The Long Hair of Death (1965)

Original title: I lunghi capelli della morte

The 15th Century. Adele Karnstein, the mother of Helen (Barbara Steele) and her kid sister Lisabeth, is accused of witchcraft thanks to the machinations of Kurt von Humboldt (George Ardisson), the son of the local ruler, Count Humboldt (Giuliano Raffaelli). Helen is willing to pay the rather steep price of sleeping with the count if that should set her mother free, but the Count’s apparently not a man to pay what he owes afterwards, so Adele is still getting burned. The woman, certainly no witch before that, curses the Humboldts, their descendants and their lands.

Helen finds herself dying in an “accident” a short time later, too. However, perhaps bitten by a slight case of conscience, Humboldt does take little Lisabeth in to raise her as what amounts to a daughter - and since we never see or hear about the two girls’ father, we might get some additional thoughts about what kind of a man the good Count is.

Ten years or so later, Lisabeth has grown up to be played by Halina Zalewska. Her mother’s curse seems to come true, for the land is plagued by drought and pestilence, turning the Count into a very bitter and angry old man. Kurt has developed what goes as a romantic interest for the kind of guy the is in Lisabeth. The girl wants nothing to do with him whatsoever, but once the Count dies mid-rant, she is in no position anymore to say no to his “proposal” of marriage.

Some time later, things have not improved for the Humboldt lands. Lisabeth, while not having grown to love Kurt for obvious reasons, has grown somewhat possessive of him, finding it difficult to reconcile this feeling with her hatred for her husband as a Humboldt as well as an individual. On the night of a terrible storm, Helen – in a fantastic sequence - rises from her grave and turns up in the Humboldt’s chapel. Kurt, who, like everyone else who knew Helen, doesn’t recognize her at all, quickly falls in terrible lust with the woman who now calls herself Mary, breaking whatever the emotional bonds between him and his wife may be, and soon starts to plan her murder. From there on out, things begin to go very badly indeed for the man, madness and much worse awaiting.

The Long Hair of Death is certainly not the best of the gothic horror films of house favourite Antonio Margheriti (as usual, working under his nom de plum of Anthony Dawson in most parts of the world), it being paced a bit too leisurely even for its genre and time and not quite delivering the dramatic tension of Horror Castle and Castle of Blood. However, it perfectly encapsulates the tone of morbidity and perversity always lurking under the surface of its genre, and every positive human feeling is perverted into its worst form.

Love in particular as portrayed here is a terrible power for the worst, but then, all love in the film is twisted in some way, shape or form. This is exemplified in Kurt’s desire for Lisabeth, a feeling that never rises above the wish to possess her in whatever way possible. The kind of love that eventually arises in Lisabeth in response, however, is just as terrible in its own way, mirroring his sense of possession where hatred would seem the much healthier alternative. And let’s not even think about what exactly is going on between her and her dead sister, supernatural vengeance perverting this relationship too until it is only a tool for destruction. Clearly, there is something very wrong in the lands of the Humboldt’s.

Margheriti’s goes all out in emphasising the way all the central human relationships here seem perverted and twisted, apart from a handful of genuinely human gestures between Lisabeth and the lady Grumalda (Laura Nucci). But then, Grumalda’s motherly love for Lisabeth will also make her complicit in the vengeance plan from beyond the grave, paying back Kurt’s cruelty with just as much of their own.

All of this is clad in an increasingly nightmarish mood of stark contrasts between shadow and light. The decrepit corridors of the castle becoming ever more labyrinth-like, and the paths the characters take through them increasingly draw them downwards towards the castle’s crypts (and death). It’s morbid in a very precise way.


On the acting side, Steele, not surprisingly, dominates proceedings with sheer charisma (technique really isn’t something of much use for an actress or actor in Italian horror of this time), which is only fit and proper since Helen as Mary does dominate the other characters one way or the other, too.

Past Misdeeds: And God Said To Cain (1970)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

After ten years of forced labour, Gary Hamilton (Klaus Kinski) is pardoned by the state governor. As it goes with protagonists of movies, Gary has been framed for the crime he has supposedly committed, and has not exactly mellowed towards the people responsible for his plight.

So Gary gets into the next stagecoach to return to the little Western town where his troubles began. With him in the coach is Dick Acombar (Antonio Cantafori), a soldier who is just returning home after two years of absence. As destiny (and it is destiny responsible in this particular film, and not luck) will have it, Dick is the son of the main target of Gary's vengeance. Gary gets out of the coach a bit before town, because he still needs to buy a weapon and a horse from the mandatory old blabbermouth, but he asks Dick to tell Acombar that he'll be around for a visit in the evening.

Dick's father (Peter Carsten) has become the head honcho of the town, ruling it with an iron fist and a veritable army of gunmen, yet has somehow been able to hide his rather dubious character from his son. Acombar and those of his henchmen in the know seem rather disturbed when they hear the news of Gary's impending arrival.

Because the patriarch still wants to hide the nature of his affairs from his son (for whom he has great plans including buying him the presidency), he sends his men out into town to kill Gary before Gary can learn the truth of the business between them. That's easier said than done, though. Gary arrives at nightfall, together with a tornado that might just have metaphorical dimensions, and he shows a nearly supernatural ability at hiding and striking at his enemies from the shadows, slowly working his way closer to Acombar throughout the night. Of course, all that racket in town can't help but send a clever young man like Dick searching for explanations.

