Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

People are voting emotionally.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Mackenna's Gold has a stellar cast led by a leading man who could act and who was at home in Westerns (e.g. the far more modest and far superior The Gunfighter and The Stalking Moon) and some wonderful scenery and action photography. But that's about as good as it gets. Marshall MacKenna (Peck) kills an old Apache who had ambushed him. The Apache had been carrying a map to a hidden seam of gold (the Lost Adams). MacKenna, who'd spent 3 years looking for the gold, burns the map. He is then captured by a gang led by his old Mexican enemy Colorado (Sharif) who had been hunting for the map. The fact that MacKenna has the map in his head is the only thing keeping him alive. Colorado's gang (including MacKenna's old lover played by Newmar as an Apache) have taken a captive, Inga, (Sparv) to provide some protection against the pursuing cavalry (including Savalas who's more interested in the gold than the gang). The gang is forced to join forces with a group of gold-hungry townsmen (including Robinson as Adams who'd been blinded by the Apaches decades before so he could never find his way back to the hidden canyon. You'd think he could still remember the features we see later in the movie but who cares). They all set off in search of gold. They'd have been better served looking for a screenplay and a director. A voiceover fills in the gaps in the storyline, often a bad sign. Some shots are obviously done in a studio. They don't match well with the location shots. The special effects haven't aged well (and I'm not talking about a shadow lengthening as the sunrises!), nor have the racial stereotypes. Some actors (Sharif, Wynn) ham it up. Most go through the motions. This is a film out of time. It looks like a studio thought if it threw enough money and enough names at a project it would suffice. It was released in 1969, a year that saw a good traditional Western (True Grit), a very good comedy Western (Support Your Local Sheriff!), a great revisionist Western (The Wild Bunch) and a hugely enjoyable one-off Western (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). Mackenna's Gold is none of these.

"Mackenna's Gold" is based on a similar theme to that of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", namely how people can be corrupted by the lust for gold. Unusually for an American Western, it had a major success in the Soviet Union, where the authorities doubtless saw it as a parable of capitalist greed, neatly ignoring the fact that it had been made by a capitalist corporation with the express purpose of making money. Whenever Hollywood satirises greed and lust for money, it generally does so for good business reasons. An old legend tells of a vast fortune in gold lost somewhere in the Arizona desert. The Apache Indians were well aware of the gold, but made no attempt to exploit it, believing that it belonged to the spirits and that their tribe would only prosper so long as left it untouched. The plot is too complicated to set out in any detail, largely because there are so many diverse groups and individuals in pursuit of the gold. The title character, Marshal Mackenna, is one of these, although he is sceptical about the existence of the treasure and is only in pursuit of it because he has been forced to accompany a gang of outlaws who believe he knows the location of the legendary "Cañon del Oro".The film might share a theme with "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", but in quality it is far inferior to John Huston's masterpiece. The main reason is that the plot is far too complex. Besides the two main leads, Gregory Peck as Mackenna and Omar Sharif as Colorado, the leader of the outlaws, the film features several big-name stars, including Telly Savalas, Lee J. Cobb, Anthony Quayle and Edward G. Robinson, most of them only in minor roles and some of them with surprisingly little to do. There are too many characters, most of whom end up dead, and it is very difficult to keep track of who is who, who has been killed, who has killed him, and why. The ending, with that sudden earthquake burying the gold forever, seems far too neat and schematic. On the positive side, the acting is not all bad. This is far from being Peck's greatest film, but he gives a reasonable performance as Mackenna, seemingly the last man of decency and integrity in a world driven mad with greed. Sharif is also watchable as the only Egyptian bandit in the Old West. (Actually, Colorado is supposedly Mexican; Sharif seemed to specialise in playing characters of every nationality except his own). There are decent performances in supporting roles from Savalas as a villainous Army officer and Julie Newmar as the Apache woman Hesh-Ke, a former lover of Mackenna. Newmar does not speak a word throughout the film, yet still dominates every scene she is in by charisma alone. The lovely Julie's talents clearly stretched much further than Catwoman in the "Batman" TV series, the role for which she is best remembered today. The film was directed by J. Lee Thompson, a British-born director who worked both in Hollywood and in his native country. His work tended to vary in quality, and although "Mackenna's Gold" is not his worst film it falls a long way short of the likes of "Yield to the Night" and the original "Cape Fear". (1969 was the year in which he also made the seriously weird "Country Dance", aka "Brotherly Love", about incest among the Scottish aristocracy, but his all-time worst must be the dreadful "King Solomon's Mines"). Yet in this case it would be unfair to blame Thompson for the relative failure of the film. His direction is generally good, there is some striking photography of the desert landscapes, and sequences such as the fight scene between Mackenna and Colorado and the final earthquake are well handled. The problem lies with the script, which was always going to be too much of a sow's ear for any director to make a silk purse out of. 5/10

