The weirdly named Kitosch (George Hilton) works as a ranchhand for a certain Don Jaime (Eduardo Fajardo) on a farm close to the Mexican border. His real specialty aren't cows; he rather has a thing for married women. Don Jaime takes this mostly with good cheer and lots of lashings of Kitosch's backside. Kitosch himself seems to be perfectly alright with this kind of treatment. Things change when Don Jaime finds his whipping boy in a, well, let's say problematic situation with the Don's own wife (Pamela Tudor). This time the Don isn't quite as amused by Kitosch's antics, which are for once not what they look like, and decides that branding the cowboy's ass with his brand is a fitting penalty.
After this, Kitosch doesn't really want to stay on the ranch anymore (what a surprise). Alas Don Jaime doesn't take kindly to Kitosch's wish for a change of employer and does his worst to make the man stay.
After some minor cat and mouse games and severe beatings, Kitosch escapes, only to get arrested by the corrupt Sheriff of the next village.
There's a nice rope already waiting for him, when Black Tracy (Frank Wolff) - an infamous bandit and killer - comes to town and has his own little run-in with the Sheriff and his men during which Kitosch saves his life.
A sort of friendship develops between the men and soon both are robbing gold and taking revenge on some friends of Tracy's who once betrayed him.
The longer they are together, the more obvious it becomes (even to the somewhat slow Kitosch) that Tracy is a psychopath, a sadist and an epileptic (which Kitosch finds worse than his friends other problems). Even worse: Tracy is not what I would call a dependable friend.
It doesn't take long until the rather less bloodthirsty Kitosch and Tracy come to blows. In the end, only one of them can survive.
One shouldn't underestimate the ability of a typical Italian journeyman filmmaker like Nando Cicero to make a damn good film when the possibility shows itself.
His direction of Last of the Badmen certainly isn't flashy or all that creative, but he does quite a nice job in letting a well written script do its thing.
An added bonus are the fine performances of Hilton (who is a much more believable gunman than I had expected) and Wolff that really let the film become a fine exploration of moral shades of gray (of course one of the big themes of the Spaghetti Western).
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2 comments:
This sounds really interesting, and it's been a while since I've watched a western. I like them a bit strange, and this does sound strange.
Oh, it's stranger when it's told than seen, yet there are some weird flourishes.
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