After my last Spaghetti Western experience with Ferdinando Baldi's clichéd and unfocused Django, Prepare A Coffin!, it is especially nice to stumble onto a film as focused and tight (though not lacking in clichés) as Antonio Margheriti's And God Said To Cain, the product of a director not only in control of his visuals but also one having quite specific ideas about dramatic unity Aristotle-style. Tightness and focus aren't usually words I tend to connect with Margheriti's name, but And God Said To Cain makes it quite obvious that the director could do tight and focussed if he wanted to.

Now, Margheriti is of course one of my special favourites among Italian genre filmmakers, yet I usually tend to praise him for those of his films that live on sheer gleeful silliness and a sense of good fun like his post-Indiana Jones adventure movies or - strangely enough - his jungle action films. One tends to forget that Margheriti was also quite at home in the Gothic horror genre - a part of the cinematic landscape where one won't find much glee - and did in fact produce some very fine films there.

And God Said To Cain is Margheriti's successful attempt at stitching the stylish and elegant head of the Gothic onto the stinking, unwashed and possibly flea-bitten body of the Spaghetti Western, creating a monster made out of ringing church bells, howling wind, shoot-outs and vengeance taken right out of the Old Testament. In a sense, mixing the typically elegant Gothic horror with the typically rude Spaghetti Western shouldn't work, what with the Gothic being a film genre of night and fog and the Spaghetti being one of daylight and too stark sunshine.

Fortunately, Margheriti makes some deft directorial choices, taking the mood (and therefore the night) from the Gothic and the nature of his hero and the way violence works in provoking ever more violence from the Spaghetti. The director also emphasises the common ground of the two genres he is trying to fuse: both can be high on the melodrama (although the Spaghetti Western not always is) and both love to tell stories of vengeance and the way the sins of the father tend to fall back on the sons, as will inevitably happen to Dick Acombar in the end here.

It comes with the vengeance territory that both genres tend to believe in destiny (or the grim god of the Old Testament working through the gun of a film's protagonist) and so like to end on a scene of a cursed building burning down. And God Said To Cain is certainly no exception to this rule, ending a final confrontation in a room full of mirrors (of course also a visual tell of both the Gothic genre and the Spaghetti Western) with a burning villa.

I find it rather interesting how the film utilizes Kinski. Usually, directors employing the man had him do his - loveable and most excellent - Wild Man of Germany shtick, glowering, screaming and jumping up and down like the original, frightening Rumpelstilzchen, but Margheriti somehow convinces Kinski to restrain himself until he becomes a stone-faced, coolly-burning killer who shows his true emotions only through his eyes. Not surprisingly, Kinski is quite brilliant at this, too.

I was also impressed by Margheriti's restraint when it comes to showing the violence happening, often only letting us (and the increasingly panicked bad guys) see the aftermath of Kinski's killings instead of the the executions, letting the audience share something of his victims' fear of their enemy being more than just a normal human being who can be killed like anyone. Only the film's final third shows Kinski's work in more detail, and very consciously begins to show us the sheer physical strain this man must be under, making him possibly even more frightening than he was when he seemed to possess the dubious physical reality of the killer from a slasher movie. After Kinski has become something akin to a force of nature, he slowly becomes human again until he can throw away his gun in the end.

There's a mythical quality about much what happens in the film. It lies in the way in which what would be coincidences in a different world become destiny, in the dark rhythm of the film's editing, in the methodical way Kinski goes about the killing business, the silent fear he awakens in his victims and in the sparseness of information about what betrayal it is Kinski has come to take vengeance for.

This is not all the sort of Spaghetti Western one would expect Margheriti to make - and in fact, his other Spaghettis are much lighter in tone - but it should be an excellent surprise for everyone stumbling onto it.

Killer Fish (1979)

If you’re gonna steal a bunch of diamonds from your former employers, go big, thinks Paul Diller (James Franciscus), so while he’s having a nice game of backgammon as an alibi, a power plant and other stuff explodes as a distraction while his nurse-turned-lover Kate (Karen Black putting way more effort in than anyone else on screen) and a group of professional criminals lead by professional criminal and semi-professional ladies man Lasky (Lee Majors playing that character he’s always playing lest horrible things will happen on screen, one supposes) do the actual stealing.

Things go well enough, and the successful criminals sink their loot in a lake to let it wait there for sixty days until the heat dies down. Alas, not everyone – namely some of Lasky’s buddies - is too happy with the idea of waiting two whole months in a tourist town in Brazil (there’s obviously no accounting for taste). They learn all too soon that Diller has taken some precautions for this case, for he has infested the nicely dammed off lake with piranhas who proceed to eat the untrustworthy criminals. Despite this not hanging well with Lasky, he still finds time and space to romance visiting model Gabrielle (Margaux Hemingway, not able to act as usual) and say stuff like: “Historically, bisexuality is a lot older than any of my blocks” (seriously). Obviously, everyone involved is still trying to pull one over (though it’s clear Lasky and Kate would both have preferred to play fair) on each other, an activity that gets decidedly more dangerous once a storm destroys the dam and the surviving cast find themselves on a sinking boat on a piranha-infested lake.

