The Master Gunfighter is a film released in 1975, written and produced by Tom Laughlin, who also played the lead as Finley.
The film is set in southern California near Santa Barbara shortly after California became part of the United States. American settlers and the U.S. government discriminated against the Mexican landowners and frequently took their land by force or legal skullduggery. The film focuses on wealthy Latino ranchers whose land and wealth are at risk. They decide to misdirect a U.S. government ship carrying gold so that it will be wrecked and plundered. To prevent themselves from being caught, they plan to massacre the local Chumash Indians. The hero is the now-estranged adoptive son (Finley), a master swordsman and gunfighter, who tries to prevent this while still saving his family.
The Master Gunfighter is mainly a remake of the 1969 Japanese film Goyokin, although the story revolves around a true incident in the early 1800s involving massacred Indians that occurred in the vicinity of Goleta, California.
Reviews of the film were somewhat mixed, though the female lead, Barbara Carrera, was nominated for a Golden Globe award for her performance.
Famous quotes containing the word master:
“There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master the victory cry of the great ape as it issued from the androgynous chest of Johnny Weissmuller, to the accompaniment of thousands of arms and legs snapping during attempts to swing from tree to tree in the backyards of the Republic.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)