Movies That Didn't Need to Be Remade

Well, Aphrodite wanted to see the remake of Conan the Barbarian. She's seen the first one more times than I can count (having caught it every day for a couple of weeks at a dollar theater back in Austin when it first came out) and the leading man appeared to be sufficiently hunky to make it worthwhile. The Bug was in agreement on this latter component, so we decided to allow her to see her first 'R-Rated' movie.

Since a quick look at the box office returns made it clear that this would be the last weekend that we'd be able to catch it, we saw it at the over-priced theater in the mall. It was the only place that was showing the movie in 2D and none of us have any interest in wearing silly glasses. The one good thing about the mall 26-plex was that it was also showing Spy Kids 4, in 2D, at the same time, which allowed Little Buddy to catch a movie, too. Tragically, he got the better end of the deal.

To say that it was dreadful is unfair. It was worse than that. Not only was the original far better, but even Conan the Destroyer, which was a wretched piece of crap, was better. You've seen the plot before. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was pretty much the same plot, done better. The dialogue was written by someone with a tin ear. The heavies had bombastic lines, the good guys popped out with strangely disconnected bits, and the leads seem to have picked up scripts for different movies.

Most of the acting was genuinely dreadful. Stephen Lang did a nice job as the villain, at least until the very end, when the plot completely came apart, and the actor who played Conan as a child was a much better actor than the adult version, which may explain why he had so few lines. It certainly wouldn't have looked good if Conan had been articulate and charismatic as a boy, only to lapse into grunting sullenness as a man.

None of the characters were more than a cardboard cutout and the movie completely lacked the humor and joie de vivre that made the first movie worth watching. I managed to hold it together through the movie, but burst out into loud laughter during the credits, simply because of the pompousness of it all.

One bright point was that Rachel Nichols was definitely prettier than Sandahl Bergman and a better actress. The downside was that, as Aphrodite pointed out, she went from being a monk of a peaceful order to a killing machine with very few qualms and with remarkable efficiency.

Standing in the lobby before the movie, I noticed the posters for several additional movies that didn't need to be remade:

The Three Musketeers — IMDB lists twenty-four live-action movie versions, dating back as far as 1903 and coming from countries as diverse as Argentina and Iran. For anyone born in the latter half of the last century, the definitive version was done in 1973. The cast included Oliver Reed, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain, Raquel Welch, Michael York, Geraldine Chaplin, Christopher Lee, Sybil Danning, Spike Milligan, and (in the only role that I've ever liked him in) Charlton Heston. What does the new version have to offer? M'lady is Milla Jovovich, which is an inspired choice, although I don't see her as deliciously evil as Faye Dunaway. Buckingham, who is definitely not a lead, is played by Orlando Bloom, which should attract the sighing female audience. D'Artagan is the kid who played Percy Jackson, and is no Michael York, in any way. You've never heard of any of the actors playing Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The one casting that seems truly promising is Christoph Waltz as Cardinal Richelieu.

Fright Night — I never saw the original, but really, is there that much of a need to revisit yet another low-budget horror movie?

Footloose — The world survived for 3.87 billion years before the arrival of the first version of Footloose. Couldn't we have waited as long for the remake?

The Thing — There was a trailer for The Thing. This movie holds a special spot in my heart, as the John Carpenter/Kurt Russell version came out in 1982, which was the year that I spent in Antarctica. We had a copy of the movie down there and watched it repeatedly. It gets the feel of one of the small bases pretty well. Frankly, it's a decent flick and I don't see why it needs to be remade. Without putting too fine of a point on things, I would definitely have preferred to have spent the year with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, rather than with Kurt Russell, but that's just me.

A couple that we didn't see this time, but I've seen trailers or teasers for:

The Mechanic — The original movie was fine. Not art, but fine. The pacing was good, the plot was decent. Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent both did a nice job, and it featured a Questar telescope. What could be better?

Red Dawn — For those of you who might have been busy in 1984 (or not around for some reason), the original Red Dawn had a group of teenagers fighting a Soviet invasion of the United States. This invasion took place across Canada and into the Dakotas, because an invasion across thousands of miles of endless, empty steppes worked so well for Napoleon and Hitler. Uhhhh. When we saw it, back then, two rows in front of us were a cluster of idiots in camo gear. Someone must have seen them come in, because during the trailers, the lights came on and the manager demanded to see whether they were carrying guns. Which they were. Toy guns. The manager collected the hardware anyway and told them they could collect it after the movie. Needless to say, these guys got seriously into the movie, with one excitedly shouting, "This could really happen!" as the adults were rounded up. The new version has North Koreans invading. A million starving North Korean soldiers coming ashore in shipping containers would make for an interesting opening scene, but my suspicion is that they wouldn't last an hour in the Long Beach dock area before someone had mugged them and stolen all of their weapons.

I'll run through some of the past remakes in a later posting.

Stranded in Iowa

Stranded in Iowa
Stranded in Iowa
Better get the Breakdown squad out
Get me rolling on
'Cause I can't keep my thoughts out of sight
Better get the Breakdown squad out
Get me rolling on
'Cause I need to feel the stars slip by at night
I'm stranded all night, stranded all right
                                                                      — Manfred Mann

Nate Silver has a great posting on why the Ames Straw Poll and the Iowa caucuses matter. What's interesting is not that neither is a particularly good predictor of who will be the Republican nominee (nice double negative there), but exactly what purpose they really serve for the Republicans. While Iowa itself is a remarkably moderate state, being about as purple as they get, the Republican caucus attendees are amongst the most conservative voters in the country. As a result, the Iowa caucus tends to identify which candidate(s) have the blessing of the psychotic right. Depending upon the year, this may or may not be a good indicator of who will be selected as the nominee.