As long-time readers among my imaginary audience might remember, I’m predisposed to like any old crap Italian director in every genre known to Man and some known only to Italian cinema Antonio Margheriti did, so it’ll come as little surprise to these chosen few that I did indeed like, as well as deeply enjoy, this somewhat misbegotten mixture of heist film, post-Jaws something-in-the-water horror, men’s adventure, and disaster movie that mixes so many genres it’s no wonder it can’t do any single one of them terribly well. Instead, the movie is a series of barely connected events, cool ideas, horrible ideas and the mandatory in about half of its sub-genres boring modelling scenes. Somehow, this film-like entity still manages to have something like a discernible plot – mostly because it is entirely made out of clichés, one might suspect.

On the other hand, the film’s cool ideas lead to some fine library footage explosions, later on some of that patented Margheriti model work for the dam destruction sequences, and many a scene of actors getting eaten by fish. That’s rather enough to keep me entertained at least, and while I’d never pretend Killer Fish is anything like a brilliant movie (or even among the best third of Margheriti’s films), its mix of absolutely archetypal genre clichés, but from a bunch of different genres just thrown together, is rather irresistible to someone like me fascinated by the way the content of 70s men’s adventure books made it into the movies (without said movies ever actually adapting them). There’s a somewhat grimy charm to the resulting film that’s certainly enhanced – the charm part, this is - by it being actually shot in Brazil, the generally lovely cast, and the curiously likeable quality most of Margheriti’s movies (even those in the sleazier genres) have for me.

Seven Dead in the Cat’s Eye (1973)

Original title: La morte negli occhi del gatto

Freshly thrown out of school, young Corringa (Jane Birkin) arrives at the MacGrieff family castle in Scotland after years of absence to meet up with her mother Lady Alicia (Dana Ghia) who is in her turn there to visit her sister, Lady Mary (Françoise Christophe). It’s going to be a rather interesting holiday there, for soon Lady Alicia is murdered in what turns out to be only the first in a series of killings, and it more or less falls on Corringa’s shoulders to find the murderer

Alas, Corringa’s not exactly the most capable of heroines, a problem that is further exacerbated by the fact that the castle is populated by more suspicious weirdoes than an Edgar Wallace krimi. There’s Mary, who could really use the money of Alicia’s – or now Corringa’s – side of the family, her son James (Hiram Keller), who is mad, mad, I tell you, James’s pet gorilla James (some dude in the rattiest gorilla suit this side of the 30s), Mary’s lover Dr. Franz (Anton Diffring), a falsifier of death certificates, a liar, and a cheat, Suzanne (Doris Kunstmann), the “French teacher” Franz and Mary hired to seduce/cure James (Freud is blamed) and who is of course actually a lesbian, a priest (Venantino Venantini) so friendly he’s just as suspicious as the rest, and last but not least a bunch of servants of exactly the skulking and secretive type the skulking and secretive rest of the cast deserve. Oh, and the local police inspector is played by Serge Gainsbourg dubbed with a truly frightening “Scottish” accent.

And that’s before we come to the family curse that says inter-familial murder will turn the victim into a vampire, and the adorable fluffy cat present at all of the murders.

Antonio Margheriti’s Seven Dead in the Cat’s Eye is a giallo dressed in the set design and costumes of Italian gothic horror (though the film seems to take place in the 1920s, I guess?), and as a film directed by one of my favourite directors working in two of my favourite genres, you’d expect me to be rather happy with it.

And I sort of am, or rather, I am deeply pleased by the enthusiasm with which the film hits all the beats of its two chosen genres, and even adds a fake gorilla, but I gotta state the obvious for people not-me in emphasising the resulting film isn’t exactly a great one, certainly not as phantasmagorical as Margheriti’s best gothics, and just lacking in the depth these Italian genres generally achieve through a judicious mix of exploitation and style as substance.

Sure, Seven Dead does play around a little with changed mental states, some tiny suggestions of incestual feeling and starts from the deeply giallo-esque foundation that all rich people – perhaps except for certain slightly outsider-ish ones - are decadent shits, but all this doesn’t amount to as much as one might hope for. Instead, the film really is just a series of set pieces dressed in pretty colours and fashionably dubious yet excellent gowns worn by pretty people of dubious acting acumen but excellent build, with some wonderfully garish blood and a cute kitty, and nary a thought spent on anything not having to do with everything looking pretty in a decadent and somewhat morbid way.

If you’re into this sort of thing as I am, Seven Dead is a lot like falling into a very pretty and very comfy bed for a pleasant dream of nudity, random violence and gorilla costumes (of course accompanied by a dramatic Riz Ortolani soundtrack), and that’s a fine state of mind for a movie to produce, I think. However, there’s something not quite quantifiable missing here – perhaps danger, perhaps subversion, or perhaps the nastiness that never was Margheriti’s specialty (even some of his jungle action films are a bit friendly, for their genre); the thing that would turn this from a very pleasant diversion into the giallo/gothic mash up of my dreams.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,horror,gothic,giallo,antonio margheriti,jane birkin,hiram keller,doris kunstmann,anton diffring,serge gainsbourg

Three Films Make A Post: Featuring the Longest Kiss in Cinema History!

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011): Guy Ritchie's second movie about the adventures of a very pulp hero Sherlock Holmes played by Robert Downey Jr. and his especially long-suffering Watson Jude Law shares all the virtues of the first movie, and is therefore pretty much as good as mainstream adventure cinema gets. It's fun, it's silly, it's playful, and so totally divorced from Victorian reality or the self-image of Victorians as evidenced in Doyle's work, it develops something of a subversive edge simply by treating both with as little respect as they deserve yet also with as much - probably more - love as they do.

