normstobert I like Elvis as much as the next person and enjoy watching his movies more for his music than anything since most of them were so bad (yes there are exceptions that were fairly acceptable, King Creole being my favorite) but this movie was just bad - plus no singing. Stiff acting, poor dialog, thin plot. Just when you think something exciting is going to happen, it doesn't, and then it's 15 minutes until the next almost exciting thing. A better script would have gone a long way in helping this move along. There were just so many blank spaces where you were expecting someone to say something but there was just this long pregnant pause. Sorry but I have to chalk this one up on my least favorite Elvis movies.

bkoganbing The only singing you will hear from Elvis Presley in Charro is the title song over the credits at the beginning. After that Elvis is all business in Charro!. He even wears a scraggly beard to emphasize this film won't be your usual Elvis funfest.I liked the idea that Elvis was expanding his range as an actor and maybe he might have done more westerns after this if Charro! had been good. Presley had done two previous westerns Love Me Tender and Flaming Star and he acquitted himself well in both.But this one was plain ridiculous. Victor French and his gang which includes his idiot brother Solomon Sturges steal a solid gold cannon from the museum in Chapultepec near Mexico City and then schlep the item to the border where French then proceeds to pin the crime on former gang member Elvis Presley. He even brands him across the neck with a running iron to simulate a bullet wound the leader allegedly got. Now that little journey is about 2/3 the length of Mexico.Never mind, Elvis captures Sturges and holds him in a jail and gets himself appointed deputy sheriff to make it all legal. Never mind that, French threatens to use the cannon to level the town because he was smart enough to bring powder and shot and has in James Sikking one of Stonewall Jackson's old artillery men.In that other film about a cannon, The Pride And The Passion the weapon was symbolically a phallic symbol and the illusion is drilled into our heads, especially with the ridiculous ending that Charro! has.Colonel Tom Parker whose instincts for film properties were pretty good and knew Elvis's type of films were going out of vogue in the late Sixties, tried to take him in a new direction cinematically with Charro!. It was just the wrong western to do.

classicsoncall When I first saw Elvis in the film as the bearded desperado Jess Wade, I thought Wow! - what if his career had taken a turn like, say, Clint Eastwood's. Elvis Presley as Rowdy Yates on 'Rawhide'. Back when Elvis was lean and good looking, the independent wrangler approach might have taken him into spaghetti Westerns, and since he could also sing, one can only imagine the possibilities.As it is, Presley provides a fairly competent presence to his character in "Charro!", but as the film wears on, so does he. Though arguably one of his better films, it seems like the thrill is gone at a time in his career when 'The King' was attempting a major comeback. The bearded face does indeed create an amazing transformation of the Elvis persona, and is one of the highlights of the picture. It doesn't go far enough though; without achieving that flat out Lee Van Cleef mean, and matched against an adversary who's also less than sheer malevolence, the movie loses much of it's potential.The film's finale in fact seems to blow up as quickly as one of those cannon fired dynamite packets. When Vince Hackett (Victor French) falls apart and simply gives up, what the heck happened to Gunner (James Sikking) and Mody (Charles H. Gray)? I mean, they just disappeared! Then, as the town re-groups and Jess prepares for the trip to Mexico, Mrs. Ramsey (Barbara Werle) plants a kiss on him, when in just the prior scene she was ready to beat the snot out of him, blaming him for her husband's death! How exactly did the reconciliation take place?Even with the disconnects, it was cool seeing Paul Brinegar once again as Doc Opie (there's that 'Rawhide' connection again). Ina Balin, looking radiant and very much like a high school sweetheart of mine, doesn't have much to do here as Presley's romantic interest, but even that seems wasted by the end of the story. Do you think he ever sent for her?If for no other reason, "Charro!" is worth seeing for a non characteristic look at Elvis Presley in a role that would have served much better at the beginning of his career than near it's end. But that's a whole other conversation. I wonder how Clint would have been in "Jailhouse Rock".

noyb cutshall After 30 films of watching Presley sing to everyone including the guy he just beat up, can you imagine trying to take Presley serious in a western? Not for fans like me. This film could have been a hit for Clint Eastwood or John Wayne but Presley...no way. Presley sings only the title song and only a fan with more time on his hands than brain power could sit through the first 30 minutes. Presley was showing obvious signs of extreme boredom during this film and you can tell his movie contracts were close to being finished. The unshaven, dirty western appearance of Presley was not tolerated by fans in 1969 and fans have not changed, So even from the biggest fan, Charro does not come with a recommendation.