Major Dundee | 1965
Sam Peckinpah's ambitious second feature film was filmed in Mexico, primarily at the familiar Durango Western location, with some interiors filmed in Mexico City's Churubuscu Studios. It was plagued by problems, most famously the friction between stars "square" Charlton Heston and "reckless" Richard Harris, although this might actually have played into the characters' onscreen conflict.
Less publicised were the difficulties with locations. Relatively inexperienced in large-scale features, Peckinpah chose locations himself without regard to the practicalities involved in reaching and filming in difficult places. The varied landscapes do add enormously to the sweep of the film but at a cost.
Often described as "Moby Dick on horseback", the film begins on a similar note as John Ford's The Searchers as ambitious, single minded Major Dundee (Heston) vows to avenge a massacre and to bring back three children who were abducted.
Apache chief Sierra Charriba, who has been terrorising a large area of 'New Mexico', wipes out a company of the 5th United States Cavalry. For the aftermath of the carnage, seen during the opening credits, the Rostes ranch, supposedly in "southern New Mexico" was built at La Marquesa National Park, 25 miles southwest of Mexico City.
The quest of Dundee and his mismatched band to follow Charriba was filmed at various places in Morelos state, south of Mexico City, including Cuautla; Tequesquitengo and Tehuixtla.
Exhausted and needing supplies and horses, Dundee's men raid the camp of Napoleon III's invading French forces. Afterwards, they relax and tend their wounds by a large pool fed by three waterfalls. These are El Saltito waterfalls pouring into the crater of an extinct volcano, 11 miles from the city of Nombre de Dios, along the Durango-Mexico highway.
If you're intending to visit, try to aim for a rainy season – or just after – to see the waterfalls in full force. The spot is also featured in 1971 John Wayne Western Big Jake.
It's here that Dundee is wounded by an arrow. After an extended sequence of his recovery in Durango, he returns to join the troop hot on the trail of Charriba. They come across one of his campsites where he's left a taunting message for them in a scene is dominated by a trio of rounded peaks. These mountains overlook the town of Tlayacapan, in the northeast part of Morelos state, 37 miles east of state capital Cuernavaca.
They can be seen west from Hwy 113 a couple of miles north of Tlayacapan, a popular day trip destination for some Mexico City residents, which was used the site of the final 'Bolivian' shoot-out at the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969); as well as being seen in Don Siegel's 1970 Two Mules For Sister Sara, with Shirley MacLaine and Clint Eastwood, and Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986), with James Woods. The classic 1960 Western, The Magnificent Seven, was also filmed in the area.
The sudden dispatch of Charriba comes as a bit of an anticlimax but the real battle is now against the French troops out for revenge, which was filmed on the Río Balsas (also known as the Mezcala River, or Atoyac River), north of Chilpancingo, capital of Guerrero state.