Bonus points for a Moriarty who doesn't act like a hyperactive twelve-year-old, Noomi Rapace (who would make a pretty great pulp Holmes too, I think) and the most off-handed Reichenbach Falls ever.

The Life of the World to Come (2010): For some reason, this film doesn't appear on Rian Johnson's IMDB page, but this was made by the director of Brick and The Brothers Bloom anyway. It's a one take/long take concert film without an audience of The Mountain Goats (in this case in the form of John and Rachel) performing the whole of "The Life of the World to Come", the (not exactly religious) album on which all songs are titled with bible verses - which honestly is much better in practice than it may sound in theory; a description that fits The Mountain Goats in general.

For the most part, the film consists of the camera shifting position around Darnielle while he plays on the piano or the guitar, providing the film with an aesthetic that is minimalist and - thanks to the long take business - just a bit awkward at times, which again fits The Mountain Goats nicely, for this is the music of a guy who has always been willing to accept and own moments of awkwardness instead of excising them.

I'm too much of a fan of Darnielle (whose music, together with that of the Go-Betweens, Lucinda Williams, Epic Soundtracks, and the Fellow Travellers may very well have kept me sane at one point in my life) to say much about the quality of the music or the performance, except that the film made me cry just a little.

Finalmente… le mille e una notte aka 1001 Nights of Pleasure (1972): As a genre, the Italian sex comedy, even in its (in theory) more classy aspect, never did much for me, despite sharing at least the female half of its casts with those Italian genres of the same eras I do love. Their ideas about what's funny and mine just disagree a bit too much with each other.

So I found myself rather surprised when (house favourite) Antonio Margheriti's provoked quite a few smiles and even two or three guffaws from me here. The film's combination of low-brow comedy, nudity graciously provided by actresses like Barbara Bouchet and Femi Benussi (and, if that floats your boat, to a lesser degree actors like Gino Milli and, well, whoever plays the other semi-nude guys), and pretty nice to look at production design doesn't exactly add up to something everyone should see, but the film is a fine enough piece of exploitation for those evenings when something deeper, cleverer or less friendly would be too much. This is also another film that supports my theory of Margheriti being - generally (let's pretend we don't know his war movies) - one of the most good-natured of all Italian genre directors, for there's really nothing nasty about the film, even when the joke's by all rights should feel nasty. I imagine Margheriti as a happy man.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,italian movies,adventure,action,music,comedy,exploitation,robert downey jr,jude law,guy ritchie,rian johnson,the mountain goats,antonio margheriti,barbara bouchet,femi benussi

The Squeeze (1978)

There will be spoilers later on.

After a few years in the slammer former expert safe cracker Chris Gretchko (Lee Van Cleef) has retired from the crime world, and lives in Mexico as a cattle rancher. Still, when Jeff OIafsen (Edward Albert), the son of an old friend, seeks Chris out to ask him for help, the old gangster doesn't make the young man beg all that much. Jeff is in big trouble with a gang of Germans under the leadership of a certain Van Stratten (Peter Carsten), but if Chris would be willing to come to New York and open a safe full of diamonds for the Germans, all would be forgiven for the young man, and Chris would make a nice amount of money. At least that's what Jeff says.

In truth, once Chris has arrived in the US and contacted his old friend, the fence Sam Steinfeld (Lionel Stander), it becomes quite clear why the Germans have to import a retiree like him for the job instead of digging into New York's native talent pool: people doing business for or with the group tend to disappear or turn up dead, which makes these Germans somewhat unpopular partners. Chris enjoys challenges, it seems, for he decides to stay in the city, do the job, and take the diamonds for himself and Jeff - whom he plans to keep safe by talking him into letting himself getting arrested before the heist starts - instead.

Things go nearly as the old gangster has planned, except for the fact that his escape from his murderous partners entails dead people and explosions and leaves himself hurt badly enough to need to lay low in an empty apartment quite close to the place where he got rid of his escape car. That sort of trace is eminently followable for the police, the former owners of the diamonds, and the rest of Chris's former partners. Jeff's true loyalties seem dubious at best, too. On the positive side, Chris's empty apartment has a very friendly - and impossibly ditzy - neighbour (Karen Black), only too willing to help him out for no obvious reason.

As much as I adore Italian director Antonio Margheriti, Lee Van Cleef's natural coolness, Edward Albert's easy sociopathy and Karen Black's full-blown looniness, I can't call The Squeeze a fully successful film. The first half of the movie is strong enough, with Margheriti seemingly just turning on his camera, being happy to film in New York, and giving his actors possibilities to shine in an authentic and laid-back way that doesn't produce much of the tension you'd usually expect from a crime movie, but establishes the characters and the city they are living in quite wonderfully.

Unfortunately, once the in a Margheriti movie mandatory mediocre but beautiful model effects sequence has passed and Van Cleef's character is laying low and not doing much anymore, the film's looseness turns into a liability. The focus shifts from Van Cleef to Albert to Stander to the former owners to Black overacting hilariously and back again nervously, with half of the scenes of no use to further develop the film's characters or plot, and the other half being pretty fine looked at as single scenes, but not as parts of a whole that's supposed to be a movie. The actors are doing some fine work with what they are given, but the script becomes just too disjointed for them to truly salvage anything.

It sure doesn't help The Squeeze's case that it has two absolutely horrible plot twists that don't make sense even if you're trying very hard not to think about them - and believe me, I was trying. Twist number one (please be advised I'm getting spoiler-y now) might explain why Black's Clarisse is so damn helpful, but could only have worked if Jeff had known beforehand where Chris would be hiding out, which he doesn't, while twist number two needs the audience to believe that Chris is either always carrying dummy ammunition around with him or can somehow pull some out of his ass.

