Reviews

This episode stands out from earlier ones with its more interesting visual style.Shots were composed of more interesting angles. The monster has a fun design w/ its vacuum cleaner tongue for sucking up pearls. Also, the opening and ending give a feel for swinging 60s Tokyo.

This episode was also the first episode to streamline the basic series formula. Instead of going through the whole set-up of monster origin, science patrol investigation, etc. This episode moves right to monster action after a short prelude.

There is some goofy stuff about women and their love of pearls, but that adds to the period charm. There is no reason to get offended over Ultraman . . .

Seminò La Morte... Lo Chiamavano Castigo Di Dio [1972] was the last of Roberto Mauri's string of ultra-low budget Italian westerns. Two of his films, Vendetta è Il Mio Perdono, La [1968] and Sartana Nella Valle Degli Avvoltoi [1970] are straightforward b-movies that are alright diversions for euro-western fans, but this movie and Colorado Charlie [1965] are exercises in incompetence and would serve as good fodder for Mystery Science Theater. The dubbing, in particular, is so bad that it has to be seen to be believed.

Durango (or Django in the English version) is seen leaving a midnight tryst the same night that a bank robbery occurs. Accused of the robbery, he is thrown in jail with the bandit/revolutionary Santo. When Santo is freed out by a mysterious figure, Durango flees with him and sets out to discover the identity of the bank robbers.

Italian and Spanish westerns were something of an improvisational genre – based on a foreign model, then off of a few successful translations of that model (Leone, Tessari, Corbucci), these movies took the same basic elements and recombined or re-emphasized them, a tendency that in the end gave the genre unique delirious over-the-top character. While this movie was late in the cycle and poorly made, it is variation on earlier, better films. The relationship between Santo and Durango is reminiscent of the Gringo/Revolutionary duos of La Resa Dei Conti [1966] or Vamos A Matar, Compañeros (1970). The overall revenge film plot was very popular through the genre, though what is often emphasized is the aspect of mystery of this type of plot.

In Mauri's better westerns, dialog is sparse. However, in this movie the villain Scott spends far too much time in his study describing his traps for Django. Then Mauri cuts to Django and his escape from the dastardly plan. Mauri never figured out how the more successful films in the genre created tension and narrative drive. They used distorted angles and tense, faces and presences that imposed themselves onto the scene and the audience in a dynamic visual tension, and eccentric music and gestures that were exaggerated until they were radically out of proportion.

This is movie would only be of interest to euro-western fans.

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Roberto Mauri directed a number of rather pedestrian Italian western such as Sartana nella Valle degli avvoltoi [1970], Seminò la morte... lo chiamavano Castigo Di Dio [1972], and La Vendetta è il mio perdono [1968] as well as Colorado Charlie [1965], which was his first film in the genre. Unlike Baldenello, Mulargia, and a few other ultra-low budget directors, Mauri didn't master the technique of focusing his resources to achieve a single effect (like Django il bastard' s [1969] focus on a Gothic atmosphere)and so his movies tend to be a little dull.

Wild Bill, sheriff of Springfield and the fastest gun in the territory, is retiring at the request of his new wife, a widow with a young son whose father had been killed in a gunfight. Colorado Charlie, notorious Mexican bandit, learns of this and of the celebrating cattle buyers that have recently returned to town. Waiting for Wild Bill to leave, Charlie robs the buyers and kills the new sheriff, forcing Wild Bill to pursue him.

This movie is reminiscent of the early WAI which attempted to pass themselves off as American product. While some of these films are descent b-movies, they are not as dynamic and interesting (to most viewers) as later movies that were inspired by Leone's cinematic and financial success (not necessarily in that order). Colorado Charlie is a strange little melodrama with music that at times brings to mind 1940s b-westerns and histrionics that belong to the silent era. Given the utter poverty of the production, it is difficult to determine the intention of the filmmakers. Was this supposed to be ironic in the manner of the same year's Una Pistola per Ringo [1965] in which the conventions of the western are played up and almost border slapstick? Was this supposed to be a social melodrama about the consequences of violence like later Spanish westerns such as El Hombre Que mató a Billy el Niño [1967]? This confusion arises from what must have been the mismatch between means and goals as well as shifting goals themselves - melodrama or comedy? Furthermore, Leone's techniques of extreme closeup and the idiosyncratic use of music were not intuitively understood by many of the filmmakers that tried to replicate his success after the reception of the first two Dollars films. Colroado Charlie was probably intended to be a pastiche or farce of sorts like Navajo Joe [1966], but in the end it doesn't work.

