The War Wagon

The War Wagon is a 1967 American Western heist film directed by Burt Kennedy, starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas as rival gunmen who join forces to rob an armor-plated stagecoach carrying half a million dollars in gold dust. It was adapted by Clair Huffaker from his 1957 novel Badman, produced by Marvin Schwartz for John Wayne's Batjac Productions in association with Universal Pictures, and released on 24 May 1967 with a running time of 101 minutes.¹

Production history

A long-gestating property. A first attempt to adapt Huffaker's 1957 novel Badman was announced on 8 August 1962, when Fred Jordan planned to launch a production branch at the Producers Studio rental lot, with Huffaker set to write the screenplay and produce through his company Lucifer Productions. The arrangement did not move ahead. Nearly four years later, the property, now titled The War Wagon, was picked up as the next starring-producing vehicle for Wayne's Batjac Productions in association with Marvin Schwartz.¹

Casting. Lee Marvin was reportedly the first actor considered for the co-starring role, and offers were also made to Rod Taylor and Steve McQueen before Kirk Douglas was cast. Wayne and Douglas had previously appeared together in In Harm's Way (1965) for Paramount Pictures, and Douglas had also worked with Wayne on Cast a Giant Shadow (1966); The War Wagon was their third and final screen pairing.^{1 • 9} Joanna Moore was originally cast as Lola but was released from her contract after receiving a starring role in Countdown (1968) and was replaced by Joanna Barnes.¹

Filming. Principal photography began on 19 September 1966. Location filming took place around the state of Durango, Mexico, before the unit relocated to the Estudios Churubusco in Mexico City for interiors. A six-week construction produced a twenty-building "western town" in Durango costing $100,000, which was to be preserved as a movie museum to attract tourists and film companies. During the move to location, Wayne's longtime makeup artist Lawrence Butterworth died of heart disease in Austin, Texas.¹

Key personnel. William H. Clothier, a frequent Wayne collaborator, served as cinematographer; Harry Gerstad edited; Alfred Sweeney was production designer; and Dimitri Tiomkin composed the score, with the title song "The Ballad of the War Wagon" written with lyricist Ned Washington and sung by Ed Ames.^{1 • 9}

Release

The film opened in Chicago on 24 May 1967. Wayne, who had not taken part in a promotional tour since The Alamo in 1960, attended dual premiere events at the Majestic Theatre in Dallas and the Worth Theatre in Fort Worth on 27 May 1967; the premiere festivities ran three days and included a birthday dinner for Wayne and an honorary deputy sheriff certificate for co-star Bruce Cabot. Los Angeles and New York openings followed on 2 August 1967. The picture was considered for entry in the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, but a trade report claimed the print would not be ready in time for submission.^{1 • 10}

Reception

Contemporary reviews were broadly favorable. Roger Ebert, then the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, called it "that comparative rarity, a Western filmed with quiet good humor" and noted that Wayne was playing a bad guy for just about the first time in his career. Variety described it as "an entertaining, exciting western drama of revenge, laced with action and humor." TIME found the story derivative but praised Burt Kennedy's taut direction and the cast of old pros, observing that Wayne at 60 and Douglas at 50 could still invest any screenplay with style and gusto. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was cooler, calling it "not a bad picture, just obvious."^{8 • 6 • 11}

Retrospective standing. The film holds a Metascore of 65 and, on Rotten Tomatoes, an 83% Tomatometer from 12 reviews with a 77% audience score. Critics have singled out the Wayne-Douglas rapport as the film's core asset, with the two stars trading sardonic banter, including the exchange after a simultaneous gunfight: "Mine hit the ground first," Douglas boasts, and Wayne replies, "Mine was taller."^{6 • 7 • 3}

Commercial performance. The Numbers records a domestic box office of $6,000,000, and home-video histories describe the film as one of Universal's top moneymakers for 1967.^{4 • 5}

Home video

Kino Lorber released the film on UHD Blu-ray from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with HDR/Dolby Vision grading and two newly recorded commentary tracks. A DVD release by Universal Home Entertainment had preceded it on 18 August 1998.^{5 • 4}

References

1. The War Wagon (1967), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. The War Wagon (1967) Full cast & crew, IMDb
3. The War Wagon – Kirk Douglas, TCM article by Jeremy Arnold
4. The War Wagon (1967) Box Office, The Numbers
5. The War Wagon – UHD Blu-ray Review, Home Theater Forum
6. The War Wagon critic reviews, Metacritic
7. The War Wagon, Rotten Tomatoes
8. The War Wagon movie review (1967), RogerEbert.com
9. War Wagon, The (Blu-ray Review), The Digital Bits
10. The War Wagon Dual City Premiere (1967), Texas Archive of the Film
11. Cinema: Death and Texas, TIME, 16 June 1967

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

© 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI. Free to use with credit under the Edgepedia Community License. Developers: read Edgepedia by API or MCP. Embed a reference card.