The weekend's poll landed in favor of Michelle Bachmann, with Ron Paul following closely behind. This makes a lot of sense, given Silver's hypothesis. On the other hand, Pawlenty had no traction whatsoever, which also indicates that there are few moderates who attend these things. I'm pleased to see that Gingrich and Santorum both polled badly. Santorum's campaign headquarters in Iowa is located two blocks from my office and I'm afraid that it will take years to for the stench to fade.

On the Democratic side, the Iowa caucus does a much better job at predicting the nominee. Last time around, I registered as a Democrat for the first time ever, just so that I could attend a caucus (after almost fifteen years in Iowa, I figured that it was time to see what all the fuss was about). Having watched and taken part in the process, I can say that the Democrats seem to have a much more pragmatic approach to the whole affair. While each candidate's representative got to make a brief appeal to the caucus, most of the discussion focused upon who was most likely to win in November. Beating out the differences between Edwards and Richardson was much less important than identifying who could win.

It's just about time to stop listening to the news again. The year before a presidential election is remarkably crazy in Iowa. You can't throw a brick without hitting a potential president. Our suburb of Des Moines had Rick Santorum marching in the Fourth of July parade, glad-handing everyone he could. I was about to shout that he had been a loser in Pennsylvania too, when The Boss fired her elbow into my side and diverted my attention to trying to remember how to breathe. The state fair has more candidates than cattle and the cattle at least display some signs of civility.

White Fang and the Hunter (1975)

Cast

• Robert Wood
• Pedro Sanchez
• Malisa Longo
• Massimo De Cecco
• Robert Hundar

Inventory

• Three dog teams
• An Indian woman
• A branding iron
• An HO-gauge railroad
• Incriminating papers
• A bucking broncho
• A suitcase full of neckties
• One wedding brawl

Summary

A grizzled backwoods coot takes a shot at a rabbit with a Henry rifle and causes an avalanche which buries a less grizzled, but even more mangy trapper. Fortunately, the trapper has a wolf (german shepard) that is clearly the brains of this outfit. The wolf makes like Lassie and brings the shooter back, where they dig out the trapper. The trio heads to town, only to find it a corrupt dump where everything is owned by someone named Ferguson.

When we meet Ferguson, he's doing a Snidely Whiplash act, pressuring a widow to sell her farm to him. When she objects, he points out that he's always been fond of her. For example, he had offered to marry her the day after her husband died. For some reason, she remains unmoved by the offer and even suggests that it might have been Ferguson would sped her ex-husband to his heavenly rewards.

After leaving town, our trio is set upon by a pack of wolves who leave the coot and the wolf, who we learn is named White Fang, wounded. Fortunately, they find their way to the aforementioned farm.

As expected, the trapper, who we learn is named Daniel, proves to be an expert shot, brawler, and horseman. The coot also turns out to be a horseman as well, for he is able to ride out on a tan horse and ride in on a white one. When Daniel pursues the coot, he learns from Ferguson that the farm's importance is that it's blocking the path of the railroad.

An eyeblink later, both Daniel and the coot are back at the farm, just in time for an army of Ferguson's men to assault. Fortunately, the hoodlums have the standard level of incompetence and are only able to shoot a puppy, while being all but massacred themselves.

This entire attack is conducted in a static-fiiled grey fog. I don't think it was actually filmed that way, but all of the contrast was bleached out of whatever was used to master the DVD. The daylight scenes, which take place in a winter wonderland, are almost the exact opposite, with nothing but contrast. In fact, virtually all of the movie's action takes place in murky gloom. The screenshot at the top was about the clearest shot in the movie and it required considerable work in Photoshop to render into something worth posting.

In the end, Ferguson is shot (indirectly) by White Fang. I know that this is a spoiler, but I don't think that I can truly capture the spirit of the movie without mentioning this little detail.

The closing credits do include the following, in English:

The producers thank for its collaboration

"THE CASA PRESENZANO"

Breeders of the Samoiedo Belonging to Isabella del Balzo

author of the book "The Samoiedo and other Nordic Races"

published by Ed. Olimpia

The General Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Rome

The Legion Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Como

and The Members of their Dog Training Units

All capitalization and punctuation is as found in the original.

Ignazio Spalla, who played the old coot, Dollar, spent most of his career acting under the name Pedro Sanchez, including this movie. Somehow, this doesn't sound like much of an improvement.

Dialogue

"Leave us alone. You too, although you are his mother. Johnny and I must talk. Talk as men do talk."

Story

It's almost impossible to tell how much of this was intended to be slapstick and how much was supposed to be a serious movie. The Jack London estate has a good case for a defamation suit.

Music

The main theme has a seventies feel about it. I can't decide whether it belongs to a cop drama or to a porn movie.

Acting

Malisa Longo is incredibly beautiful. She might even be able to act, although this movie doesn't give her much room to show it. Massimo De Cecco, who played Johnny, was not much of a child actor. Whoever dubbed his lines was even worse. Actually, all of the dubbing is really, really bad. As in, you could get a bunch of friends together and do a better job, even after having spent the evening getting drunk.

