Blood River (1967)

aka God Forgives…I Don’t!

Original title: Dio perdona…Io no!

When a train full of gold is robbed by a gang of bandits that don’t leave any survivors behind as witnesses, adventurer Hutch Bessy (Bud Spencer), working for the insurance company responsible for making up for the losses, starts investigating the case. Hutch is convinced the way the heist was planned and executed can only point to one man as the responsible brains of the operation - his old acquaintance, the highly intelligent but psychopathic Bill St. Antonio (Frank Wolff). Problem is, Bill has been killed by Hutch’s and his old friend/enemy Pretty Face (Terence Hill) – or Cat Stevens, if you’re a script writer who has probably taken the name right out of the new album releases column of a newspaper – if under rather questionable circumstances.

When Hutch seeks out Cat to have a little chat about his theory and about what truly happened on the day of Bill’s death, the two of course do not decide to team up and find out what’s up, but do the old Spaghetti Western dance where they express their mutual sympathy by trying to put one over on each other at every possible juncture. To no one’s surprise, Bill will turn out to be quite alive and even crazier than ever, and Hutch and Cat just might have to work together one way or the other if they want to find the gold and survive against Bill and his gang.

Giuseppe Colizzi’s Spaghetti Western was made a couple of years before the dynamic duo of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer turned into the dubious but childhood-approved pair of punching comedians we hate and/or love or hate/love to love/hate, and really is your typical earnest and violent Italian western. In its structure God Forgives is clearly indebted to Leone’s second Dollar movie, though it is – like most of the films coming in the wake of Leone and Corbucci – somewhat simpler and certainly less loaded with philosophical and political undercurrents.

Visually, most Spaghetti Westerns tend to orient themselves more on Corbucci inventive yet rougher style than on Leone, most probably because Leone’s approach would take quite a bit more effort, time, and perhaps even money to copy, all things in short supply when you made an Italian genre film meant to cash in on the latest fad. Colizzi, though, actually does use quite a few of Leone’s techniques – most obvious the long shots, yet the film’s pacing tends to the stately too, and the framing of some scenes looks damn familiar, too. To my surprise, the resulting film actually works as more than an attempt to blankly imitate Leone’s style, its surface indeed carrying meaning. At least, the film gives the struggle of its to varying degrees unpleasant protagonists (all of them men, as usual in the genre) the proper atmosphere, and while the political and psychological subtext is pretty much Spaghetti Western by numbers, the film never feels so derivative it becomes annoying.

Rather, it’s another entertaining Spaghetti Western that looks better than some of its brethren, recommends itself by many a shot of men squinting at each other as well as by one of Wolff’s more exalted performances, and presents its typical tale of violence, betrayal, sweat, and more violence with enough style to keep it interesting even if you’re like me and have seen what I suspect is nearly every film in the genre ever made.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,in short,spaghetti western,giuseppe colizzi,terence hill,bud spencer,frank wolff

Three Films Make A Post: Zeppelins. Bombs. Bordellos. Burials. You name it. We have it.

Trinity is Still My Name aka Continuavano a chiamarlo Trinità (1971): I didn’t enjoy Enzo Barboni’s quickly shot seque to the first Trinity movie as much as its predecessor but it still is a fun little movie, if already suffering from the ever increasing childishness of the Terence Hill/Bud Spencer comedy pairings. This one’s still having a lot of fun with Spaghetti Western conventions but it’s also working pretty hard at repeating the favourite beats of the first film without just repeating itself – mostly with success, even. The sequel’s problem really isn’t so much that it isn’t a funny, well-made movie, it sure is funny and well-made movie, as that it’s just not quite as funny and well-made as the one it follows up on. It’s a bit of a luxury problem to have for a film, but there you have it.

Willow Creek (2013): Even though I am not quite as enamoured with Bobcat Goldthwait’s unexpected turn towards the bigfoot POV movie as some of my peers are, this is still a fine little film. I particularly love how Goldthwait doesn’t overdo the amateurishness of the footage, the carefully thought through shorthand he uses for the characterisation, and the film’s use of humour.

Willow Creek does take quite some time to get going, though, but once it does, it culminates in two of the most effective examples of “people frightened in their tent” and “people panicking in the dark woods” scenes I’ve seen in a POV horror film. Particularly the former, basically consisting of a single, fifteen minute shot of lead actors Alexie Gilmore and Bryce Johnson looking frightened while creepy noises play, is quite an achievement because it takes a set-up that should be a guarantee for boredom and actually makes it work.

Sledztwo aka The Investigation (1974): I always find myself rather surprised by the comparatively high number of Stanislaw Lem adaptations. While often intellectually quite delightful, the comparative disinterest in plot and character displayed in Lem’s body of work doesn’t exactly lend itself to screen adaptations. Despite that, most Lem adaptations not only exist but are also also tend to be rather good.

