Ulzana

Annotation for KRRR! 2024 by Petr Groh

The Apache tribe settles in Arizona and holds a celebration, to which the local U. S. Army leadership, General Crook and Captain Burton are invited. The army and the Indians are on friendly terms. The Apaches live in prosperity and their leader, Ulzana, and General Crook wish for peace. However, the peaceful times are disturbed by local traders who lure the general on a trip to Washington. Unbeknownst to him, they bribe Captain Crook, who drives the Apaches to a new reservation in the desert. The Indians must take action as they have no chance of survival in their new home.

The Apache chief Ulzana is played by the legendary Yugoslavian actor Gojko Mitić, the hero of many Eastern European westerns. Ulzana was released in 1974, by which time Mitić had already played over a dozen roles in such films. The film was directed by Gottfried Kolditz, for whom it was the fourth and last collaboration with Mitić, who also co-wrote the screenplay, as he had done a year earlier with Apache (1973) - where, as here, he played the Apache chief Ulzana.

Captain Burton is played by another well-known film personality of the time, and not only from Eastern European westerns, Rolf Hoppe. He also appeared in a number of Kolditz's films alongside Gojko Mitić, for example in the aforementioned Apache or in Gold in the Black Hills (1968). Czech viewers will, however, recognise him in particular as the king from the very popular fairy tale Three Peanuts for Cinderella (1973) by Vaclav Vorlíček.

Ulzana's Mexican wife was played by the German actress Renate Blume, who, on the other hand, appeared in Indian films only in 1973 and 1974 (also in Apache). However, she repeated her collaboration with Gottfried Kolditz in the 1979 sci-fi film Das Ding im Schloß (The Strange Thing in the Castle), which also starred the prominent Czech actor Vlastimil Brodský. It was Kolditz's last film ever.

Ulzana was filmed in Romania and Uzbekistan in a co-production between East Germany, Romania and the Soviet Union. His hero Ulzana is not a fictional character. He was a real Apache leader who was responsible for many attacks on settlers and farms in Arizona and New Mexico in the late 19th century. In fact, shortly before Mitić's two films about him, the Hollywood film Ulzana's Raid (1972), directed by Robert Aldrich, was also made.