And still, having said all that, I don't regret having watched The Squeeze. There's enough good, relaxed acting in it, and it evokes enough of a sense of place and time for me to put it down on the "basically enjoyable" side of the equation. Everyone concerned has certainly made or been in better movies, but they've also wasted their (and my) time on worse.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,crime,lee van cleef,karen black,edward albert,lionel stander,antonio margheriti

Ursus - The Terror of the Kirghiz (1964)

Original title: Ursus, il terrore dei kirghisi

aka Hercules, Prisoner of Evil

After the death of the great Khan (that must have been a few years ago, it seems) pressures rise in a city state and its surroundings. It's not too surprising that problems arise, for while the city itself is under the domain of the Kirghiz and their prince regent, the evil Zereteli (Furio Meniconi), at least until the Khan's daughter Amiko (Mireille Granelli) will come of age, the surrounding areas belong to the tribe of the heroic, shirt-despising Ursus (Reg Park).

The trouble between the two tribes intensifies when a human-sized, but very hairy monster that also despises shirts but loves capes, begins a nightly reign of terror, killing people wherever it can find them. For some strange reason, it never touches members of Ursus's tribe, though, and all of the hero's attempts at catching it - or even seeing it - come to naught.

Zereteli knows a useful political lever when he sees it, and so decides that the monster is a perfect excuse to start a little civil war and get rid of Ursus forever. After that, it's just a case of marrying Amiko, and he'll be set for life.

Alas, what our bad guy doesn't know is that Amiko and Ursus have had secret lovers' trysts in a hidden cave for months now, and their love just might become a problem for Zereteli's marriage plans.

Zereteli's not the only one not having the full picture of the situation, though, and only with the return of Ursus's much cleverer brother Ilo (Ettore Manni) will various lies and spoileriffic and/or obvious secrets like the identity and use of the monster be unravelled.

House favourite Antonio Margheriti's Ursus - Terror of the Kirghiz is quite an atypical entry into the wild, wild world of the peplum, beginning with the small yet surprising fact that its Ursus isn't exactly much of a hero beyond his awesome ability to not wear shirts and roll around a rock or two. It's not just that he isn't very clever - that's not too surprising for a hero in a peplum - but that he doesn't actually do much to resolve the problems at hand, and even spends about half of the movie unconscious. The main work of the film's protagonist falls to Ettore Mani's Ilo, who does all the thinking, planning, understanding, and problem solving while Ursus sleeps, is manipulated or does nothing of use. Even in the end, when most peplum heroes would be allowed to, you know, do something heroic, the nominal hero of this film doesn't know what was actually going on around him, and does little to resolve the situation. Ilo's not even going to tell him what the situation actually was, to help Ursus sleep at night in the future.

Alas, as great as this overturning of the usual rules of heroism in the peplum sounds on paper, the film's execution makes it more interesting than entertaining. Structurally, the film is set up more like a mystery than a normal peplum. Unfortunately, it is the sort of mystery in which the heroes are utterly confused by the obvious and only solve the central crime after the audience has understood what's going on for over an hour. This not only drags the film's pace down quite a bit, but it also makes it difficult not to lose one's patience with its heroes. It's a bit of a shame too, because the mystery's solution could have been quite riveting and touching on a philosophical darkness the peplum genre not usually bothers with, if it had been handled more succinctly and with a greater emphasis on how horrible the truth actually is. There is much of interest Margheriti could have explored here without departing much more from the genre rules of the peplum than he already did, but as it stands, he's not taking the less typical aspects of the movie far enough; with the consequent use of Ilo's role as that of the film's backdoor hero being the one exception.

On the more positive side, the film is decently acted, has a plot that's a bit more complex than typical, is really nice to look at, and has pretty okay action scenes. I don't think that's enough to make up for the film's wasted potential to make it more than just decent, it is however more than enough to make it worth watching at least once.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,peplum,horror,reviews,antonio margheriti,reg park,ettore manni,mireille granelli

On WTF: And God Said To Cain (1970)

Antonio Margheriti makes a Gothic Spaghetti Western with Klaus Kinski in a surprisingly stone-faced leading role.

I react by singing songs of praise and love for the film on WTF-Film, as I should.

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,antonio margheriti,spaghetti western,gothic,klaus kinski,reviews,other places,luciano pigozzi

The Stranger And The Gunfighter (1974)

The thief and expert safe-cracker Dakota (Lee Van Cleef) is trying to steal the fabled riches of the Chinese-immigrant businessman Wang. To his disappointment, Wang's safe only contains four pictures of the backs of Wang's four mistresses. Worse still, the pictures' owner stumbles onto the burglary and falls down dead (I suspect four mistresses weren't such a good idea for a man of his age). Poor, semi-innocent Dakota ends up sentenced to death for murder.

A little later somewhere in China, a warlord presses Wang's nephew, the martial arts expert Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh), into his service to travel to America and get him his uncle's money. The fabled riches weren't actually Wang's own, but belonged to the warlord who used Wang as intermediate to invest money in the US. Now, the rather rude man has gotten impatient and gives Ho Chiang exactly one year to return with his money, or the fighters' father and sister will die.