Case in point is this TV movie directed by Marek Piestrak with a directness that still leaves room for visual mood-building as well as a degree of playfulness, all the while following Lem’s philosophical ideas. It’s quite wonderful to behold in its way.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,american movies,polish movies,in short,comedy,spaghetti western,horror,sf,enzo barboni,terence hill,bud spencer,bobcat goldthwait,alexie gilmore,marek piestrak

They Call Me Trinity (1970)

aka My Name is Trinity

Original title: Lo chiamavano Trinità...

Hygienically challenged professional drifter (with a horse), and probably fastest gun alive, Trinity (Terence Hill), by chance comes upon the town where his half brother Bambino (Bud Spencer) is working as a sheriff. Or rather, where Bambino has gone under cover as sheriff, for in truth he’s only a mildly successful horse thief with a grumpy disposition, and has taken the place of the town’s actual new sheriff whom he - half accidentally - shot.

Mostly, Bambino is trying to lay low, and the town’s nice and quiet enough for that, or it was before a group of pacifist Mormons (yeah, I know) lead by Tobias (Dan Sturkie) arrived, settling as farmers in a place horse magnate and practical owner of the town, Major Harriman (Farley Granger), wants for his horses. Up until now, the Major’s men haven’t done much beyond punching out a Mormon now and then, but the situation won’t stay this way forever.

Particularly not once Trinity takes a look at two pretty Mormonesses and decides he really should be helping their people out against the Major and his men, dragging the unwilling Bambino in with him.

It’s always dangerous visiting childhood favourites, particularly when you’ve already made the experience that Terence Hill and Bud Spencer movies don’t hold up when you’re not a kid anymore, even when you’re as childish a grown-up as I am doing my best to be at all times, so realizing Enzo Barboni’s They Call Me Trinity was actually a rather nice Spaghetti Western comedy turned out to be a very pleasant surprise for me. Which might have a lot to do with the fact this was actually the first comedic outing by Hill and Spencer after the success of the comedy dub of a much more serious earlier film – Boot Hill - featuring the two in Germany and elsewhere in Europe proved surprisingly successful, and this was the film that set the basics of the formula of the pair’s films instead of just repeating it ad nauseam.

What makes the film work beyond the often quite funny interplay between Hill and Spencer, with Spencer as always giving the grumpy straight man to Hill’s trickster, is its clear-eyed view of the elements that make up the Spaghetti Western. Unlike Tonino Valerii would later do with Hill in My Name is Nobody, Trinity doesn’t use that knowledge so much for a deconstruction of the genre as for the kind of mild comedy that clearly loves its genre too much to become a true parody yet can’t help but use the more ridiculous elements of it as the base for jokes. Quite a few of these jokes are really just slight exaggerations of the generally exaggerated things happening in Spaghetti Westerns (particularly those having to survive on actors making snake eyes at each other and one or two gimmicks), often used surprisingly subtly and with only the very mildest wink in the direction of the audience.

Despite what one is used to from later Hill and Spencer movies, there really isn’t all that much slapstick going on here, with most of the physical humour working more as a sub-set of sight gags; just with more punching on heads and shot down trousers, as if the film’s high concepts was to take the Spaghetti Western and replace most shoot-outs with light and fun brawls. An approach that certainly, given the general wiliness of Italian genre producers, doesn’t just by chance open up the genre to family audiences.

Consequently, and despite some cynical jokes, the resulting film is a rather good-natured concoction where the big bad is sent off to Nebraska after a big climactic brawl, where shot sheriffs walk around on crutches quite sprightly, and where tricksters can happily escape the threat of grown-up responsibilities while still helping out those in need if they put their mind to it. If this is supposed to be a conscious argument against the Spaghetti Western’s generally more cynical and bitter bent I’m not at all sure, though it’s certainly not impossible.

In any case, They Call Me Trinity proves how a capable director can take some very pessimistic (sometimes even cruel) genre conventions, and give them a believable twist in the direction of the good-natured, the fun, and the (dare I say it?) life-affirming, without having to turn to sappiness – at least in the realm of comedy.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,spaghetti western,enzo barboni,terence hill,bud spencer,farley granger

In short: The Five Man Army (1969)

Somewhere in revolutionary Mexico. Certified criminal genius The Dutchman (Peter Graves) summons a group of old acquaintances and friends for a heist. Knife-throwing swordsman Samurai (Tetsuro Tanba, trying to go broaden his reign of being in every Japanese film to Italian cinema too), food-fixated strongman Mesito (Bud Spencer), explosives expert and cardsharp Captain Augustus (James Daly) and unsuccessful bank robber and former trapeze artist Luis Dominguez (Nino Castelnuovo) are perfectly willing to take part in one of the Dutchman's plans, seeing they all have hit rock bottom in one way or the other.

