Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		1.0

The Deadly Trackers Blu-ray Movie Review

Deadly Viewing

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 29, 2016

Nearly every Blu-ray announcement from the Warner Archive Collection provokes a variation of the same outraged complaint: "Why are you releasing that when you could be releasing this?" ("This" always refers to a favorite title the complainant is desperate to see.) But WAC's distribution model only works when the company chooses titles that can sell enough discs to recoup their investment in remastering. Whether you're talking about a musical, a fantasy or some cult rarity, every film has its fans. Every person's "that" is someone else's "this".

But how can one explain WAC's latest Blu-ray release, a 1973 disaster called The Deadly Trackers that has been deservedly forgotten and which no one was clamoring to have on Blu-ray? The film began as an adaptation by the now-legendary Samuel Fuller of his short story "Riata", but Fuller was fired from the project shortly after production began—reportedly at the behest of star Richard Harris—and replaced by veteran TV director Barry Shear. Most of the film was recast, and the script was rewritten by many hands. Screenplay credit eventually went to Lukas Heller (The Dirty Dozen), but Harris and co-star Rod Taylor contributed numerous scenes. What had begun as Fuller's version of a spaghetti Western relocated from Spain to Mexico, where filming continued with a local crew and enough footage was shot to allow editors to cobble together a semi-coherent narrative. The final product pleased no one, and Warner quickly consigned it to limited release and subsequent oblivion.

In 2008, however, the studio released a double feature of Harris' Westerns on DVD, pairing Trackers with Man in the Wilderness, an earlier and far superior effort based on the history of frontiersman Hugh Glass (more recently depicted in The Revenant). The two-disc package sold well in stores, from which someone inferred that both films had a sufficient fan base to justify re-releasing them on Blu-ray. Eight years later, with brick-and-mortar retailers eliminating catalog titles from their media inventory, the unenviable task of implementing that corporate decision fell to WAC. The company has done its usual commendable job, but I doubt the disc will be flying off e-tailers' shelves.

Trackers is essentially a revenge tale about Sean Kilpatrick (Harris), an Irish immigrant who is the sheriff of the frontier town of Santa Rosa. While a firm believer in law and order, Kilpatrick is a pacifist who doesn't wear a gun. But the sheriff's pacifism vanishes one day, after a gang led by outlaw Frank Brand (Taylor) robs the local bank, wantonly killing civilians in the process, including Kilpatrick's wife and young son (Kelly Jean Peters and Sean Marshall). Seeking revenge, Kilpatrick trails Brand and his gang across the border, where his path crosses that of a Mexican lawman, Gutierrez (Al Lettieri), who is also chasing Brand. While they should be natural allies, instead the two pursuers find themselves at odds, with Gutierrez insisting on the letter of the law and ordering Kilpatrick to return to his own jurisdiction. Meanwhile, the grieving husband and father has no more patience for legal niceties.

Trackers reflects the same Seventies-era paranoia about wanton predators that underlies Death Wish and the original Dirty Harry. Brand is portrayed as a remorseless sociopath who dispatches innocents for sport and relishes telling how he killed his own father—none of which prevents him, in the film's final act, from displaying inexplicable devotion to a family member, who proves to be his Achilles heel. Kilpatrick's arc is supposed to chart the transformation of a peace-loving man into a vigilante, but the character is so poorly drawn that the grieving sheriff never becomes the righteous dispenser of justice that a revenge tale demands. Indeed, Kilpatrick is a study in ineptitude. While directing the townspeople of Santa Rosa in coordinated maneuvers to capture Brand's gang, he manages to leave an entire schoolhouse of children unguarded, thereby handing the outlaws a ready-made set of hostages. In his pursuit of the gang, he spends more time abusing innocents (including a priest) than he does dispensing justice. An effective revenge tale requires an avenger who can retain the audience's sympathy and admiration even when violent, and Kilpatrick quickly loses both.

Brand's gang are mostly caricatures, but they manage to be more entertaining than their pursuer. The brutish Schoolboy (William Smith) stabs a man for his hat and is either mentally challenged or a madman who hears voices (any distinction between the two is too fine a point for Trackers' blunt-force characterization). Choo Choo (Neville Brand) has a piece of railroad tie where his right hand used to be, and it seems to weigh nothing; the story of how he got it also explains his name. The most intriguing personality is Jacob (Paul Benjamin), an African-American card-sharp who suffers Brand's incessant racism in silence—until he doesn't.

Everything about Trackers feels cut-rate, haphazard and improvised, from the abbreviated opening, which attempts (and fails) to establish Kilpatrick's character with a series of still frames instead of fully staged scenes, to the choppy cutting back and forth between Kilpatrick and Brand's gang, to the copious splashes of stage blood, which look so phony that even Roger Corman might have hesitated to use them. By the time Trackers reaches what is supposed to be a darkly tragic conclusion, you don't feel any sense of closure or catharsis, just relief to be done.

(Note: While IMDb lists the film's running time at 110 minutes, Warner's official records indicate that Trackers has always been 105 minutes, which is its length on this Blu-ray disc.)

The Deadly Trackers Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Deadly Trackers was shot by Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Torres, who, like director Shear, was a TV veteran. The film's photography reflects its troubled production history and patchwork editing, with many obvious signs of rush and compromise, e.g., a scene of Al Lettieri lying on the ground where the exceptionally heavy grain indicates an underlit shot that was pushed in processing (you can't miss it, because the editors keep cutting back to it). Nearly all of the film's opticals suffer from fluctuating densities, beginning with the opening titles.

Newly transferred from an interpositive at 2K, Trackers arrives on this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray with all of its flaws intact but looking better than it has any right to. Colors are decently saturated, especially the red of the fake-looking blood, and blacks are generally adequate, although they sometimes shade toward gray (which, I suspect, reflects the look of the original). The image is free of dirt and print damage, and the film's grain has been retained, even when it's distracting (as in the shot noted above). Detail is weak in long shots but stronger in closeups; the overall softness of the image reflects the limitations of the source. Trackers has been mastered at WAC's now-standard average bitrate of 35 Mbps.

The video score for this title reflects the accuracy of the presentation, with some discount for the weakness of the original image.

The Deadly Trackers Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Trackers original mono track has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, and it's adequate but nothing to get excited about. Dynamic range is reasonably broad for the period, and the dialogue is (mostly) intelligible, though the post-dubbing is obvious and often poorly synchronized. The score is credited to Fred Steiner, yet another TV veteran, who too often falls back on emulating Jerry Fielding's score for The Wild Bunch.

The Deadly Trackers Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The sole extra is the film's trailer, which has been remastered in 1080p (1.85:1; 2:45).

The Deadly Trackers Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Some films really do deserve to be forgotten, and The Deadly Trackers is one of them. Save your money for the upcoming Man in the Wilderness.