The Deserter (1971 film)
| The Deserter The Devil's Backbone (USA) Ride to Glory (USA) Video title |
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| Directed by | Burt Kennedy |
| Produced by |
Dino De Laurentiis Norman Baer Ralph Serpe |
| Written by | Stuart J. Byrne William H. James Clair Huffaker |
| Starring |
Bekim Fehmiu John Huston Richard Crenna Chuck Connors Ricardo Montalban Ian Bannen Brandon deWilde Woody Strode |
| Music by | Piero Piccioni |
| Cinematography | Aldo Tonti |
| Edited by | Frank Santillo |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Paramount |
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Release date
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Running time
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100 minutes |
| Country | Italy United States |
| Language | English |
The Deserter (La Spina Dorsale Del Diavolo) is a 1971 Italian-American Western film by Dino De Laurentiis. It was directed by Burt Kennedy.
Scripted in the style of The Dirty Dozen (1967), and designed as a vehicle for Yugoslavian theater and film matinee idol Bekim Fehmiu, the film featured an ensemble cast of well-known American actors. Noted as the boy in Shane (1953), actor Brandon deWilde appears in his last Western film before his death the following year.
The film was shot largely on location in Italy, Spain and Yugoslavia. Many exterior scenes were filmed at the Fort Bowie set built in the Province of Almería, Spain, where the desert landscape and climate that characterizes part of the province have made it a much utilized setting for Western films, among those A Fistful of Dollars (1964), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and later 800 Bullets (2002). This same set was also used in the films Blindman (1971) with Ringo Starr and A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die (1972).
A US Army cavalry unit returns from a 2-week patrol to find the inhabitants of an outpost near its home fort have been killed by Apache Indians. Among the victims is the savagely tortured wife of the patrol's leader, Capt. Victor Kaleb (Bekim Fehmiu).
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