Given this, there are the usual WAI motifs of mirrors, assumed identities, and parallels between protagonist and antagonist in which the one is the reverse image of the other. Livio Lorenzo gives one his strange, over-the-top performances(see Jim il primo [1964]) as the title character that may imply some comic intentions – it is hard to tell.

The ironic pastiche that recurs throughout many of these movies is due to the genuine enthusiasm that the filmmakers had for the American western and the recreation of the conventions and situations of those movies. However, by the mid-60s the conventions of the classic westerns may have appeared absurd. Additionally, the Italian popular filmmakers tended to be very self-conscious and more than a little aware of what might seem like the sarcastic absurdity of their productions shot in the Almerian desert or the Italian countryside. The idea of a Mediterranean western might have struck them as a sort of clever joke. This irony informs the movies of Corbucci, especially Il Grande Silenzio [1968], and it led to the inevitable development of the often unwatchable slapstick westerns of the 1970s. In a film like Colorado Charlie the seeds of this development can be discerned.

This movie would only be of interest to die-hard euro-western fans.

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This early Italian westerns title Sfida a Rio Bravo (1965) gives away the inspiration for this movie, Howard Hawk's Rio Bravo (1959), which was very popular in Italy. Guy Madison stands in for John Wayne while Gerard Tichy plays the drunken friend on the mend. This movie is a decent if unremarkable b-western from early in the Cinecitta western cycle. While it is clearly influenced by Leone's Per un pungo di dollari (1964), both stylistically and in terms of the motives for it's production, it is not based as much in those stylistic conventions that would soon come to define the genre as later films in the genre. As the Americanized pseudonyms for actors, directors, and composers in these early WAI suggest, there was an initial impulse to pass off these movies as an American product. However, as movies by Leone and Corbucci found an international audience, it later became more important to imitate their movies than the earlier American models. However, in 1965 and 1966 these conventions were not completely established and there were a number of films like Sfida a Rio Bravo (1965).

Though this is an early WAI and at first glance appears to be simply an antiquated imitation of the American original, there are a number of euro-western motifs derived largely from Leone's Dollars trilogy. Wyatt Earp is stalked from a distance by gunmen that haunt the ridges of the canyons, there is the focus on mirrors, confused or concealed identities, traps that use misdirection and misperception, feints and hidden alliances; these are all typical WAI elements. Even Lavagnino's score, which appears so imitative of the American example, has moments which are clearly inspired by Morricone.

The most interesting narrative element of this movie is the difference between those characters who are honorable, whether lawmen or outlaws, and those that are not. Wyatt Earp and the bandit Bogan can respect each other because they do not hide their intentions, but the judge and powerful Zach Williams are dishonorable because their actions are concealed. This is an old western trope, but is fairly well done here. The fistfight between Bogan and Earp is one the best scenes in the movie.

Overall, the action sequences are handled pretty well while the characterization and story are pretty standard American b-western fare, though even more artificial. The last gunfight is well done if conventional. As with many of the lesser WAI, this movie will be of interest only to genre fans as long as they are not expecting Leone.

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Conedandos a vivir (1972) was and is marketed purely as a violent exploitation film. Viewers approach it that way and either find it terribly vacant and crude or enjoy those aspects of the movie that are hyped up by hucksters. As the euro-western was widely marketed as violent and cynical, this advertising tactic that often blinds viewers to what is actually occurring on-screen. This is unfortunate as this movie is actually a well thought out and decently executed western that provides the nihilistic capstone to an interesting series of Spanish westerns made in the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s. Viewed in that tradition, as the terminal point in a genre narrative that began much earlier in films like Joaquin Marchent's own El Sabor de la venganza (1963), it is a moving and fascinating movie.

Contrary to the reputation of the "Mediterranean westerns" made in Italy and Spain in the 1960s and 70s, these movies are not simply absurd and extreme distortions of the original American genre somewhat like Red River (1948) or Rio Bravo (1959) projected into a hall of mirrors. Instead of warped conventions without significance, these movies contained their own views of society and morality. Many of the westerns written or directed by Spaniards have a very interesting perspective of the nature of violence that is central to plot and character. Violence is a contagion that consumes everything and everyone in it's vicinity. In movies like El Hombre que mató a Billy el Niño (1967), El Sabor de la venganza (1963), or Garringo (1969) victims are transformed into victimizers through the alchemy of good intentions in a corrupt society. There is always a character who has a close personal relationship with the victim-turned-victimizer who both opposes the political corruption and also it's products, including their friend or brother/son. Outlaws are portrayed in bestial terms, a pack dominated by the most brutal one. These movies always end with an ambiguous sacrifice to necessity.

