In a valley two kilometers east of the town of
Daganzo, located about 35 kilometers east of Madrid, the set of a Mexican fort
was built for the American produced film "The Guns of the Magnificent Seven"
(1969). Two years later on this same terrain the American screenwriter Philip
Yordan, who had worked on many western films and who in the 1960s had moved to
Spain, collaborated with the producer Bernard Gordon in the production of
several spectacular films, such as "La battaglia dei
gigantic" (Battle of the Bulge, 1965), "Custer eroe del
West" (Custer of the West, 1966), " Krakatoa,
est di Giava" (Krakatoa, East of Java, 1968), "La
grande strage dell’impero del sole" (The Royal Hunt of the Sun, 1969),
created a production company and built a film factory: Estudios Madrid 70. The
first film they produced was "A Town Called Hell" (1971), for which,
a short distance from the set of the previously built Mexican fort, a similar
set was built on the top of a hill (in a more open and panoramic position). It
is a Mexican fort with high walls and various buildings inside, among which, to
the left of the entrance door, a high tower and a church stand out, suitable
for being able to shoot inside; then there are houses with porticos and the
"cellar". The project was by Julio Molina, designer of the great Mexican
fortress made for the film "El Condor" (1970) a few hundred meters
away from Rancho Leone, south of Tabernas in Almeria. Later, on the hill east of Daganzo,
a few tens of meters away from the Mexican fort, an American village was built
with a wooden buildings and a large brick saloon (also suitable for indoor
shooting), where the sequence was shot for “Capitan Apache” (1971) (in which
the Mexican fort is also used); “Bad Man’s River” (1971) (and the Mexican fort
was also used); “Pancho Villa” (1973) (in which the American set represents the
city of Columbus New Mexico, on the border with Mexico); “The Valley of the
Dancing Widows” (1975). Other westerns shot in Daganzo are "The Man Called
Noon" (1973) in which the American set and the Mexican fort represent a
single "city"); "The Spikes Gang" (1973) (American set and
church interior); "The Stranger and the Gunfighter" (1974) (American
set and Mexican fort); "Whiskey and Ghosts" (1974); "Comin’ At
Ya!" (1981); "Straight to Hell" (1986). Little is exploited is
the surrounding landscape, which appears in some scenes of "A Town Called
Hell" and in the spectacular railway sequence of the collision between two
trains of "Pancho Villa", for which shots were filmed with a real
locomotive in the secondary railway branch of La Calahorra (east of Guadix, in
the province of Granada) they are combined during assembly with shots taken
with a miniature train in the countryside around the set of Daganzo. In 1979
Philip Yordan returned to the United
States and the Daganzo film factory is taken
over by Spanish director and producer Juan Piquier Simon, who continues to make
films, but of other genres, until 1985, when a big fire destroyed the set. Of
that large structure, today, in addition to many remains on the ground, some
ruins of the buildings of the Mexican fort remain, including the tower of the
church (with the four-lobed windows that can be seen in some scenes in the
interior of "A Town Called Hell", "Pancho Villa"), the base
of the tower, a water trough and, a few tens of meters away, three brick sides
of the large saloon. In the area, some industrial buildings arose a few hundred
meters to the west. To the east, on the other hand, a vast barren landscape
extends, on the horizon of which a "mesa" stands out, which appears
in a scene from "Pancho Villa" which also distinguishes it from Madrid's Barracas
airport.
“Guns of the Magnificent 7”
(1969)
“Captain Apache” (1971)
“Bad Man’s River” (1971)
“A Town Called Hell” (1971)
“Pancho Villa” (1972)
“The Stranger and the Gunfighter” (1974)
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