Once arrived in America, Ho Chiang soon realizes that Dakota didn't steal his uncle's money. It also becomes clear that uncle Wang was quite the fetishist and had the whereabouts of his treasures tattooed onto his mistresses backsides.

Since Ho is a nice guy and thinks himself in need of a traveling companion who knows the lay of the land, he frees Dakota from the gallows and offers him a little money for his help. Dakota agrees to the proposal, very un-Spaghetti-like without showing any sign of ulterior motives.

Together, the two men travel the land to stare at female asses everywhere. It's just too bad that they aren't all that good at secrecy, so they soon have to compete against an insane preacher only known as The Deacon (driving a mean mobile church) to get at the behinds.

As the film's fascination with female backsides (not that it is actually showing any of them) should demonstrate, The Stranger And The Gunfighter is not to be taken seriously. It's a film built - in the glorious Italian tradition -  to cash in on the short popularity of Lo Lieh in American grindhouses as a martial arts hero (which of course blissfully ignored the fact that he more often than not played the bad guy in his Hong Kong films) and the absolute willingness Lee Van Cleef's to do any damn thing for a movie (see also Captain Apache), and it succeeds admirably as a silly piece of fluff.

Many among the surprising number of Spaghetti Western/martial arts crossover films aren't too entertaining to watch, but most of these films weren't directed by house favorite Antonio Margheriti, who always had a sure hand when it came to directing silly adventure movies. And at heart, The Stranger And The Gunfighter is a deeply silly adventure movie outfitted with the trappings of a Spaghetti Western and a little Kung Fu more than it belongs to those other two genres.

Watching the film, I found it hard to shake the feeling that everyone involved had a hell of a time - Van Cleef shooting, singing (alas) and drinking and Lo Lieh staring at female bottoms with scientific earnestness and a looking glass and kicking male asses when necessary. I imagine Margheriti giggling with glee behind his camera, as I often do when watching the man's films.

All this is obviously far from that mysterious thing experts call "good taste", but I stopped caring about that a long time ago when I decided that I'm not that bourgeois. While the bottom business and the not completely enlightened interpretation of Chinese culture (which isn't as bad as in other films I've seen, mind you) might offend some people, that will mostly be a problem for those looking to be offended.

For my tastes, the film is much too good-natured and light to deserve anything but laughter, and much too fast-paced and silly not to be entertaining.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,spaghetti western,comedy,martial arts,lo lieh,lee van cleef,antonio margheriti,reviews,adventure

Ark of the Sungod (1983)

aka Temple of Hell

The gentleman burglar Rick Spear (David Warbeck) has come to Turkey to combine a pleasurable holiday with his girlfriend Carol (Susie Sudlow) with a little light burglarizing. Keeping Carol out of the loop of what he's doing for a living is surprisingly easy. The woman's a real airhead, but at least she will turn out to be a very practical airhead without much of a propensity to scream during the course of the movie, so the film already has one better on the middle part of the Indiana Jones trilogy (there is no fourth film).

Rick's burglary business is easy work for a professional, even with a random cultist trying to kill him while he is acquiring the tools of his trade from the shady Mohammed (Ricardo Palacios), but it also turns out to be a benign sort of trap laid by Rick's old buddy Lord Dean (John Steiner). Dean wants Rick to find and steal the scepter of king Gilgamesh for him. The artifact is securely tucked away in a lost temple somewhere in the mountains of what should be Iraq. An expedition in the 30s found it, but didn't manage to open the large, golden door leading into it. Obviously, an expert burglar will succeed where archeologists have failed.

Finding the last survivor of the old expedition (our dear old friend Luigi Pigozzi aka Alan Collins) to learn where exactly the temple is located will be the least of Rick's problems. He'll also have to cope with more cultists and the bumbling henchmen of a certain Prince Abdullah (Aytekin Akkaya, if you believe the IMDB the man who played Captain America in 3 Dev Adam) who is planning on using the scepter to...rule the world. Mwahahaha. I see kidnappings in Carol's future.

Ark of the Sungod (and might I mention the complete lack of an ark in the film?) shows director Antonio Margheriti in full cheap-skate Spielberg mode, although I would argue that while Indiana Jones might be the commercial reason for the film's existence, the serials the Lucas/Spielberg films were based on are the company in which the Italian film really belongs in spirit of quick and dirty fun and by virtue of its cheap but effective production values.

The archeological adventure part isn't as important for the film as one might think. Mostly it is a very (yes, pulpy and serial-like) succession of fistfights, stunts, model-driven car chases (in fact one of the best model-driven car chases in movie history), and gleefully absurd humor.

Some would call the plot and the plotting here dumb and juvenile, but I find the lightness of touch this film shares with Margheriti's other adventure movies much too knowing and endearing to be this humorless about it. There's also a friendly little bunch of stereotypes to offend the easily offended, but taking offense here would mean putting a weight on a film it never was meant to take.

What Ark of the Sungod has going for it is an infectious feeling of fun and enthusiasm that comes through in Warbeck's sarcastic swagger, Akkaya's insane ranting, the relish with which Margheriti presents the location shots made in Turkey and the shrugging disinterest for common sense that runs through much of the film.

Like many of the director's best films from this phase of his career, Ark of the Sungod possesses a slightly post-modern feel. It is a movie very conscious of being a movie and of being stitched together out of parts of other movies. Margheriti is of course very adept at being irresponsible and playful about it without the need of great gestures to demonstrate how clever he is.