For what it's worth, the "wolf-dog", White Fang, was played by Habbash. He clearly was the best actor in the movie. The credits also note the "participation of Robert Hundar", who played Ferguson. Apparently, he did it just to be cooperative.

Spam

I, like most people these days, have multiple e-mail addresses. There is my work address, my public address, my private address, and a couple of odd accounts that I use for specific purposes (like my gmail account, which pretty much exists to make my Android equipment easier to use). There's a reason for this, of course. Mail to my private address tends to be from family and friends, while my public account is filled with receipts, ads, job offers, and the occasional Nigerian 411 scam.

The quality of spam filtering varies on these accounts. My work e-mail is protected by a psychotic series of filters that includes the best heuristics and black-listing that money can buy. My Yahoo account has Yahoo working to filter it and my private e-mail has something like SpamAssassin installed at my service provider. What makes this interesting are the occasional inappropriate messages that make it through.

At work, the few that make it through have two general characteristics: they are addressed to one of the large mailing lists and they are genuine, first-class spam. The content is either highly inappropriate or accompanied by an attachment that absolutely screams "I'm a virus!" The stuff that leaks through Yahoo is generally pretty boring. For the most part, they're someone who has figured out a way to camouflage Viagra and Cialis well enough to sneak past the Bayesean filters, or ads for financial companies.

My private e-mail's spam falls into a few key categories that are worth mentioning (in increasing order of offensiveness):

1) Offers for business seminars and management training. These make me think that one of my friends or family has been hacked at some point and his or her contact list has been sold.

2) Gonzo messages. These are the ones with random words or the occasional line from a book or movie. I've dissected these forensically and there is nothing contained within them that would make sending or receiving them useful to anyone.

3) Knock-off/Replica goods. These are offers to sell me knock-offs or replicas of Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and other brand names. They make no effort to pretend to sell the real stuff.

4) Romantic offers. These are the offers to hook me up with the girl or guy of my dreams. The ones that pretend to be from old flames are more offensive, primarily since the implication is that I have somehow forgotten a past dalliance that should now be renewed. Trust me, any romantic adventures that I've forgotten are best left that way.

5) Pharmaceutical offers. These come in spurts. (Boy, that line sounds a lot worse in retrospect.) For some reason, I'll receive a batch of offers for some or all of the drugs that are commonly offered this way, then months will go by before the next batch gets through.

6) Educational offers. The amount of spam dedicated to telling me that a college degree could improve my career opportunities is amazing. I wish that I had known how easy it is to get a degree before I spent all those years in classrooms.

7)  And, without a doubt, the least effective spam in the world (drum roll, please): The bottomless barrage of broadsides bemoaning my basic behavior in bed. The propaganda poking put-downs at the performance of my personal package. Yes, I'm referring to the "Male Enhancement" ads. Why and how these pour through the spam filter is a mystery to me, but boy howdy, do I get them. Herbal supplements that guarantee results that would make a stallion blush, sure-fire techniques for satisfying my mate (the gender non-specificity is a nice touch), and those promising to make me perform like a teenager (which I presume means stammering in front of women and having an acne breakout before each date).

What inspired this posting was an e-mail that slipped through the Yahoo filters this morning from the sender "Sacred Hair Growth". I had to open it to see what it could possibly be. The answer were the two words "Canadian pornstars". This is so transcendently gonzo that it's almost zen-like. It certainly inspired me to wonder if there were scenes of lumberjacks showing up to discover slumber parties going on.

This line of thinking caused me to remember back a few years to 2005. I had the same e-mail address for twelve years. Not only that, but it had been published in several computer books that I had co-authored and had certainly been scattered to the four winds on several newgroups and forums. As a result, I got spam like you wouldn't believe. Since my ISP made no effort to block it, I was getting 150-200 unwanted messages a day. This led me to set up my own filtering system, using SpamAssassin and a few other tools. The thing about rolling your own is that it requires constant maintenance to keep black- and white-lists updated, as well as the tuning of the Bayesean filters.

In practice, scanning through the logs let me discover the concept of the fetish of the month. For whatever reason, pornographic spam has a tendency to focus on different subjects, rotating on a fairly regular basis. I wondered, but never enough to try to find out, whether this was based upon looking for the most common key words in Google searches, or if it was more or less random. Nevertheless, I discovered a great deal about the rather interesting interests of my fellow netizens.

I watched as various ethnic groups and nationalities had their moment in the sun, only to fade when the next group came along. I saw ads aimed at those with an interest in latex, vinyl, leather, and rubber. There were an amazing number of ads for amateur wives, where amateur was misspelled in more ways than you would imagine possible. These inspired the question, "Are there professional wives?", but I digress. Various age groups were promoted, usually falling into the categories of teens, young, older, and mature. This naturally inspired subjects like "Mature Russian Amateur Teen Wives", which topped off the great Russian explosion of 2003.

Throughout all of this, I remained uncurious enough not to pursue any of the topics offered. At least until the great balloon fetish burst into my inbox. One week, almost like magic, much of the spam suddenly focused upon balloons. Not one or two e-mails,  but literally hundreds of messages, all purporting to deliver the finest in balloon erotica.

Now, I have never lived what I would call a sheltered life, but this was new to me. It boggled the mind to imagine what could possibly be a turn-on about balloons. As more and more of these messages poured in, the inevitable happened and I cracked. I Googled "balloon fetish" and opened a few of the sites.

