1967 - THE CAPER OF THE GOLDEN BULLS, an entertaining heist film

This is a very decent heist film but it's no classic like Rififi, The Killing or Le Cercle Rouge.  The cast is a collection of  character actors and if the leads weren't exactly at the top of the movie star list they got the job done.

I.E. an American living in Spain since the end of World War II served as a bomber pilot.  During the war he and his crew accidentally blow up a cathedral.  To make amends this group robbed a number or banks to rebuild the cathedral.   Now operating a restaurant in Spain the American is blackmailed into performing one last robbery.  He reassembles his crew and we get the usual master planning, execution of the robbery and some close encounters with the police.  This is all pretty standard stuff for this genre.  

The cast had a lot of "seen them all before actors" who had shown up in many movies.  Vitto Sotti seemed like he was in about every movie and TV show from the 1940's on.  If you needed someone to pay a stereotypical Italian, Scotti was your guy.  Henry Beckman had also been working in movies and TV since the 1950s, he was the definition of a working actor, no part was too small for him.  Leon Askin is chiefly remembered as General Burkhalter on Hogan's Heroes.  Walter Slezak early in his career had worked for Hitchcock in his propaganda film Lifeboat.  Frankly in this film the list of character actors is endless.

The leads were Steven Boyd as the American and Yvette Mimieux as his girlfriend.  Boyd's career started out strong with Ben Hur, Billy Roses' Jumbo and The Fall of the Roman Empire but kind of petered out after awhile.  Still he was always a reliable performer for the most part.  Yvette Mimieux was an attractive blonde who was groomed to be a star in the studio system.  The problem was that the Hollywood studio system was falling apart in the late 1950's and early 60's so her career kind of drifted off into television .  

 The Caper Of The Golden Bulls was never going to win any awards but it does entertain and the gorgeous on location filming in Pamplona shot during the running of the bulls makes it a very good looking film.  The film is fun to watch because the makers were smart enough not to take this story seriously.  I'm sure everyone had a very nice vacation filming this picture in sunny Spain. 

The film was written by Ed Waters and David Moessinger, the running time is 106 minutes.