Ark of the Sungod is a boy's own adventure with all the problems that entails, but it seems to know that these problems are mostly dangerous for and in those boy's own adventures that decide to take themselves much too seriously. The only thing Margheriti takes seriously is having some fun while making his film, which in his case more often than not produced a fun film.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,adventure,action,antonio margheriti,luciano pigozzi,john steiner,reviews,david warbeck

Alien From The Deep (1989)

An evil Texan corporation (of Evil) known as E-Chem has built a shiny new recycling facility for radioactive waste right next to a mildly active volcano on a tropical island. What do you know! It is not really a recycling facility! In truth the corps' minions dump the radioactive materials into the volcano, blessedly ingorant of any problems this might cause.

The projects' chief scientist (Luciano "Alan Collins" Pigozzi) doesn't think this is a very bright idea (now, don't ask me why he helped build it, then), but his Texan bosses ignore him and have put the homicidal hard-ass Colonel Kovacks (Charles Napier) in charge, a man who does what he's told, unless that interferes with shooting people or screaming at subordinates.

But don't fret, people who think dumping things in volcanos is a bad idea, Greenpeace has sent its top operative Jane (Marina Giulia Cavalli) and her cameraman Lee (Robert Marius) to infiltrate the facility. The inital break-in part works out nicely, and the two heroic eco warriors get some nice shots of waste being deposited contrary to regulations. Too bad that then the alarms start to sound and a bunch of angry, armed people is out to shoot them. Lee just manages to hide the video tape before he gets caught, while Jane escapes into the jungle, hunted by the rather rude security personnel who are just itching to kill her with their nice automatic weapons.

Jane survives her pursuers' attention only thanks to the help of the American snake farmer Bob (Daniel Bosch) and his tobacco into snake face spitting brand of masculinity, upon whom she literally stumbles while running through the jungle. Bob takes Jane home, and finds himself a wet T-shirt moment later roped into helping Jane rescue Lee from his (very American, that is, torture-loving) captors.

At the same time, a hungry alien has landed in the ocean next to the E-Chem base to do who knows what with the radioactive waste. In any case, it starts to lay waste to the place just when Bob and Jane arrive to rescue Jane's friend. What fun!

Alien From The Deep is one of the last films directed by Italian low budget crap hero Antonio Margheriti and is for some reason often called his worst film. I don't really see that. Sure, the film's stupid as they come, it has plot holes you could maneuver a death star through and everyone in front of the camera except for Pigozzi and Napier tries to win a price for "Worst Acting Performance In A Movie", but that is par for the course when it comes to the Italian action film of the late 80s. The true measure for this type of film isn't how intelligent it is, but how entertaining, and when it comes to entertainment, Alien From The Deep is a winner.

It really has quite a bit to recommend it. For a start, there's some of Margheriti's patented incredibly fake but beautiful looking model work, made with obvious love for detail, and an even greater love for miniature explosions). Then there's the immortal dialogue including lots of discussions of people's "balls" and some of the most deadly sexual inuendo you will ever hear.

And of course there is the alien, for the most part represented by a, well, a giant black lobster claw which is unfortunately not related to the Giant Claw, but looks pretty nifty in its giant clawlike way. The rest of it is rather less exciting. It seems to be a very very very large behelmeted, black, spiky biker without a motorcycle (but with the wonderful claw) or a beard, and it just don't look right, Ma, no, not right at all. Fortunately, Margheriti was far too experienced a director to show us this abomination for too long, so we can only enjoy it for a few short moments in the grand, Aliens-inspired finale.

What I find absolutely brilliant about the film is its (technically of course absolutely dubious) decision to make about an hour of an Italian jungle action film that then culminates in thirty minutes of Alien(s)-impressions. This does not only help reserve the effects budget for some mighty fine explosions, but also keeps the film away from needing to include too much filler by the sensational new method of making two Italian genre movies at once. It's brilliant in its simplicity, Dub-Dub.

This brilliant plan of resource conservation could of course have backfired badly if not for Margheriti's knack for making something watchable even when only in control of the tiniest of budgets. Late period Margheriti possessed a certain liteness of touch quite contrary to the nastiness and misanthropy of Italian exploitation colleagues like Lenzi (or the total incompetence of Bruno Mattei, for that matter), a liteness that made for surprisingly charming movies in genres where charme was usually absent. Even when people are mutilated by aliens or bitten by cobras, it all very obviously happens in good fun.

It's the magic of cinema, I suppose, and absolutely keeping in spirit with the classic American movie serials Margheriti must have loved.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,reviews,action,horror,luciano pigozzi,antonio margheriti

In short: The Last Hunter (1980)

Look here, future American presidents: Even Italian war exploitation movies are telling you that war is bad.

Antonio Margheriti and Dardano Sacchetti probably saw Apocalypse Now a few times before making The Last Hunter. The basic rhythm of both films has quite a few similarities and both films are not telling us that war (in this case the Vietnam war) is hell, but that war is madness.

Of course, the Italian film does this in a much cheaper way (I am sure I must have heard parts of the music one or two times before) as well as with much more dubious motives.

Captain Henry Morris (David Warbeck, displaying just the right amount of cynicism) is ordered to destroy a highly effective Northern Vietnamese propaganda radio station. On his way there he meets a lot of mad or half-mad people, hooks up with the war journalist Jane Foster (Tisa Farrow, looking terribly under the weather), enters an American outpost commanded by John Steiner, who amuses himself with playing recorded gunshots and explosions as his beloved music, shoots a lot of people, is tortured etc etc. Also, there are lots of explosions (many of which you can meet again in later Margheriti films. I can't blame the man - they are nice explosions.).