So what is a balloon fetish, you might ask? I'll tell you. These sites consisted of pictures of women and balloons. The women tended to be young, late teens or early twenties. For the most part they were dressed, albeit sometimes in bikinis or nightwear. The balloons were the kind of party balloons that you've blown up before. And the women were playing with the balloons.

No, really. They were throwing the balloons into the air, or holding them in front of themselves. At times, the women would be popping the balloons, usually by sitting or stepping on them. That's it. Almost without exception, these sites wouldn't have warranted a PG-13 rating, let alone an adult-only.

In a strange way, I found this gratifying. Not the balloons, mind you; a typical shampoo commercial is more pornographic. No, the satisfying part was discovering that there are people out there (I presume mostly men) whose idea of a good time is watching someone pop balloons.

Come on, admit it. Doesn't knowing that make you feel a little bit more normal, too?

The Price of Power (1969)

Cast

• Giuliano Gemma
• Warren Vanders
• Maria Cuadra
• Rai Saunders
• Fernando Rey
• Antonio Casas
• Benito Stefanelli
• Van Johnson

Inventory

• A suicidal hanging
• Four beers
• A philosophical doctor
• The worst beard in the history of movies
• A press conference
• A flashback
• A head butt
• Two gunfights in the dark
• Russian Roulette
• An IED

Summary

Our story begins in Dallas, Texas. Judging from the portrait of Lincoln and the American flag being thrown on a bonfire, it's after the Civil War and not everyone is happy. Within the first five minutes, we learn that the President is on his way to visit Dallas and there is a plot to kill him, led by the sheriff. When the plot is told to a local rancher, it becomes necessary for him to meet his end at a poker party. Apparently having a poker shoved through your torso causes you to fold.

We soon meet the President, who looks and sounds like Hedy Lamarr in Blazing Saddles. This movie doesn't seem to be particularly concerned with history, as the President is clearly neither Andrew Johnson or U.S. Grant. Also, to the best of my recollection, there was never a first lady named Lucretia.

Update

I stand corrected. James Garfield's wife was named Lucretia. Garfield was also a great proponent of African-American rights and education, as depicted in the movie. Since Garfield was also assassinated, although in nothing resembling the manner depicted in the film, I feel obliged to retract my comment about the filmmakers' concerns with history. I will point out that they could have saved me the embarrassment of writing this update had they simply pasted a beard on Van Johnson's face. Without it, he looks much more like Chester Arthur, minus the mustache. As an aside, not that it would have made any difference to my guessing who the president was supposed to be, Maria Caudra is much prettier than Lucretia Garfield.

Fortunately for the republic, the rancher's son, who fought for the Union, and a black man are on the case. After surviving an ambush, the son disrupts the unrepentant renegades' attempt to blow up what has to be the most magnificent railroad bridge in the country, a soaring steel masterpiece.

It turns out that the plotters are racist tea baggers who've bought and paid for the Vice President. Soon there are snipers in the book depository (sorry, on the overpass — no, really, that's what they call it) and the President is shot in the neck. He falls into the arms of the first lady, who cries, "Help me! Won't someone help me?"

Later, a newspaperman says that no one person could have fired twice in less than ten seconds. and there is even a Warren Commission-like medical report that confirms the lone gunman theory, including the angle of the shot. Naturally, a single doctor who repudiates it.

The allegory is laid on thick and fast. The only thing that I have to say in favor of the bad guys is that they have a seemingly inexhaustable supply of incompetents that can be thrown into any gunfight

Dialogue

"Some people dream of things and ask 'why?' I dream of things and ask 'why not?'"

Story

I really wanted to hate this movie after the first half-hour, but I have to admit that it grew on me as it went on. There were enough threads and twists to keep things moving. I certainly wouldn't claim that the characters were well developed, but at least there was a healthy variety of stock roles.

It's actually a fairly imaginative spin on the Kennedy assassination in an entirely different drama. I'd complain about the dialogue, but it's no worse that Oliver Stone's version in that regard.

Music

A decent original soundtrack, with significant incidental music. There is a song and dance number in the middle which is out of place, but not awful.

Acting

All of the voices are overdubbed. Everyone who did the dubbing appears to have been well sedated. With a few exceptions, most of the actors do a reasonably good job of acting. It's a shame that the voice work is so flat.

Three Bullets for Ringo (1966)

Inventory

• Gordon Mitchell
• Mickey Hargitay

Inventory

• Behind the back shot
• Two chinese bodyguards
• A saloon gunfight
• A street fight
• A dying mother
• Three deeds in a box
• A funky afro-gypsy indian ritual
• A six-barreled cannon

Summary

The movie begins in good style, with guitar music and men's choir doing the "Ahhhh, ahhhh" thing, stock photos of pistols (all cocked), and the worst sound effects ever of a Winchester being cocked and fired. Gordon Mitchell's and Mickey Hargitay's names both show up before the title, which means that they either had the greatest agents ever, or the standard for being a box office draw was once much, much lower. The title in the title sequence is 3 Colpi di Winchester per Ringo, which seems to be rather specific. Cutting back on the product placement probably helped to fit it onto American marquees.

Without too much ado, a pair of gunfighters are hired to recover a woman from a gang of Mexican bandits who have kidnapped her. This is accomplished with considerable more ease than you might expect, especially considering the price that they charge.

When Daddy tries to welch on paying the gunfighters, they proceed to have the most stunningly apathetic gunfight in the saloon, at least until the banker shows up and everyone stops shooting and walks away peacefully.

