Viva Zapafa! (20th Century-Fox) is a delayed cinematic footnote to MGM's slambang Viva Villa (1934), in which Wallace Beery sweatily portrayed Mexico's bandit patriot. Villa's revolutionary ally to the south in the bloody 1911-19 uprisings was fiery Emiliano Zapata, nicknamed "the Tiger."
Viva Zapata! makes the Tiger out to be a pretty tame cat. According to history, Zapata was not only a great folk hero and agrarian emancipator, but also a cruel, cunning Guerrero Indian whose notorious Death Legion made human torches of the enemy and staked living men to anthills.
The picture...