The Headless Rider

Vladimir Vaynshtok’s 1973 film adapts Mayne Reid’s novel as a Soviet-Cuban co-production, which is to say as one of the Soviet Union’s own westerns. It is set in Texas in 1850. Louise, daughter of the wealthy planter Poindexter, is in love with Maurice Gerald, a poor mustanger. On the night of one of their secret meetings her brother Henry disappears, and Gerald, found covered in blood, is assumed to have killed him. A crowd is a minute away from lynching him when a headless rider appears. It was shot in Cuba, with Oleg Vidov as Maurice and Lyudmila Savelyeva as Louise, and it exists because Soviet audiences wanted westerns and had to be supplied domestically.