As an aside, no one seems to have any idea of what two hundred ounces of gold weighs, as they pour out a dozen coins onto the counter and call it good.

Once things settle down, it turns out that one of the gunfighters, Ringo Carson, has a long standing relationship with the daughter. Or, to be more accurate, a long laying relationship. The other, Frank Sanders, is rather jealous of this relationship, which puts a strain upon the partnership. The two demonstrate that they are equally bad at pretending to brawl as they are at pretending to shoot. I don't normally like to complain about the continuity in these movies, but if you're going to have one guy knock another to the ground, when he hops up swinging, it should be the same one who fell. Finally, Frank has had enough, proclaims the woman to be not worth the fight, and rides out of town.

In a matter of the next couple of minutes, Ringo is reconciled with his estranged mother, marries Jane, becomes a father, the Civil War ends, and he is appointed sheriff. We know the war ends because of a caption, in Italian, which says so while someone in a nineteenth century Spanish uniform dies on the screen.

A few seconds after this sequence, the stage brings in a dying man who says that renegade Southerners are shooting up the place. Ringo says goodbye to his son, who appears to be about nine years old, and heads out to fight the rebels, who are wearing brand new Confederate (Spanish) uniforms. He rescues a little boy from a burning building, but is blinded when a beam from the roof falls onto his head. Fortunately for him, the leader of the rebels is his former partner, Frank, who brings him back to his home.

Within minutes, Jane's father, who's a gun runner, and Daniels, the Banker, offer Frank the sheriff's job. Fortunately for everyone, the Doctor does mention that in some cases a second blow to the head will cause the eyesight to return.

Now, at this point, the story gets a little unbelievable. No, really. It gets worse. Much worse. The conclusion is genuine batshit crazy.

As I said earlier, I don't like to complain about continuity, but people walk into a building in the dark and out a few minutes later in full daylight. At one point you can see daylight out a window, while the doorway next to it is open to the night.

By the way, IMDB calls it Three Graves for a Winchester, which makes no sense whatsoever.

In the obscure connections line, Mickey Hargitay was the husband of Jayne Mansfield for six years and three children.

Dialogue

"Jane, I'm sorry about this little mix-up, honey. They didn't harm you, did they?"

"No, but it wasn't a picnic, Pa. The whole thing was revolting, as usual, and I won't do it again."

"A bit of whisky, missy?"

She takes a slug and continues, "The first time I was taken by cattle rustlers, the second time by indians, just to get you to pay ransom. I'm getting tired of being your daughter."

Story

This movie is 87 minutes long including the credits. Beyond a doubt, that is at least 85 minutes longer than necessary. The dialogue is ridiculous and the plot defies description. This is as close as I've come to just turning one of these movies off.

Music

Once again, passable music.

Acting

Whoever dubbed the leads seems to have believed that a cowboy drawl sounds like a mentally handicapped person with a speech impediment. They speak the words at a normal pace, but with a painful pause between each word and a flat inflection.

The best actor in the movie is a horse who gets shot and lays down, pretending to be dead. Unfortunately for the director, the horse proceeds to get up and fall down dead twice more in the background of the scene. At the end, he's walking around waiting for his next cue.

Kid Vengeance (1977)

Cast

• Lee Van Cleef
• Jim Brown
• John Marley
• Glynnis O'Connor

Inventory

• A snake
• A scorpion
• Two toes
• Four utterly inept brothers
• Two hundred pounds of gold
• A lot of dynamite

Summary

Okay, almost before the credits even begin, we know that this will be a winner. It's a Golan-Globus production, and for those of us of a certain age, the words Golan-Globus at the start of a movie let us know that 1) the script was unlikely to have cost more than $10,000 to buy off of whatever desperate screenwriter happened to walk into the office that day, and 2) for the most part, there was no reason to worry about excessive production values getting in the way of a trashy action flick. Now, admittedly the cousins would, in their later years, get into arty films that had cinematic merit, but this movie holds a special pride of place, as it is the FIRST Golan-Globus movie, which makes it the sui generis of an entire art form.

If that were not enough, this is a matzoh western, having been filmed in Israel, of all places. The concept of a mid-eastern western is rather metaphysical, in a number of ways.

We're not disappointed, because after a bucolic family scene, we move to town, where we meet Lee Van Cleef as an aging hippy. Jim Brown soon shows up as a prospector who struck it rich in the hills. Needless to say, this attracts the attention of the wrong kind of folk.

Van Cleef and his band soon shows up at the camp site of the bucolic family, where they engage in some old fashioned rape, pillage, and murder. This is all witnessed by the young son. When one of the bandits stays behind to loot the dead, the boy beats him to death with a shovel.

As the boy's sister is accidentally taken by the bandits while she hides in the wagon, the boy begins to wreak his revenge in a creative, if unlikely, commando operation. His actions are significantly aided by the general incompetence of the bandits, who seem destined for duty as the bad guys in a future Delta Force or Death Wish movie.

If nothing else, this movie does examine the idea that even bandits return home after a hard day of work to a quiet little bedroom community.

The title on the film is Vendetta. Kid Vengeance does have that grindhouse tone to it, though.

Apropos of nothing, it's amazing how little two hundred pounds of gold weighs.

Dialogue

"Don't step on the duck!"