What makes the film surprisingly effective as a variation on its rather surrealist predecessor is Margheriti's assured direction. As I might have said about him before, the man knew how to use a meager budget to produce a rather expensive looking film.

I'm always fascinated by the way Margheriti can get away with the depiction of as much nastiness and depravity in his films as other Italian directors without looking like a cynical madman. The trick lies in the humanity of his gaze, I think. The camera may linger on many things a lot longer than one should be comfortable with, yet Margheriti often uses this to give the victims of violence at least a basic human dignity. In this sense, his films feel like a humanist counterpart to the nihilism of Ruggero Deodato or Umberto Lenzi.

His merry gang of constant collaborators helps a lot with humanizing the film, too. The script doesn't care for the kind of psychological depth that pleases the jury at Cannes, but still gives the actors enough to work with to create a certain amount of human depth. People like Warbeck, Farrow, Steiner and Pigozzi (aka Alan Collins) are able enough actors to make the best of what they get when in the hands of a director who cares at least somewhat about their performances.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,antonio margheriti,david warbeck,tisa farrow,john steiner,action,war

In short: Indio (1989)

A typically evil big money corporation is just dying to build a road through the rainforest. If there's a village in the way, it's getting wiped out. If the villagers are making trouble, they are wiped out, too.

The man who's doing the dirty work is ex-marine Colonel Whytaker (Brian Dennehy, making his role a little more human than expected).

His life isn't going to get easier when Daniel Morell (Francesco Quinn, ideally equipped for a role like this that only requires action and determined stares), the son of an American and a local chief returns home from his stint at the marines. The corrupt authorities can't dissuade him from seeking justice for his people. When his father is crushed by an excavator, he starts his own little guerilla war against Whytaker and his men. Soon exploding coconuts are flying and helicopters are hit by tree catapults. Whatever Whytaker tries to stop Daniel doesn't work, not even flying the young man's old Sergeant Jake (Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Yes, that's his name. I am sorry to inform you that his name is the only marvelous thing he has.) in to have a little talk with his student.

If nothing else, this is another proof that Antonio Margheriti was even very late in his career still able to make an entertaining film out of next to nothing.

I doubt that Margheriti had much more money to spend on it than Tonino Ricci had when making Raiders of the Magic Ivory; Indio still looks so much better that Raiders feels even more like the (surprisingly funny) joke it is.

The difference here is Margheriti's talent to let things look a lot more interesting than they have any right to be. Even the silliest moments almost magically work, there is no filler to be found and the action is inventive enough to satisfy. Even the acting is mostly alright (in Dennehy's case even a lot better than alright), with the exception of Hagler who has never met a line he couldn't butcher.

And come on, there are exploding coconuts.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,antonio margheriti,brian dennehy,in short,action,francesco quinn

Jungle Raiders (1985)

Malaysia, 1938. Duke Howard (Christopher Connelly) also known under the delightful moniker of Captain Yankee pays is bills by conning Western millionaires into financing not all that dangerous adventurous expeditions full of events Disney World would be proud of. As the Captain sees it, nobody gets hurt: the rich have the adventures of their lives and himself, his friend Gin Fizz (Luciano Pigozzi; a better alcoholic Scot than that Connery guy could ever dream of) and a local tribe that plays the evil howling natives for them make a nice living. Alas wonderful arrangements like that don't last forever. Just back, he helps a woman called Maria Janez (Marina Costa) escape a handful of crooks that tries to kidnap her (queue fruit cart and cardboard box destroying car chase here), only to be brushed off when she hears his name. He doesn't know yet that she is a) the woman of his dreams and b) working for a museum in search of the mythical Ruby of Gloom. He also doesn't know that she is the person his friend Warren (Lee van Cleef) has just blackmailed him into playing the guide for in a real adventure.

How adventurous, you ask? Well, there are a few other groups interested in the Ruby - the usual types, like the hidden guardians every artifact must have and the Borneo Pirates under their leader Tiger, who plans on using the Ruby to help him get crowned as king of Malaysia (nope, I don't know why he needs the ruby for that) and who has bought the help of the local weapon smuggler Da Silva and a group of quite unimpressive mercenaries. I see lots of explosions in Captain Yankee's future.

Antonio Margheriti has a big place in my personal pantheon of Italian B-movie directors. A film like this doesn't make this place smaller. In part an Indiana Jones rip-off, a comedy that has a lot of fun with some genre clichés and a series of explosions (yeah, the Ruby is buried under a volcano), Jungle Raiders certainly is a lot of fun. The actors seem to be having a lot of fun, the tone stays mostly on the light side and the humor is (to my great surprise) actually funny. Margheriti's usage of genre standards is actually a lot more interesting than what the gentlemen Spielberg and Lucas did; especially when some of the racist underpinnings the Indiana Jones films just repeat are nicely deconstructed.

This being an Italian action movie, there are of course moments of pure idiotic genius, most of them backloaded into the last third of the movie. Personal favorites here are the caterpillar/tank with flamethrower approved embrasures and Lassie the cobra who gives Wonder Dog Moti a run for his money (and gets to slither into the sunset with a lady cobra, oh yes!).

And the best thing? This isn't even Margheriti's best adventure movie.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,adventure,action,comedy,antonio margheriti,christopher connelly,marina costa,lee van cleef,luciano pigozzi,reviews