Lone Wolf McQuade

Director Steve Carver had previously worked with Chuck Norris on the film A Eye for an Eye.[4]

BJ Nelson wrote the script and all drafts. It was originally called Lone Wolf". He wrote all drafts and was not rewritten. Kaye Dyal only assisted with story ideas late in the process anda John Milius suggested a few details. Nelson wanted Clint Eastwood to play the role but after he passed, Carver thought Chuck Norris would be ideal to play the lead so he approached him to do the film.[4]

Carver wanted to "mess up" Chuck Norris' image, having him grow a beard and drink beer on screen. Norris was reluctant as he wanted to be a good role model for children.[5]

Carver and Nelson were fans of director Sergio Leone and made the film in the style of Leone.[4]

Chuck Norris and David Carradine refused to use stunt doubles for their climactic fight scene, despite strong reservations from the producers. "The thing about the fight with Dave is that not only is it very well done, but it and the other martial-arts scenes are not just fillers," said Norris. "You've got to have more than technique if you're going to capture the emotions of the audience."[6]

Carradine said Norris wanted to do a fight that matched the one Norris did with Bruce Lee in the Roman Coliseum in Way of the Dragon "and we were actually trying to go beyond that. I think we did. I think photographically we didn’t. But as far as the fight was concerned, the combination of the two styles, you know, because I was very flowing and loose, and he was very solid and hard, I think we accomplished what we set out to do."[7]

Carradine said the fight was shot over four days and "we were little old men by the end of it. All our old injuries came back, we got new injuries, and we were stumbling around like little old men."[7]

Carradine said Steve Carver was "probably the best director Chuck has ever had" adding that:

Chuck had a feeling when I was working with him, that he wanted to be a better actor. At one point, when we were working on the fight, I got close to him, and I said. This is really right man, puttin' your face in the dirt.’ And he looked at me, you know, and he didn’t expect that from me. And we got to be buddies. For just that period. I don’t hang around with Chuck. Chuck mainly doesn’t like to work with co-stars. His movies are all solo movies.[7]

In an interview in 2020, Steve Carver said Chuck Norris was "easy to work with". He added that athletes "think differently than trained theatre actors. If you block a scene with an athlete, if you ask an athlete to move from point A to B, or to pick up something, or do anything, he will do these movements mechanically. Which is not a bad thing, because with every rehearsal the movement becomes more fluid. Whereas a theatre actor will project their movements and their dialogue. It’s a stage to them. That’s the difference. Chuck was a little bit stiff in An Eye For An Eye. He became looser in Lone Wolf McQuade. After that he became better with every picture he did."[8]

The film was originally rated "R" but Chuck Norris appealed the decision to the MPAA and succeeded in getting the film rated PG.[9]

"This is the second time I've appealed," said Norris. "They gave Good Guys Wear Black an R, but I persuaded them to make it a PG. My argument was the strong, positive image I project on the screen. The word karate, unfortunately, connotes violence to many people. Actually, it's a means of avoiding violent situations, and a form of defense if you have no choice and you're backed into a corner.... My films are very similar to the John Wayne movies of the '40s. He'd go in a bar and Jack Palance would pick a fight with him, and then Wayne would take out half the saloon. It's the same theme: A man is pushed into a situation where he has to resort to violence."[6]

Lone Wolf McQuade grossed $12 million in USA.[10]

Roger Ebert rated the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and compared Norris and his character favorably to the roles Clint Eastwood used to play in spaghetti Westerns.[11] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Norris "good" and further noted: "The plot, set in and around El Paso, is unimportant and nonstop, like an old-fashioned, Saturday afternoon serial, which isn't at all bad. Steve Carver, the director, understands that in such films action is content."[12] Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote, "Fans of Soldier of Fortune magazine will think they've been ambushed and blown away to heaven by 'Lone Wolf McQuade.' Every conceivable type of portable weapon on the world market today is tried out by the macho warriors on both sides of the law in this modern western, which pits Texas Ranger Chuck Norris and his cohorts against multifarious baddies who like to play rough."[13] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "The rhythm here is seven minutes of action, followed by a minute of dialogue, followed by another seven minutes of action. For a while I was laughing at all of the explosions; eventually, though, all of the noise became annoying."[14] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times thought that the film, "like its predecessor, 'Forced Vengeance,' becomes so numbingly violent that it's a turnoff about a third of the way through."[15] Jimmy Summers wrote in BoxOffice magazine, "Chuck Norris still doesn't have the screen presence to achieve his often-repeated wish of becoming the next John Wayne, but as long as he keeps his feet and fists flying and stays relatively quiet he's an effective action hero. In the wildly exaggerated world of this movie, he's almost a super-hero."[16]

As of December 2019 the film has a score of 57% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 7 reviews.[17]

Norris later said the film "broke the kung fu mode" for him and helped turn him into a more mainstream action star.[2]

Norris credits this film as a leading inspiration for his hit television series, Walker, Texas Ranger, which premiered a decade later. Yet the pilot had to be rewritten, and the characters' names changed, since "all things McQuade" were copyrighted by Orion Pictures. The original co-producer of the series was The Cannon Group, which like Orion is now absorbed into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (though the Cannon films are distributed on television by another company).[18]

Steve Carver and his production partner Yoram Ben-Ami sued the producers of Walker, Texas Rangers for 500 million dollars. Carver talked about the lawsuit in an interview in 2020: "MGM and CBS had bigger and better and more lawyers than we did, all the way to the Supreme Court. We failed to convince the Supreme Court that there were similarities. Now, you and I and anybody else knows that there are similarities between Lone Wolf McQuade and Walker Texas Ranger." He added that the lawsuit was the reason Chuck Norris and he parted ways.[8]