With Condenados a vivir, this formula reaches it's fullest development. Isolated in the wilderness, there is nothing to stall the corrosive assault of brutality. Every member of the group is degraded and virtually every on-screen character is dead by the final credits. Sarah Brown (Emma Cohen) is the only character who opposes this effect in any way, though her response is ambiguous as it involves a hopeless and absolute nihilism. In this series of movies, the typical genre ending of a shoot-out in the street or synonymous act becomes endlessly complicated. The exorcism of violence by violence must, according to the logic of these narratives, only perpetuate the contagion – an inescapable circularity.

This movie has a sort of resurrection of the dead hero in the manner of the Italian brand of western, but here it occurs in the delusions of an insane fugitive. However, whereas in the Italian movies this return-from-the-grave is followed by a sort of liberation of a community, in this movie this is only a guilt-ridden and confused hallucination.

As in most of these Spanish movies, the technical execution lags far behind the narrative sophistication. The "gore-effects" will strike you as laughable if you are in the right mood. However, all-in-all, this movie is a successful and sincere b-movie, and as such I recommend it. With El Sabor de la venganza, this is Joaquin Marchent's best western.

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Ballata per un pistolero (1967), which I saw under the title Pistoleros, at first appears to be a rather unremarkable if decently executed Western alla'italiana. As is the case with most of this genre, and perhaps any genre, this film is largely a rehearsal of narrative elements form earlier films that proved resonant with audiences. Here, story elements from Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy, especially For A Few Dollars More (1965), are the sources for most the entire film. However, while director/screenwriter/actor Alfio Catalbiano failed to create much emotional resonance with this movie, his movie provides an interesting and surprisingly self-consciousness commentary on the genre and Leone's films in particular which makes this movie of real interest for fans of the genre.

Catalbiano was not a very prolific director and this was his first effort, which must explain the self-conscious imitation of Leone that is evident through the movie. This awareness of the conventions and phases of the western was nothing new in the WAI in and of itself. The early examples all have a strangely surreal feel to them, they are familiar but something is off in the prominence of certain features or their arrangements. Leone, Tessari, and a few others successfully used this awareness in their ironic re-arrangements. Were the focus had previously been on the American western, in Catalbiano's case the focus seems to have turned to the WAI itself. This would explain the increasing amount of slapstick as well as the outright commentary on the world created in other films of the time. Along with films like Vado... l'ammazzo e torno (1967) this may mark a turning point from the sincerity (if ironic style) of the best WAI to the often unwatchable slapstick westerns that came to dominate the genre after Lo chiamavano Trinità (1970).

Most of the story is a based on For A few Dollars More, with an older "mentor" character Rocco (Anthony Ghidra) competing/cooperating with a younger man Blackie (Angelo Infanti). Costume and style are switched, with the younger man in black with a Colonel Mortimer "look" while the older man is closer to the "Man with no name." Catalbiano himself plays an Indio/Ramon Rojo-type character complete with rifle and amoral detachment. Numerous other elements, from the final showdown to the Allentown bank robbery, all have a suspicious similarity to sequences in FAFDM. The comic barroom brawl in the middle of the movie and the funny prospector "Explosion" all point to other sources, however, and are a little out of step with the rest of the plot. However, there is a character who bears a little resemblance to the Clint Eastwood of the Dollars films who is repeatedly beaten and out-shot in what had to have been a deliberate in-joke.

Catalbiano made good use of arches, depth, and lighting in a manner which betrays his reliance on Leone's style. The first sequences in the film also have the flowing camera movements associated with Leone and they help make what might have been an otherwise dull opening into something a little more interesting.

The most interesting aspect to the film, and one that should have been more fully developed by Catalbiano, was the attitude of the older man, Rocco, to the younger bounty hunter, Blackie. It evolves from disgust to curiosity to concern. Both are "traveling the same road" and this correspondence has the same strange fated, quasi-religious character of other WAI such as Requiescant (1967) where it was used to great satirical effect. The resolution of this element to the relationship is something of a rejection of the surreal comic cynicism of Leone's first two westerns. This is further emphasized by the continued focus on the 'collateral damage" of the violence in the film, as at the ranch or the strange street funeral service that Rocco watches. In fact, there was a great deal of concern with the bystanders in Leone's westerns, especially the later ones, but Catalbiano's focus is much more explicit and has to be understood as a reaction to perceptions of the genre. Blackie's first gunfight recalls Mortimer's in FAFDM, but the ending is very different, very cynical, and funny in light of the earlier film.