The Dutchman has been hired by Mexican revolutionaries to steal half a million dollar of foreign bribes in gold that are bound to be delivered to the military dictator of the day, and instead give them to the revolution. Officially, every member of the Dutchman's team is promised a thousand dollars, but he heavily hints at further plans to steal the gold from the revolutionaries too.

However, before anyone can think about any kind of double-cross, there are a few problems to solve. Chief among these problems is that the gold is being transported in a heavily armed and guarded train only a fool or an army would take on in a frontal assault. Fortunately, the Dutchman is quite the planner when it comes to impossible missions.

From time to time, Italian producers didn't just import a handful of foreign stars to improve their films' chances at success in international markets, but also made attempts to give the director's chair to an American. Usually, these films didn't amount to much, for the US directors were generally of the dependable workhorse type of filmmaker badly equipped to work through the peculiarities of Italian scripting practices, as well as just not the sort of visual stylists many of even the lesser Italian directors were.

The Five Man Army's director Don Taylor is quite a good example of the type of American willing to do this type of work for hire. As a very experienced director mostly working on TV, Taylor is enamoured of a straightforward point and shoot style that makes the film look visually impoverished when compared to other Spaghetti Western. Ironically, how much of the film was actually directed by Taylor is not clear at all. Depending on the source, Taylor either directed most everything or was replaced by the film's producer Italo Zingarelli after a day or so. Since not even the actors playing in the damn thing are telling the same story about its production history, we will probably never know for sure.

Personally, I'd go with Taylor as the film's main director, though, because Five Man Army looks like the product of exactly the kind of director Taylor was, someone who doesn't have much of an eye for beauty or for mood, but who knows how to keep a film moving. The script (curiously co-written by US animation writer Marc Richards and Dario Argento) plays more to Taylor's strengths as a director than is normal in this sort of project, replacing much of the moral ambiguity and cynicism typical of the Spaghetti Western with more easily digestible boy's adventure tropes, and featuring a narrative that is as straightforward as the director's style.

Consequently, Five Man Army isn't much to talk about as a Spaghetti Western, but works perfectly fine as a straightforward Western with (also straightforward) heist movie elements. Plus, it has a pretty great scene where Tetsuro Tanba hacks an office full of soldiers to pieces while Nino Castelnuovo looks on with a shocked expression, which is something that can't be said about many Westerns, Spaghetti or not.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,spaghetti western,in short,don taylor,peter graves,james daly,bud spencer,tetsuro tanba,nino castelnuovo

In short: Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die (1968)

Bill Kiowa (Brett Halsey) has spent years in jail for a robbery he didn't commit. He has used his time leveling up his fast-drawing skills, and is now bound for revenge on James Elfego (Tatsuya Nakadai, oh yeah) who framed him and killed his Indian wife.

Kiowa soon learns that his enemy's gang has grown in the intervening years, and decides he'll need help in his vengeance project. So he puts together a team of four excellent gunmen (among them Bud Spencer and William Berger) to assist him.

Elfego for his part does not like to be hunted and tries to change his role from that of the hunted into that of the hunter.

Tonino Cervi's film would probably fall under the large umbrella of solid and entertaining examples of the Spaghetti Western genre I can not find a single word to say about, if not for the excellent stuntcasting of the great Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai as its big bad. Hooray for the Italian/Japanese friendship!

Unfortunately, the script doesn't give Nakadai as much to do as one would hope for (I suspect the language barrier made it difficult to let him do more dialogue-heavy scenes than strictly necessary for the plot), but Nakadai still does some excellent Kinski-style scenery-chewing, making bug eyes like Amrish Puri and looking dangerously mad quite like himself.

Cervi (or co-writer Dario Argento?) also puts in two fight scenes styled after chambara fights in which Nakadai wields a machete as if it were a katana, while the soundtrack pretends to belong to a Japanese movie. It's of course as ridiculous as it is awesome.

It's a bit of a shame the good guys aren't as interesting. While Spencer and Berger at least seem to have fun playing some of their stock characters, Halsey's "Franco Nero as Django" performance put comes over as a bit bland and unexciting instead of the mysterious and dangerous he is probably going for. The other two characters, as well as the bad henchpeople, are so underwritten as to be non-existent.

Today We Kill also starts off much slower than necessary. Once the film hits has hit its stride, though, it's getting exciting - though not original - enough. I'd call the film's finale of cat and mouse games in an atmospheric (and very European looking) forest even very good. Suddenly, Cervi's direction, perhaps inspired by the autumn forest, becomes moody and creative, at times even intense.

Intense enough that I'd recommend the film to non-Spaghetti-completists even without Nakadai's participation.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,spaghetti western,tonino cervi,in short,brett halsey,bud spencer,william berger,tatsuya nakadai