Bavaria Beer Commerical - LVC's Final Performance

Shot only a few weeks before his death, presented here is LVC's final performace (appropriately a gunslinger) for the Dutch company Bavaria Beer.



Here are some comments from people that worked on this commercial-

Director of Photography

I was the DP on this commercial. We shot it in Fiddletown Ca. in an original old west era bar. Getting a chance to meet Lee van Cleef is something I will never forget. Lee had cancer and died I believe about two weeks after we shot this. He was wonderful to everyone there that day. He was so fast on the draw that we had to slow him down. From the holster to the muzzle blast was only about 1 frame of film. He was using special loads like small buckshot to smash the bottles.

Art Director

I was the art director for this spot and I bet no one knows that Lee actually shot the bottles! Special effects couldn't get a squib to work on a traveling bottle so what they did was to open the blank cartridges and put six grains of sand in each bullet. When Marsh, the bartender was ducking, he was really ducking! They had to slow him down so they could see his draw on camera.