Overall, the Ballata per un pistolero is not very emotionally involving, but it has several sequences which are definitely pop-western "cool." Rocco's first gunfight, followed by his use of a piano as a flight of stairs, is unexpected and fun. The usual WAI elements are in place, complete with the hidden symmetries and Gothic family western distortions which are an important, if not often noticed, element of the genre. In particular, the relationships between father/son and brother/brother recurs again and again in these movies. Finally, the movie follows the same liminal plot as most WAI with the near-death and resurrection of the main character Rocco. As in many WAI, this involves a literal crucifixion of Rocco on a bizarre spinning target which the outlaws use for guns, knives and harpoons (In a mine?). For genre fans, this film is recommended. Other viewers would probably be not be interested.

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One of the more satisfying Western all'italiana, Johnny Yuma has the freshness of many WAI made during the heyday of the genre and is highly recommended for fans of the genre or offbeat, intelligent cinema.

Johnny Yuma is, in most respects, not terribly original, but this actually does not count against it. The success of a genre film depends on how well it meets the audience's expectations as well as provides surprising variations on these expected elements. Earlier, pleasing experiences are recreated but with subtle (or major) twist that provide continuing interest. The quality of the execution is also, obviously, important. A tired retread will be less successful than a sincere attempt to entertain or move the audience.

Given these criteria, Johnny Yuma succeeds. There are numerous reprises of elements from earlier films. The setting is the brutal, twisted semi-feudal twilight world of shared by many of the best "Gothic family" westerns made 1964-1968 such as Tempo di massacre (1966). The plot is a combination of the basic Fistful of Dollars (1964) plot and the Ringo films, a fact not surprising as screenwriter Fendiando di Leo was involved in both. Di Leo was one of the best screenwriters in the popular cinema coming out of Cinecitta in the 1960s-70s and his work helped provide much of the thematic continuities and coherency to the genre (Along with a couple of other personalities in a few distinct circles of actors, directors, and screenwriters). In the FOD plot, the protagonist arrives in town, stirs up a tense situation, then undergoes a near-death followed by a resurrection (in some films, like Quella sporca storia nel west (1968) it is quite literally a crucifixion). The Catholic undertone to the narrative and the symbolism is intriguing, especially given the implicit populist/explicit socialist leanings of the filmmakers and their films. The Ringo plot, developed more fully by screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi in a series of films starring Guliano Gemma, a egoistic protagonist chooses the interest of a community over his own through the medium of a relationship with a member of that community (with a healthy dash ironic uncertainty).

The relationship between Carradine and Johnny is clearly based on that of Manco/Mortimer from a Fistful of Dollar (1965). The two scene of the exchange of the gun belts provides a clever dialog and understanding between the two. Numerous films, including Da uomo a uomo (1968) or even El Chuncho, quién sabe? (1967), use this relationship between an older and younger man (father/son, older/younger brother, Anglo adviser/adversary and peasant revolutionary) as a central dynamic to the plot.

Additionally, there is the focus on deception and misdirection, mazes and mirrors, that recur throughout the best early WAI. The canons and pueblos of Almeria become literal mazes through which protagonist and antagonist play shifting games of cat and mouse.

What distinguishes Johnny Yuma from other WAI is the quality of director Romolo Guerriri's use of visual/psychological space together arrangement with the script's intelligent mechanisms to forward the plot. Dialogue was never very important to the WAI and often absurdly unintelligible (thought there are exceptions, such as the cynical commentaries in Django (1966) or Faccia a faccia (1967).

Psychological depth of character is created almost entirely through iconic imagery, it's juxtapositions, and it's description of the overall narrative situation. See how the presence of the deadly Samantha is felt during the beating scene – watching from the roof or from the background of the action. Or how Johnny strips Samantha and Pedro of their security and confidence in their power through his stealthy invasions of their ranch, hotel, even bedroom (this, again, is a theme from FOD). Finally, note how there is a focus on the search for information. Like many elements, this is borrowed from FOD which was ultimately based on the hard-boiled mystery novel Red Harvest. It is through incidental contacts, wanted posters, overheard conversations, glances out of windows, watches left in the dust, or mistaken identities and movements through the ripples created by the actions of Pedro and Samantha within this surreal and absurd reality that the narrative tacks forward to it's conclusion.

