What makes the Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso duo so intriguing is that they would often make two movies at the same time.

During the making of Scalps, this film was also being made. This is much like how Violence In a Women's Prison and Women's Prison Massacre or The Other Hell and The True Story of the Nun of Monza feature similar casts and storylines but emerge as different films. Fragasso may have directed this entire movie uncredited, depending on who you ask.

A team of outlaws attack a band of settlers and kill everyone except a pregnant woman who dies in childbirth, but not before her child is adopted by a tribe of Native Americans. Given the name Shining Sky (Sebastian Harrison, Sodoma's Ghost),he is raised by Chief White Bear (Italian western vet José Canalejas) as an equal to his son Black Wolf. Yet during a competition for the affections of Rising Star (Lola Forner, Wheels on Meals),Black Wolf is accidentally killed and our hero is forced to leave his tribe.

Settling amongst the white man, he acts as if he is mute. However, when Isabella (Cinzia de Ponti, so memorably killed on the ferry in The New York Ripper) flirts with him and cries rape when he rebuffs her, he's run out of town by the henchmen of the governor (Alberto Farnese, who was in Scalps). Left to die in the wilderness, he's rescued by Crazy Bull (Charles Borromel, The Blade Master) and must recover in time to stop Ryder (Charly Bravo, Panic Beats) from coming back to kill him.

White Apache is based on the true story of Santiago McKinn, an Irish boy who was taken by the Apache tribe and refused to leave them even when they were arrested by government forces. It was written by José María Cunillés (who also wrote Virus for Mattei) and Francesco Prosperi (who directed The Last House on the Beach, Gunan, King of the Barbarians and The Throne of Fire).

I'm at a loss why Mattei decided to make two westerns in 1986. Part of me was thinking he was following the Hollywood mini-revival that started with Silverado. Another thinks that he was excited that Tex and the Lords of the Deep and Django Strikes Again were being released and the cycle of Italian westerns would begin all over again. That said, I really enjoyed both films that came out of this Spanish location shoot and wish that Mattei had made more of these types of movies.

You see, the thing about Westerns is that the whole spiel about the laconic man of action is a myth. Oh he may stand and stare and spit and smoke, but eventually he is going to open his pie hole and say something, and it had better be memorable. Or at least funny, poignant, witty, sarcastic, even poetic depending on who wrote the script. This is why you don't see actors like Dolph Lundgren or Sylvester Stallone making Westerns. No matter who dubbed their voice or wrote the script, whatever their character might say at the moment of truth would come across as the words of a big meathead.

WHITE APACHE has the same problem. It's hero is an archetype in search of a one-liner or two. Family is killed by slobbering cracker gang, who are in turn slaughtered by Native Americans, who take the baby of one of the womenfolk in as their own and raise him into Dolph Lundgren. Dolph falls in love with the only blue eyed squaw, kills his adoptive brother and finds himself cast out of the tribe -- ALL IN THE SAME DAY! -- and finds himself drawn to a community of white people who are all racists, bigots, sleazebags, murderers, cutthroats, and proud of it. An alien even amongst his own folk, the guy draws the ire of the local Dennis Hopper mad dog villain (played by one-time Spaghetti supporting regular Charly Bravo, who is unrecognizable) by just standing there and staring as his gang roughs him up.

See, this is where the problem lies: Your average Clint Eastwood or Anthony Steffen or Gianni Garko type would have said something as the fists started to fly that would have been three times as brutal as the punches. Or someone like Eli Wallach or Tomas Millian would have used it as the launching pad for a soliloquy on why they are a bunch of pig-dogs. Instead, Dolph stands there being beaten, and since it's only a movie we know he isn't *REALLY* being beaten and his hair still looks like a rock star's at the end of it, the result is a null sum gain. Drooling evil white guys: 1. Poor misunderstood proto half-breed: 0.

The film does have one great performance, with frequent Margheriti supporting actor Luciano Pigozzi as the friendly local businessman who takes Dolph in to work as a stable hand. Pigozzi doesn't do or say much that is memorable either, but just seeing him on screen is such a pleasure that the movie becomes more enjoyable just via his presence. The other cast member of note is longtime genre character actor José Canalejas, here somewhat absurdly cast as a soothspeaking Injun medicine man and unlike Mr. Bravo easy to recognize under his silly looking wig and feathers.

Which brings me to the subject of the film's somewhat duplicitous racial agenda. The movie's central theme is the racism that Dolph is subjected to by both his own people (the whites) and his adoptive people (the Injun tribe),creating an interesting problem of whom to root for during certain scenes. The assumption by the filmmakers is that we will end up rooting for Dolph, though frankly beyond being a pincushion for Mr. Bravo's thugs to push around he doesn't give us much reason to root for him. The film's most interesting moment comes when he rather stoically confronts his white woman squeeze with her own racist beliefs and she turns the tables by ripping open her skirt and screaming RAPE! Beyond that the movie's formula is very easy to predict, the ending a foregone conclusion, with the requisite torture scenes, sex scenes, exploitation scenes, fight scenes, atrocity scenes and mystic Injun going postal scenes to qualify this as an Apache Atrocity & Revenge potboiler. Director Bruno Mattei would concoct a more potent and lurid version with SCALPS the following year, which may be a nastier movie but is probably a better movie if only because the hero has some decent lines.

3/10: Recommended for fans of Italian made Westerns. Anyone else will probably need to watch it drunk.