Some of you may know 1960’s “The Magnificent Seven” as one of the greatest westerns of all time. It is also based on Kurosawa’s 1954 film “The Seven Samurai,” considered by me to be the greatest film of all time. Yes, I’m talking to you, “Citizen Kane” and “Casablanca.” Kurosawa’s movie is better, so nyah.
Of the seven actors that played the seven Old West gunslingers hired to defend a Mexican village from a group of bandits led by a classically-trained actor faking a Mexican accent, only one, Robert Vaughan, is still with us today. (He has done some remarkable work as a non-attorney spokesperson recently, but I digress.)
The first two to pass away were Steve McQueen in 1980 and Yul Brynner in 1985. After that, four more have died, and it all happened in the space of one year:
- James Coburn, November 18, 2002
- Brad Dexter, December 11, 2002
- Horst Buchholz, March 3, 2003
- Charles Bronson, August 30, 2003
There is no greater cosmic significance to this whatsoever, although (no major spoilers) if the actors had passed in the same order as their characters in the film, that would be something remarkable. I just thought it was interesting. (This is what I do on Saturday mornings.)
It is vaguely reminiscent of the “Poltergeist” curse, in that it is tempting to draw some sort of conclusion that greater forces are at work. Statistically speaking, though, the supposed curse around the three “Poltergeist” films (2 unusual deaths, 2 medically-predictable ones, all of them tragic) was nothing out of the ordinary.
