Guns and Guts! A Better Than Expected Wild Bunch Ripoff

I may have found the perfect western- or at least the perfect guilty pleasure western.  Las Viboras Cambian de Peil, known in English as "Guns and Guts", is a 1974 Spaghetti western homage to Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch with a big slice of western decadence on the side.  Excepting that it was made in Mexico.  I swear I've seen the term "Tortilla Western" somewhere, but I'm not sure if that's a real expression or a "build the wall" douchebag style term.  Regardless, the film has a real Eurotrash feel to it, with a hero ("El Pistolero") looking a bit more like an Italian fashion model than a hardened gunslinger.  It works, because while El Pistolero makes his living with a gun, his real passion in life is prostitutes (just like his Mama!).  This sets the stage for a regular rotation of nude or scantily clad saloon girls and soiled doves making their way through the film.  The title could have been "Guns and Guts and Boobs".

Keep in mind that there are still plenty of both guns and guts.  Shootouts are frequent and increase in violence each time.  I get a sense that director Rene Cardona sat down with his visual effects guys and said "can you get me 50% of The Wild Bunch look on 10% of the budget?", and they did a decent job.  The blood tends to leak out of the squibs instead of splatter, and it's a little more orange than you would think, but it's effective.  The final gunfight is in some ways a direct rip off of the cataclysmic ending of The Wild Bunch.

What's that, you say?  What's the plot?  We don't need to stinking plot!  Just kidding.  It's a tough plot to explain, since the "hero" has by the end quadruple or quintuple crossed just about everyone in the film, setting up an assassination so he can retire to a found a personal brothel in Montana.  I think it was Montana, there were lots of breasts on the screen at the time and I think I lost track of the details.

It's that kind of movie. Don't sweat the details, just sit back and enjoy.  Currently found on Tubi, another good review found here.

PS- Google translate is stymied by the original Spanish title, it may be something like "The Serpent Sheds It's Skin".

Typical scene from the film