Story

With a name like Kid Vengeance what do you expect? It's a revenge movie. There are a few twists thrown in, as well as some genuinely funny lines, but it is not the kind of movie where you're going to sit around with your friends and and debate what the filmmaker really meant.

Music

Decent music, by an Italian, of course. They saved money by using as little as possible of it.

Acting

What's remarkable is how much Lee Van Cleef looks like a balding, bearded Dennis Hopper. James Brown was one of the greatest football players of all time. He ran like the wind. From what I've read, he's intelligent and a gentleman, but in the name of all that is sacred, he couldn't act to save his life. Something clearly went wrong with Glynnis O'Connor's lines, because she's very badly dubbed.

Fundamental Constants

Once upon a time, when I was but a humble undergraduate, I had a professor who interrupted his lecture to point out one of the fundamental constants of the universe:

"Unlike such things as the fine structure constant, which is occasionally up for discussion (and why 1/137?), there is one number that remains fixed and unchanging throughout time. When I was an undergraduate, commercial fusion energy was twenty years in the future. When I was a graduate student, commercial fusion energy was twenty years in the future. And now, as I look upon your bright and eager faces, I tell you that commercial fusion energy is twenty years in the future."*

* I may be gifting my old instructor with more eloquence than he actually possessed, but we'll give the old boy the benefit of the doubt.

I sat in my chair as he said this and harbored a secret chuckle, for I knew what he did not. I had spent several years as a technician working for the Fusion Research Center at the University of Texas on the Texas EXperimental Tokamak (TEXT), and I knew that with the remarkable breakthroughs that we were making daily, that it would only be a decade or so before someone, somewhere, had a working fusion reactor. After all, at that time there were hints from Princeton and other places of near-break-even operation, if only for a fraction of a second.

Well, today (and I am sorry to say that it has been much more than twenty years since I had sat in that classroom) there was an Op-Ed in the New York Times on the topic of fusion energy. Stewart Prager who is identified as the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has a wonderful piece that talks of all the benefits of fusion energy: it's not a greenhouse gas producer, it doesn't pollute, there is no chance for a catastrophic meltdown, it's available to every country on Earth, and the fuel is damn near free.

And then, in the last paragraph, just when he's closing the deal, he mentions the fundamental constant:

Fusion used to be an energy source for my generation’s grandchildren; now, plans across the world call for a demonstration power plant in about 20 years.

Hmmm, I wonder how the gravitational constant is holding up these days?

The Unholy Four (1970)

Inventory

• Leonard Mann
• Woody Strode
• Peter Martell
• Luca Montefiori

Inventory

• One saloon brawl
• $100,000 in gold
• A traveling sideshow
• A church organ
• One graveyard gunfight

Summary

A band of bank robbers create a distraction by setting fire to an asylum for the criminally insane. In the resulting confusion, four inmates escape. Strangely, the townspeople seem much more concerned with recapturing the inmates than the are in catching the bank robbers.

It's easy to see why, when, within a day, the bank robbers are dead, ambushed by their erstwhile allies, while the inmates have eliminated the bounty hunters who had set out after them. Regardless of how crazy they are, it certainly appears that they're competently criminal.

One of the inmates has amnesia, but in the escape, he learns that his name is Chuck Moll. As the four of them drift into a town, they learn that he's the eldest son of one of the two families that run the town. The only question is which family. This would be easily cleared up if at least one of the families had the surname "Moll".

Dialogue

"Five dollars."
"I'll see your five and raise you twenty."
"You raise twenty, I raise a hundred."
(Lays cards down.) "Flush"
"You been cheatin'."
"What was that?"
"You been cheatin'."
"So have you."

Story

The story is good, with a nice collection of twists and turns. The four main characters have the usual one quirk each, with one strong, one good with a knife, one good with a rifle, and one good with a pistol. The dialogue is pretty wooden, but Woody Strode is the only American in the cast, so it's not as though any of the actors were likely to be complaining about it.

Music

The theme for this movie sounds as though it should be playing in a late-sixties comedy involving a young woman finding her way after moving to New York City. It reappears throughout the movie at odd intervals, giving a strangely upbeat lilt to a gunfight.

Acting

Woody Strode is a fine actor who never seemed to get the kind of leading roles that he deserved. In this movie he has about three lines, probably because he didn't speak enough Italian to recognize his cues. Luca Montefiori and Peter Martell are actually pretty good, but Leonard Mann seems to have been given the direction to look confused and took it to heart. There is one brief scene where he doesn't have a puzzled look on his face and he flashes a bit of real charisma that immediately disappears again. I'm afraid that I have to rate the acting as slightly below average.

End of an Era

Those who know me, know that I have been a space junkie since before space was cool. Which, to be fair, could mean last week. In truth, my earliest memory of the space program is Apollo 8. I was five years old and one of my classmates looked at a piece of paper sitting on the table and asked the teacher what it said. I looked down and read, "Blast off at noon." Since this was at a time when five year olds did not read, I was hauled off to the principal's office, where I was carefully examined for other obvious abnormalities. The next summer, I sat with my family to watch Neil and Buzz take their steps on the moon and before the next year was out, I can remember explaining to adults why rockets were multi-staged.

