Product Details

• Actors: Wallace Beery, Leo Carrillo, Fay Wray, Donald Cook, Stuart Erwin
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Warner)
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 115 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302717728
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,007 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa., September 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Viva Villa [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The historical accuracy of this lavish film is nil except that it does depict the sheer wholesale violence of the Mexican Revolution, in which whole villages disappeared off the maps forever. It also was filmed closely enough in time to the events depicted that the costumes are quite accurate, and I think that I read that some actual footage from the era was mixed into the movie, but I'm not positive of that. This film stands out as the best and most worthwhile Pancho Villa effort so far simply because of the obvious but incomparable casting of Wallace Beery as Villa. Beery effortlessly brings the macho leadership quality that Raoul Walsh wrote about in his references to Villa in his autobiography, "Each Man In His Time," and has received no competition from any of the later fine actors that have attempted the part. Beery brings a sense of outrageous flamboyance and sheer fun to everything he does on screen, and even though his Mexican accent fades in and out like a distant radio signal, he was born to play this part. Leo Carillo gives an uncharacteristically restrained performance, King Kong's Fay Wray is incandescently beautiful, and among cast members only Stuart Erwin, who plays the American reporter, grates the nerves a bit. Lee Tracy was originally cast for that one and would have been worlds better, but a drunken urination from his hotel balcony onto the Mexican crowds below effectively ended his career.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars +1/2. Progressive, given the era it was made in, July 21, 2003

By 

DJ Joe Sixpack (...in Middle America) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Viva Villa [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Wallace Beery stars in this surprisingly raw, graphically violent (and yet, somehow somewhat sentimentalized) Hollywood version of the life of Pancho Villa, one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution. Character actor Leo Carillo, infamous as a latino Uncle Tom for his portrayal as Pancho in the "Ceesco Keed" series, here costars as Sierra, Villa's blandly sadistic lieutenant, and Faye Wray appears as an aristocratic lady who catches Villa's fancy. Ben Hecht's sharp, no-nonsense script is politically left-leaning, and while it takes liberties with its depictation of Villa as a brutish lout with a heart of gold, Beery's performance sheds unexpected nuance... Basically, he's transposing his loveable-mug boxer persona onto the Mexican landscape, but in a weird way, it almost works. Apparently this film had a stop-and-start shooting history, with three directors (Howard Hawks and William Wellman worked on it, but didn't wind up in the final credits) and some extensive recasting as well; James Wong Howe provides some typically fine B&W cinematography. A dynamic classic old film, with a relatively sympathetic presentation of the Latin American peasantry... Worth checking out, even though the racial aspects of the film are at times dubious.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars You oughta read a book, Mr. Maltin!, July 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Viva Villa [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Villa was very poular in the U.S. because he let American newsreel reporters film him during his earlier days as a revolutionary fighting usurper Victoriano Huerta, President Madero (not "Madera", Mr. Maltin)'s murderer and succesor.

However, when Huerta was gone, the U.S. recognized Villa's main revolutionary rival Venustiano Carranza as president of Mexico. Villa felt betrayed and raided the town of Columbus, New Mexico killing several innocents. American public opinion turned bitterly against him, and Hollywood started making so called "greasers movies" to exploit the resentment. This picture is one of them.

Villa is portrayed here as some sort of Lombrosian aberration, the good monster who can't help but being a monster. None of the historical facts are accurate and some are downright ridiculous: Villa was a president of Mexico just as much as Davy Crockett was ever president of the United States! I myself am not a big fan of Villa, but I suspect the producers were not only trying to demean him but Mexicans in general (shown as a bunch of well meaning brutal killers). If this is the best portrait ever made of him, I don't want to see the rest!