Your choice....Apache Gold (the American title) or Winnitou (the German title).
It was a 1963 cowboy western made out of a book from 1893 by Karl May (a German).
The best I can say is that this guy....Karl May....was a smart kid in the 1850s and would do some teacher training....but screwed up. Perhaps bad luck, but the authorities took a liking to Karl and he did some local county jail time for oddball things.
The curious thing is that he eventually picked up some two-star western novels....read them....and got this idea of writing an authentic cowboy novel himself. The difference between his writing and the typical American-style? Well....in Karl's vision....the Indians were always the good guys, and a number of Latinos and white guys were typically bad guys.
Somewhere in the mix was this one handsome John Wayne-like character....always kept buddy-buddy with Winnitou.....the gracious Indian character.
Yeah, it does sound hokey.
Apache Gold has around a dozen folks who were either big-name stars or would go onto being big-names. The site for the movie? Yugoslavia.....deep in the heart of Serbia territory. The landscape looks western. The outfits? Well...they look cheap Italian, if you ask me.
The script is basically a two-star deal and it's best not to take things in this movie too serious.
As for Germans? Well....the Winnitou series of movies were all hot properties, and you can catch them several times a year on state-run TV. Course, older Germans watch them....younger Germans think they are mostly bogus. A generational thing, if you ask me.
As for Karl? He wrote literally dozens of pieces, and did well later in life. Course, Karl also had a stress-related issue, and probably had several mini-breakdowns as well.
So, if you can find the movie....settle back and enjoy it. I'll admit....it is hokey and a bit different from the typical cowboy westerns. But, it's Germany's best western.
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