When Columbia made its first flight, I sat with a mass of other science geeks and we watched it together. Those of you who never saw a Saturn V launch can't imagine how terrifying that first shuttle flight was. Saturn rockets were an unstoppable force once the engines fired. They moved steadily and with profound dignity off the launch pad and into the sky. Shuttle launches are all together different. The shuttle's main engines fire and then take their time coming to full thrust. Then, once the main engines are at full throttle, the two solid rocket boosters are lit. Once they are at full thrust, explosive bolts fire and the whole combination of shuttle, external tank, and solid rocket boosters pops into the sky as if shot from a slingshot. The thing is, while the main engines are coming to full thrust, they're turning huge amounts of water to steam under the launch pad. The SRBs add to the steam when they fire, but the solid fuel also creates great quantities of smoke. That first launch, when the whole pad and rocket disappeared into a huge white cloud, it looked like a terrible explosion had taken place. As everyone in the room was holding their breath, out pops the shuttle, taking off toward the sky like a bat out of hell. After a moment, the entire room went completely crazy, as the whole crowd cheered and screamed and danced around like over-educated idiots.

When Columbia landed at White Sands, New Mexico in 1982, I traveled with three other technicians from the Fusion Research Center, driving overnight from Austin to catch the landing. Of course, it didn't land that day because of the worst sandstorm in the history of the region, and we had to return to Austin (or risk losing all of our jobs), so we missed the actual landing the next day.

When Challenger exploded, I was still at the University of Texas. I went home and watch replay after replay, with tears streaming down my cheeks. That day and 9/11 were probably the two most emotionally devastating in my life. I was a scientist, a physicist, and I had spent my life believing in technology. And there it was, scattered across the sky. I have read the accident review board's report and Feynmann's addendum many times since then and to this day I believe that PowerPoint killed seven people.

I've gotten up early and stayed up late and taken lunches at strange hours, all to watch the shuttle launch. I was even watching, by pure coincidence, the Challenger landing on NASA TV when it shattered into thousands of pieces across Texas. When Atlantis went up, I had the NASA feed running on my computer. Of course, my boss came in to talk just before launch and by the time I could shoo him out, I was I sure that I had missed the launch. Fortunately for me, there was a hold at T-31 seconds that lasted just long enough for me to catch the restart of the clock.

Here's the weird part: I've never liked the shuttle. It's the wrong spacecraft, built to go where no one needed to go, with capabilities that didn't contribute to science. It was built to satisfy the needs of the Air Force, who hardly used it before Columbia and never used it after. They built an entire billion-dollar launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base for the shuttle and it was never used. The wings that failed for Challenger were added for the Air Force, which had a need for what's called cross-range capability. Most things that fall from space, including spacecraft, fall in more or less a straight line. This means that you need to reenter the atmosphere at a time when you're lined up with where you want to land. The thing is, the Air Force wanted the ability to go up and either leave something up there or bring something down without anyone knowing about it. This pretty much means a once-around flight. The problem is that while you're making your orbit (in about ninety minutes), the Earth is busy spinning, so you're going to come down about fifteen hundred miles from where you took off.* Since this is rather inconvenient, the Air Force wanted the ability to "fly" the shuttle back to where it took off. In the end, the shuttle made very little use of this capability and the next result was large and fragile wings that cost huge amounts of energy to lift into orbit.

* The assumptions here are that you're launching into near-polar orbit, which is why they built the site at Vandenberg, and that your launch site is near the equator, which is not true for Vandenberg. At the latitude of Vandenberg, the cross-range need is only about 1200 statue miles, which is, remarkably enough, the exact cross-range capability of the space shuttle. In fact, one feature of every launch is the discussion of the AOA, or Abort-Once-Around. This is an option if there is a main engine failure on launch. Outside of the shuttle industry, it's not widely known that this capability is all but useless for a flight from the Kennedy Space Center. The window between a TAL (Trans-Atlantic-Abort) and an ATO (Abort-To-Orbit) is pretty much zero.

The part about being built to go where no one needs to go probably needs some explanation. After all, everyone has been talking about how we need to resupply the International Space Station now that the shuttle is no longer around to do the job. Once again, there is a story behind the story. The ISS was built to give the shuttle something to do. There is no real analogy to it except building a railroad into the middle of a desert and then deciding to build a city there, so that building the railroad seems like a good idea.

Here are the problems with a manned station in low orbit. The things that low Earth orbit (LEO) are good for tend to be things like Earth observation. Taking pictures of various types to observe clouds, oceans, and landforms or for map making. There are also some experiments like growing crystals of materials that can't mix in gravity. None of these require human intervention. In fact, having people around means that there is unexpected motion, as the people move around, as well as the need for air, heat, water, and food.

Where should people be in space? On the rocks and ice cubes all around the solar system. People are very good at pattern recognition and adaptability. While it's perfectly fine to have rovers wandering Mars (go Opportunity!), a person could cover more ground, faster. Also a trained person can spot things that look out of place. For example, from the transcript to Apollo 15:

145:41:19 Scott: Get that unusual one. (Pause) Here's some dense...And there's another unusual one; look at the little crater here, and the one that's facing us. There is a little white corner to the thing.

The unusual rock with a little white corner is the "Genesis Rock", the first piece of anorthosite to be found on the Moon. These rocks (more would be found by the Apollo 16 astronauts) date back nearly 4.5 billion years and solidified shortly after the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized planetoid hit the just-formed Earth. Developing algorithms that can spot slightly odd rocks on a field of more or less identical rocks is a difficult task. Fortunately for us, seeing something that looks out of place is a strong survival tool, so the evolutionary algorithm generator has been hard at work on this problem for a very long time.

