Bernard Gordon's Western that didn't get made.

From HOLLYWOOD EXILE or How I Learned To Love the Black List by Bernard Gordon

Gordon was hired by Philip Yordan to come up with more projects to make after CAPTAIN APACHE.

He set me up with a desk, a Selectric typewriter, and plenty of paper in a fine apartment he had fixed up above the very spacious garage at one edge of his Beverly Hills property. For source material, he dumped on me a stack of scripts he had acquired at bargain rates. These scripts had all been written by an American, Marc Behm, who lived in Paris. Behm was a compulsive writer who could and did turn out screenplays in a matter of days, and, according to Yordan, had a closet bulging with such scripts. Yordan bought them wholesale for about $1,000 apiece. Then he pawed through them to see, from time to time, if there was anything there he could use. Actually, Behm was a talented writer who had a few respectable credits, such as co-writer on the Beatles' second feature, HELP. But none of the Behm scripts Yordan bought ever made it to the screen.I went to work reading these scripts to try and find at least an idea for basis for a practical production. As once before on KRAKATOA, I had to work on spec, but the genuine prospect of returning to Madrid and of becoming a producer made me willing to gamble.I finally settled on a Western of Behm's that turned me on. It was about a beautiful Indian girl who, having been raped by a gang of scruffy outlaws, for revenge sets out to kill them all. By herself. The script had some of Marc's originality, weirdness, and whimsy, but it was woefully weak in character motivation, story development, theme and the kind of ideas necessary to give it unity and direction. I pounded away at the typewriter, pleased with the way the script was going.
When I finished and gave it to Yordan, he read it swiftly and, for the only time in my experience with him, compared my writing to his own."It's just what I would have written," he said. "Only better."
He put Sidney Harmon to work on casting. It looked as though this would be the next picture on the schedule after CAPTAIN APACHE. I called my version of the script THEY ALL CAME TO KILL...
During these last months of 1970, as I was getting my feet wet in production, I also wanted to schedule my script of THEY ALL CAME TO KILL, but we proceeded instead with another old potboiler of Yordan's, BAD MAN'S RIVER. This was something he or someone had written years ago in Hollywood, one of the many scripts in Yordan's backlog. When I protested that KILL was a good script and ready to go, Yordan agreed that others liked it too, but he told me that Ben Fisz had nixed it because he didn't believe that a Western should be made with a woman lead. End of story - except that not much later another major American film was shot in Spain, a Western with Raquel Welch in the lead. HANNIE CAULDER bore a startling resemblence to THEY ALL CAME TO KILL: a woman raped by an evil gang deals with a bounty hunter, personally exacts revenge on her violators. I was bitter about this and wondered whether it was possible that Yordan felt it necessary to reinforce his position by supplying a script with his own name attached.

How A TOWN CALLED BASTARD?

From HOLLYWOOD EXILE or How I Learned To Love the Blacklist by Bernard Gordon

Bernard Gordon first worked in Spain when Philip Yordan hired him as a writer to work on projects at Samuel Bronston's company and at Yordan's Security Pictures. Both of those concerns ended, but then Yordan made a deal with Cinerama Releasing and he brought Gordon with him. The deal with Cinemara ended with KARAKATOA EAST OF JAVA, so Gordon returned to Hollywood to try to find work. Meanwhile, Yordan set up a new film, ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN, "uncharacteristcally, he was for the first time risking his own money on a production without other financing and without a release deal."

"After I had left Madrid, while Yordan was still in Europe working on ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN, he had also been developing new contacts and financing sources in England. His new associates were Ben Fisz (pronounced 'Fish'), a shamelessly extravagant promoter with overweening filmmaking ambitions, and Bobby Marmor, a pleasant, low-key man who had made a fortune in London real estate. Fisz interested Marmor in the romance of filmmaking; Yordan plugged into this combo because Marmor had money and excellent financial connections with the London merchant banks. Yordan could provide the Hollywood contacts and expertise plus invaluable Madrid contacts and know-how. With the money he had earned from Bronston, he was also in a position to contribute his share to the creation of a small studio in or around Madrid, the site of their new empire.

"To my surprise, this dream seemed to be evolving credibly. With money supplied by Marmor and Yordan, and with Yordan using his film and legal connections in Madrid, they acquired a property just outside Madrid. Working on and off with my own projects, I was startled to learn that they had developed the lot with a few buildings for offices and dressing rooms. A warehouse was to serve as a sound stage, and they had constructed a modest Western street on top of the hill dominating the property. Yordan, commuting back and forth to London and Madrid, showed me the script of the first film they planned to shoot. Under Ben Fisz's supervision, a writer in London had scripted A TOWN CALLED BASTARD. Yordan was supposed to rewrite and cure its problems. He gave me the script to read. I wasn't asked to participate, so I refrained from any criticism of the work, but since this looked like a 'go' project, I felt left out. I speculated on the meaning of this. Did Yordan feel he could handle the rewrite on his own without my help? Or had he not asked me because Bronston wasn't around to foot the bill for my work? Or did Yordan need to prove to his new partners that he, personally, was the man who could be trusted to deal with all the script problems?

"I kept my mouth shut until Yordan finally asked me, 'What do you think of the script?'

"'It's interesting,' I said, 'though I think it has some problems.'

"Never insensitive, Yordan let it go at that. If I wasn't interested in volunteering comments, he wouldn't ask for them. Actually, the BASTARD script was a bloody, violent, and confusing exercise that, presumably, catered to the booming desire for more and more sensational films. After much travail that didn't involve me, it was eventually made into a film, but Halliwell dismisses it as a 'sadistic Western with an opening massacre followed by twenty-two killings (count 'em). Pretty dull otherwise.'

"Yordan got my attention when he announced, 'They started shooting BASTARD in Madrid.'

"'Who's the director?'

"'Bob Parrish.' Parrish was an American director with many substantial credits who was at the time working principally out of England.

"'Who's the producer?'

"'Ben Fisz is in charge until I get over there.'

"So it was real.

"'You want to go back there with me?'

"'Doing what?'

"'You'll be the producer.'

"I was ready. 'When do we go?'

"'September.' He was unequivocal...

"'How do I get paid?'

"'You won't. Same as me. You'll have a big expense account and own a piece of the pictures along with me. You'll make a lot more than salary that way.' I had my doubts, but the way things were going for me in Hollywood, I couldn't say no. He went on. 'I have to get another script ready to shoot in September.' It was early summer.

"'I'm going to work with Milton [Sperling]. He owns a book.' He was referring to paperback Western, CAPTAIN APACHE, which in fact Yordan did work on full-time with Sperling. 'Meanwhile, I'd like you to start working on some scripts. We'll need a whole program.'"