The movie was notable in it's time for what were perceived of as excesses in violence. Of course, these films were hardly more violent than many American westerns. What was different was the psychological intensity of the violence and the causes to which it was attributed, which is to say that it was not the violence but it's meaning that had changed. Johnny Yuma is distinct and interesting in it's use and portrayal of violence and this is another interesting aspect of the film.

What I personally find most interesting about most of this genre is the link it provides to the anonymous, nameless audiences in Italy and Spain to whom these recurrent narratives held some significance and interest. The artifact may have no intrinsic worth in and of itself – some flint debitage from a prehistoric site, a shard of cruse pottery, or a moldering piece of leather and rusted metal – but it is reference to some nameless presence, lives, that were significant simply because they existed. While Johnny Yuma has intrinsic worth, much of it's interest for me derives from this connection and mystery.

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A hero wearing a black sheriff's star and in a mask that brings to mind the one worn by the killer in Blood and Black Lace fights for justice against the brutal banker Curry and his gang of killers.

This entertaining Italian western in very much in the mold of the Spanish Zorro movies being made in the late Fifties and early Sixties by Joaquin Marchent, among others. Other early Spaghetti Westerns, like The Last Gun (1964), have a similar plot as these movies were one of the early inspirations for the genre. The western town in Fistful of Dollars was originally built for one of Marchent's Zorro movies. Starblack has the same plot of masked hero v. oppressor and the same goofy exuberance. It is essentially just a series of escalating episodes that consist of Starblack escaping a trap laid for him by Curry (played by Franco Lantieri, who really hams it up). This, of cource, leads to a more elaborate trap and more unlikely escape in typical comic strip or serial style. Later Spaghetti Westerns like the Sabata and Sartana films or God Forgive . . . I Kill Them (1967) have a very similar plot construction which suggests that they belong in the same lineage. Zorro films would continue to be made in Spain and Italy through the Mid-Seventies.

Director Giovanni Grimaldi wrote and directed a number of Franco and Ciccio films, as well as some Toto films, which partially explain the comic tone of Starblack (Sergio Corbucci and Bruno also had similar roots in comedy). He also had a hand in scripting a number of peplum and early horror movies, including Danse Macabre (1964). His only other SW was the good In A Colt's Shadow (All'ombra di una colt) directed earlier the same year. Both movies have the same naïve, 1950s American B-western look to them, though In A Colt's Shadow is by far the more interesting visually.

Robert Woods was one of the stars of the genre, though after the success of My Name Is Pecos, he would usually play darker roles including the memorable performances in cult classics like Blackjack (1968 ) and El Puro (1969) . Having seen these films before Starblack it was strange seeing him play a grinning, lanky, and guitar-playing cowboy. He sang the theme song, which is almost as memorable as Lee Van Cleef's solo for Captain Apache (1971).

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This is a very entertaining SW from Giovanni Fago and the prolific western and horror screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi. Fago had collaborated with Gastaldi before on Vengeance Is Mine (1967) and the next year would direct the Tomas Milian vehicle O Cagnaciero!, which points back to the influence on the SW of the Brazilian film Black God White Devil (1964).

A buddy film, the light slapstick of the first half of the film plays well as the rather effeminate gunfighter Johnny King (George Hilton) runs through a number of dangerous situations with a sarcastic grin, fighting off land speculators, sleeping with the sheriff's flame, participating in a barroom fight in drag, in a knock-down drag-out fight in a jail cell, escaping from jail and then concocting an absurd but successful plan to rob a bank. During all this he meets Meredith (played by Paolo Gozlino), a rough but incompetent bandit who meets with surprising success when matched with the clever King.

The comedy darkens, though, when King returns to town after the bank heist to find his former guardian Pastor Steve killed by the land speculators. Then ensues the plot for revenge, which involves absurd methods of murder and torture and a final gunfight reminiscent of the finale to Taste For Killing. King gives up ruffles for black (he had trained in seminary, he claimed at one point) and begins quoting passages from the Bible.

Gerard Hertar is his usual sinister best as the sharp shooting Ernest Ward. He would play a similar role in the riotous Adios Sabata (1970). In the world of the SW, wealthy landowners indulge in the Sadean pleasures of target practice at live targets, almost always human. Besides Adios Sabata and Full House For The Devil, you find similar scenes in Django and The Fighting Fist Of Shanghai Joe.

The film follows the usual SW plot of an arrogant character that takes on more than he can handle, is humbled (beaten, shot, burnt, hung, crucified) before he either changes certain elements of his character or learns the secret (the iron plate in Fistful Of Dollars) necessary to ultimately succeed. Ernesto Gastaldi isolated this basic storyline in most of his westerns and used to again in this film.

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