CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

A Town Called Bastard

1971 film by Irving Lerner, Robert Parrish

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ3230889 ↗
Source-derived summary

A Town Called Bastard (also known as A Town Called Hell on DVD and Blu-ray) is a 1971 international co-production spaghetti Western. It was shot in Madrid with Robert Shaw, Telly Savalas, Stella Stevens and Martin Landau.

It was released on blu-ray on 18 August 2015. The film was retitled A Town Called Hell for US release as the word "bastard" was thought offensive.

Plot

In 1905 Mexico, a small town is presided over by a tyrant who commands a grizzled outlaw and his men. Also in town is a priest with a violent past, who has abandoned his clerical duties.

A widow arrives with her faithful servant promising to pay $20,000 in gold if the man who killed her husband is found and delivered to her. Further violence erupts when a brutal army colonel arrives on the scene searching for an elusive rebel leader. The colonel and the priest knew each other years before.

Cast

Production

The film was financed by Benmar, a wholly owned filmmaking subsidiary of Scotia Investments, the leisure activities group.

Editorial summary

“A Town Called Bastard” enters the record as 1971 film by Irving Lerner, Robert Parrish. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Town, Called and Bastard can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1971, 2015, 1905—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1971-06-27, 1971-07-12, 1971-08-23, 1971-08-26—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Town, Called and Bastard.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“A Town Called Bastard” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Town, Called and Bastard provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3230889. 11 of 11 selected statements include explicit references; 11 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 2015 and 1905.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “A Town Called Bastard”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow A Town Called Bastard primary sources, A Town Called Bastard archive and Town research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “A Town Called Bastard”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “A Town Called Bastard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.