The Invincible Six (1969)

A fairly obscure US/Iranian co-production, The Invincible Six is one of those films I've chased around for years, with little success.  There was a VHS release some years ago, but this now sells for silly money on eBay.  Finally, though, I found a version of it uploaded on the web.  Unfortunately, the transfer is poor quality and it is taken from the aforementioned VHS, which is missing several minutes of footage, both of which factors have inevitably coloured my judgement of the film.  The late sixties and early seventies saw an upsurge in the number of international co-productions, as studios tried to off set their costs with foreign money, access to exotic locations and cheap local labour.  Moreover, the use of international stars alongside locally known stars made the films attractive to wider foreign markets,  Of course, not all of these co-productions were big studio movies: independent producers also used them to stretch their budgets and provide unusual locations.  Indeed, the notorious Harry Allan Towers had been putting together such films for years, (although, in his case, it was often a case of finding a production base which didn't have an extradition treaty with the UK).

But to focus on The Invincible Six itself, my interest in this film was piqued by an entry in something like Halliwell's I read many years ago, which described it as a Magnificent Seven knock off set in contemporary Iran.  It was difficult to envisage such a thing and the listed cast seemed somewhat uninspiring: more on the level of one of the increasingly cheaper sequels to The Magnificent Seven, rather than the original.  But, to be fair, Invincible Six does settle down to be a Magnificent Seven knock off.  Eventually.  It opens, however, as a heist movie, with Tex (Stuart Whitman) and associates trying to steal the Iranian crown jewels.  Inevitably, it all goes terribly wrong, forcing the three survivors of the gang, (Tex, Ronald, played by Ian Ogilvy and Mike, played by Lon Statton), on the run.  As they try to evade the police, they encounter three other fugitives from justice.  Well, we assume they are fugitives from justice, as their back stories are next to non-existent,  The most fleshed out of these characters is the Baron, a German of aristocratic bearing portrayed by Curd Jurgens.  Nattily dressed in a suit and homburg hat, he too is on the run after a failed criminal enterprise.  We eventually learn that he was a German soldier and subsequently a prisoner of war in World War Two.  The other two characters are less well realised, although one of them, Jahan, does get a flashback explaining that he is wanted by the authorities, having murdered his wife in a crime of passion.  The sixth member of the group, Italian Giorgio, is far more mysterious - we first see him apparently stealing a government Jeep and disguising its markings.  Beyond the fact that he is some kind of engineer, we learn nothing more about him.

Now, this vagueness about the characters might be down to the footage missing from the version of the film I saw.  Perhaps it included sequences giving more background for Giorgio.  I don't know.  The perfunctory nature of most of the characterisations does weaken the film - the less we know about these characters and their motivations, the less invested we are in their fates.  One of the great strengths of The Magnificent Seven was the fact that it succeeded in creating well rounded characters for the seven main protagonists with just a few brief introductory scenes, establishing their essential character traits and motivations. Integral to this process was the first third or so of the film during which Yul Brynner's Chris methodically recruits the seven, providing each of them with a proper introduction and establishing the unique attributes each will bring to the group.  All of which was made possible by Seven's plotting, in which the characters set out with the intent of defending the Mexican village plagued by Eli Wallach's bandits.  The characters in Invincible Six, by contrast, simply stumble into the situation of having to defend a remote village from bandits.  The randomness of their involvement makes this part of the plot seem perfunctory - they have nothing invested in the village's defence (the Seven, at the very least, were being paid to do the job), which leaves the viewer with little investment in the plot.

The village they stumble into does resemble the Mexican village of Magnificent Seven to a remarkable degree. Except that we never really get to know any of the villagers.  The only ones who rise above being just background extras are the town policeman, his daughter and, to a lesser extent, the Mayor, who appears very late in the narrative.  Again, this leaves us caring little about the villagers fates.  Likewise, the bandit leader himself - played somewhat bizarrelly by James, son-of-Robert, Mitchum - is never really developed as  a character, we only meet him in person late on in the film.  In fact, the whole business of the bandits' interest in the village is the subject of some unnecessarily convoluted plotting.  It seems that Mitchum's character, Nazar, has only just taken over as leader, replacing the previous bandit leader, who has been captured and hanged and whose body is now in the village Mosque, awaiting burial.  Nazar is now intent upon recovering the body from his predecessor's mother.  We eventually learn that this is because on the body is an amulet which contains directions to the bandit's hidden treasure.  Also after this document is the slain bandit leader's European mistress Zari (Elke Sommer), who also flirts with Tex.

Once the six arrive in the village, it all plays out much as you'd expect: the villagers are eventually organised into an effective fighting force, the village fortified, a couple of the six die as they take the fight to the bandits, Tex nails Zari, one of the surviving six elects to remain in the village with the policeman's daughter and the others drive off into the sunset.  The problem is that everything seems somewhat rushed, lacking the lengthy sequences in The Magnificent Seven which chronicled the training of the villagers and the building of the fortifications and helped develop the characters.  Also none of the various strategies deployed by Brynner's Chris against the bandits are evident in Invincible Six.  It all ends rather abruptly after Nazar is mown down by  the villagers in the settlement's square, (they miraculously all miss Tex who is standing right behind Nazar).  The treasure map is then burned by his predecessor's mother, disappointing Zari.

The Invincible Six is one of those movies which is reasonably entertaining while it is playing, but is easily forgotten.  The unfamiliar - to Western audiences - Iranian setting help maintain interest, as does a score by Greek composer Manos Hatzidakis which incorporates traditional Iranian melodies and is in marked contrast to the kind of music you would normally expect to hear in an action film.  The performances of the cast are variable, with Stuart Whitman giving the sort of solid second string action hero performance he built his career on.  Ian Ogilvy does the best he can with limited material but seems completely out of place.  Curd Jurgens gives the best performance as the Baron, charismatic and roguish, his is the only character that really lingers in the memory.  Oh, and Elke Sommer's breasts deserve a credit of their own on the titles, so prominent in the narrative are they.  The biggest surprise in the credits, however, is the director: Jean Negulesco, who had a distinguished Hollywood career behind him, taking in such prestige studio productions as How to Marry a Millionaire, Three Coins in a Fountain and Rains of Ranchipur.  He seems an unlikely choice to take the reins of an action movie like Invincible Six (his last film, as it turned out).  His direction of the film, competent and professional, but uninspired, doubtless reflects the fact that he was well out of his comfort zone.

I'm left suspecting that the footage missing from the VHS release of Invincible Six would have made it a somewhat more coherent film.  Certainly, some reviews of the film reference Tex planning a new heist, which would have given some more understandable motivation for his recruiting of the three additional fugitives to his team.  But any such plot developments are completely absent from the VHS print, giving the narrative a disjointed feel.  Of course to many contemporary viewers, the very fact that there could be an action film co-produced by US and Iranian film makers probably seems bizarre.  But back in 1969, (it was released in the US in 1970), the Shah was still in power, intent upon Westernising Iran and the US was still seen as an ally.  It all seems impossible now, but back then it seemed perfectly logical.  How times change.