I first saw MACKENNA'S GOLD on TV when I was a kid and loved it; to me it was the perfect mix of the western and adventure genres. And I have always been a sucker for a treasure hunt story. It didn't matter that the film was considered to be a big overblown failure; a ridiculous attempt at a western epic, the kind of film that was going out of favor with moviegoers when it was released in 1969.I will gladly concede to the critics that everything they say is wrong with MACKENNA'S GOLD is valid: the script meanders; most of the acting is over the top; interesting characters wander into the action and then are promptly disposed of for no good reason; the whole thing runs too long.None of that matters, because MACKENNA'S GOLD is just plain fun; even after all these years. It was made by the same duo that gave us THE GUNS OF NAVARONE: producer Carl Foreman and director J. Lee Thompson, and if they did not recapture the greatness of that earlier classic, it was not for want of trying.Like NAVARONE, MACKENNA'S GOLD is a about a mission, but this time the mission is to find a mythical valley of gold hidden away in the badlands of the Southwest and guarded by fearsome Apaches. The plot concerns a motley group of various and sundry individuals who brave the dangers and each other to find a fortune. Gregory Peck (who was in NAVARONE) is Marshall Sam MacKenna, the only man who knows where to find the valley; he's being forced by the outlaw Colorado, played by Omar Sharif, to lead him and his gang there. Along the way, they pick up and discard a collection of greedy fools all driven to forsake their homes by the lure of gold.This group includes Telly Savalas as a treacherous Army Sergeant; Eli Wallach as a store keeper; Raymond Massey as a preacher; Lee J. Cobb as a newspaper editor; Edward G. Robinson as a blind old man who saw the gold when he was young; Anthony Quayle (another veteran of NAVARONE) as a traveling English gentleman; Keenan Wynn as a bandit. Add to them, Julie Newmar and Ted Cassidy as Apaches and Camilla Sparv as a hostage taken captive by Colorado. Everyone, except for Peck and Sparv (who naturally fall in love along the way) are driven by the dream of getting rich instantly, and before it's over, even those two will succumb to the itch for gold.Besides the cast, what makes MACKENNA'S GOLD so memorable? The great location scenes, some of them shot in the legendary Monument Valley. The sequence at the deep water desert spring, where villains Newmar and Sharif go skinny dipping while Peck, ever the hero, dives in with his clothes on. The laughable miscasting of Arabs and Italians as Mexicans and American Indians (The great Eduardo Ciannelli as Prairie Dog); the equally great Victor Jory's narration. Ted Cassidy and his awesome voice. Telly Savalas in one of his best bad guys roles after THE DIRTY DOZEN. Jose Feliciano's rendition of the unforgettable theme song, Old Turkey Buzzard (with music by Quincy Jones). Did I mention Julie Newmar swims in the nude? And then tries to drown Sparv because she has a thing for Peck? The way Peck plays Mackenna like it's still 1958 and he's in THE BIG COUNTRY and working for William Wyler, while the rest of the cast hams it up. Even little things like the sound effects of rifle fire echoing off the canyon walls stick in the mind.If the ambition of MACKENNA'S GOLD was to be a serious commentary on human greed, then it fell short. But in its own way, it went somewhere better: into the hearts of legions of fans who don't care that it's not THE WILD BUNCH, TRUE GRIT or ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, three classics westerns that came out the same year that MACKENNA'S GOLD was released. And if Quentin Tarantino is looking for a follow up to DJANGO UNCHAINED, I'd suggest he dust off the screenplay for MAKENNA'S GOLD. It has a lot of possibilities.

Marshall Mackenna (Gregory Peck) becomes the recipient of the location of a legendary hidden valley of gold. This makes him of considerable interest to assorted individuals who believe the legend to be true (Mackenna doesn't), chief among whom is outlaw Colorado (Omar Sharif).This 1969 western is a curious mix of extremes - when it's good, it is very good, and when it's bad it is truly awful. The workmanlike story is perfectly serviceable (if a little overburdened with sidetracks), but the script is abominable. The extensive cast is peppered with high profile names, but most of them have little to do while the obscure and uninspired Camilla Sparv is on screen through the latter two thirds of the film. The scenery is eye-catching and spectacular, but there are big chunks which are heavily (and obviously) studio-bound. The action is mostly pretty good, but the special effects are lamentable (poor rear projection, standard ratio shots unsqueezed, out of focus model work etc.).Peck is his usual upright self, and Sharif has fun chewing the scenery. Most of the support cast is OK, and Julie (Catwoman) Newmar as a moody Apache woman with her own agenda, puts in sterling service with a nekkid dip in a mountain pool.