown's career describes the filmmakers' aim as promoting this unprecedented, controversial event without alienating a mainstream audience, using the mythical setting of the Western to contain the controversy, much as The Dirty Dozen had managed Brown's action-hero persona.³ The Spaghetti Western Database records the film as notorious for being the first major Hollywood production to offer an interracial sex scene.⁴ The scene received coverage in Life magazine, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center has described the film as famed for its pioneering steamy scenes between Welch and Brown.⁶^•⁷ A 1993 essay in the journal Kinema recalled the film, alongside Shaft (1971), as a formative screen image of Black-and-white sexual attraction.⁸

Reception and box office

Critical reception at release ranged from dismissive to hostile.⁵ Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times in April 1969, gave the film one and a half stars and called it "pretty dreary," objecting that it had a larger percentage of action and a smaller percentage of talk than almost any comparable Western, with a succession of battles that never became part of a plot.⁹ The New York Times review by Howard Thompson called it "a loud, churning and triumphantly empty exercise," and TV Guide Magazine saw "just another routine western plot" beneath the fighting sequences.¹⁰

Commercially, the film performed solidly rather than spectacularly. It grossed $3,500,000 in rentals, more than any other picture with Brown as the leading man, and Variety's year-end list placed it among the top films of 1969.³^•¹¹ The ranking is reported differently by different accounts: the Emory dissertation, citing Variety, calls it the twentieth most popular film of 1969, while Brian Hannan, author of The Gunslingers of '69: Western Movies' Greatest Year (McFarland, 2019), places it in 29th position on the annual chart, the sixth highest-grossing Western of the year, ahead of Mackenna's Gold, The Stalking Moon, Paint Your Wagon, and Once Upon a Time in the West.³^•⁵ The film fell short of the expectations exhibitors and critics had set for it, and it marked the beginning of the end of Brown's mainstream career; he never again worked with a co-star of Welch's stature.³

Legacy

Like most Hollywood Westerns shot in Spain in the late 1960s, the film was re-evaluated in later years and has acquired a cult following.⁴ Jerry Goldsmith's score, described as full of Mexican colors, was released on CD in March 1999.¹² The film carries a PG rating in home-video releases and remains available digitally.¹³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Westerns before 1980 › Released 1961 to 1979

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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