Indian US cavalry Captain Apache (who knows if he has a real name, he's played by Lee van Cleef in any case) is sent to the border between America and Mexico to solve the murder of the local contact between Indians (who knows which tribe?) and the US government. The man's last words was the mysterious sounding phrase "April morning". Apache is not the only one bound to find out what that means. There is also the local big man Griffin (Stuart Whitman), the woman of dubious character (Carroll Baker), a freshly crowned Mexican bandit general and various freaks and geeks. All seem to be tangled up in something big and mysterious.
Captain Apache is one of the weirder Euro Western. A British-Spanish co-production, it does its best to look as much as a Spaghetti Western as possible - there's mud, eye-squinting, an obvious lack of personal hygiene, Lee van Cleef, the works.
The film also sports a gloriously silly disregard for logic and sense that would make even the writers of the The Stranger movies proud. I don't think they left any possible bad joke about a Western cliché out.
Fortunately, the actors are game and play the whole mess just short of breaking out in giggles - I've never before seen van Cleef so close to a plain grin (and really, what would you do if you had to wear the absurd leather jacket with fringes and fur collar he sports for large parts of the movie?).
Just add to this mess two outrageously bad songs sung by our lead actor himself and a complete disconnect in dialogue, tone and direction style, and you have yourself a winner.
Winner of what, I'm not sure.
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6 comments:
Ah, so glad you wrote this one up -- not the least because it confirms the existence of a movie that I might otherwise just think of as having been some kind of a bizarre fever dream. The closest I was able to come to reviewing this is in a closing reference to it in my Teleport City review of Tahalka. To me, the whole thing is a real testament to Lee Van Cleef's professionalism. He admirably soldiers through the entire proceedings despite being constantly called "Red Ass" by everyone else in the cast and having to sing those absurdly awful (and, of course, entirely excellent) songs.
Yeah, it's all very very odd in that "is it supposed to be a comedy or not?" way that delights me to no end.
I was initially thinking about quoting a part of the lyrics, but I don't want to get my blog flagged for excessive cruelty.
Cruel not only to your readers, but to the memory of all involved in writing, recording and performing it... and especially to anyone who has succesfully managed to forget it after hearing it the first time.
It occurs to me that pairing this movie with White Commanche would make for an absolutely perfect -- though ultimately brain-killing -- double bill.
Oh, I still have to experience WC myself.
I'm kind of afraid...
If it makes any difference, William Shatner does NOT sing the theme song.
That's good to know. I'm still recovering from his version of Common People.
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