So where should we go now that the last shuttle has launched? There are hints of a plan, if politics, greed, and stupidity don't screw it up too badly. Having commercial operations like SpaceX deliver supplies to the ISS sounds like a great idea. Let's face it, UPS and FedEx do a better job delivering packages than does the Post Office. The same will be true for crew transfers, too. Despite what some would have you believe, there is very little difference between delivering parts and people, at least on the way up. When returning to Earth, you want to be more careful with the goods when people are involved.

If there is a place for government involvement in manned space flight, it should be in the development of genuinely heavy lift rockets. These have been out of favor since Saturn, but a new rocket in that class would go a long way toward getting men and women onto the Moon.

As an old space cadet, I'll have more to say someday. I'll also put together some links where you can learn more about these topics from people who are far better qualified than I am. Until then, I say to the crew of Atlantis, best of luck and may the wind be at your back.

Four Rode Out (1970)

Sue Lyon
Pernell Roberts
Julián Mateos
Leslie Nielsen


Inventory

• Dead horses
• $120,000
• A wedding dress
• Two canteens of water

Summary
This clearly is not going to be the typical movie that we have seen so far. Instead of the protagonist being introduced by killing someone or being released from jail, this one begins with a man sneaking through a window into the bedroom of a young woman. She peels off his boots, belts, and other assorted items and then crawls under the sheets with him. Just as they are about to get started on a detailed discussion on the virtues of romantic love, an enraged man storms into the bedroom. Before anyone can say a word, the first man uses a right jab to the second man's face as an opportunity to grab as much of his hardware as possible before defenestrating himself. After his departure, the second man slaps the woman, and repeatedly cries, "You're just like your mother." After a few repetitions of this anguished phrase, he rushes from the room and we hear him shoot himself.

The next scene begins looking up from a grave at the woman and a priest. Soon, Marshall Ross shows up to ask the woman, who we learn is named Myra, about the window-climbing gentlemen, who we learn is named Fernando Nuñez. The marshall claims Nuñez is a bank robber and a murderer. Maya proclaims his innocence and appeals to Ross, who tells her that he will find Nuñez, no matter what.

Leslie Nielsen then appears as Mr. Brown, a Pinkerton agent, also pursuing Nuñez, but with more concern about recovering the stolen money than about any abstract notions of justice. The two men join forces, although not by the marshall's choosing. Before long, they're joined by Myra. Brown is determined to kill Nuñez on sight, while Ross wants to bring him in for a trial. Myra is desperate to save his life, so Brown offers Myra a trade, Nuñez's life for her favors. A friendlier threesome has never ridden together.

When they catch up to Nuñez, the movie turns into a taut psychological thriller.

This is actually a paella western, as it a Spanish-American production. The DVD version is strangely censored, with the word "whore" blipped out repeatedly.

Dialogue
"You like girls, Mr. Brown?"
"Wa-well, what do you mean?"
"Well, the way you talk about hunting down Nuñez. You talk about every man you hunt down that way?"
"What way?"
"You know, the way some men talk about the women they've had. You strike me that way about this boy."

Story

This is a western for grown-ups. It's not a shoot-em-up and good and bad are all very relative. The plot is nuanced, the characters are detailed and not stereotypical, and the dialogue is rich and realistic. I cannot understand why this movie is not part of the Western canon. I consider the fact that I have never seen it before to be truly remarkable.

Music

The movie opens with a woman (Janis Ian) playing guitar and singing the theme song. Her playing and singing pop up again from time to time. There is nothing wrong with the music, but it doesn't play much of a role in this movie.

Acting

Leslie Nielsen does a wonderful job playing a dirty, low-down, scum-sucking bastard. It's a reminder of why he got leading man roles long before he turned to comedy. Pernell Roberts reminds me of Henry Fonda in There was a Crooked Man, a tired lawman who has seen too much. He brought major western credentials to the movie, having played Adam Cartwright on Bonanza. There was something about him and his beard that looked awfully familiar. Although I didn't realize it at the time, I was recognizing him from his time as the title character on Trapper John M.D. Julián Mateos is more than passable and Sue Lyon looks and acts like Lindsey Lohan, minus the stints in rehab. Ironically, much like Lohan, Lyon ruined her career through a series of bad decisions.

Fistful of Lead (1970)

Cast

• George Hilton
• Charles Southwood
• Erika Blanc
• Nello Pazzafini

Inventory

• Hard boiled eggs
• A pepperpot pistol
• Whiskey checkers
• Trick #1
• An ex-rooster
• A parasol
• A well-armed horse

Summary

Our hero, the bounty hunter Sartana, is enjoying a picnic lunch and watching his prey cross the prairie, when they are ambushed by a group of Mexicans popping up out of the ground. They kill all of the wanted men and then flee after tossing a lit bundle of dynamite into the wagon. Sartana throws his canteen down from the hilltop where he is dining and, with a single shot, puts a bullet into it, which douses the fuse. Investigating the wagon, he discovers that it is loaded with lockboxes filled with moneybags, which in turn are filled with dirt. Shades of The Road Warrior.

At this point, I wish to digress. If the real history of the West had been anything like the movie version, the bandit would have gone the way of the buffalo or passenger pigeon, given the number of bounty hunters that were indiscriminately shooting them. Our time should be a crime-free era, with banditry either extinct or dwelling in protected wildlife parks. Clearly one-third of the population west of the Mississippi served as bounty hunters, with the rest evenly distributed between outlaws and townspeople. Had I been governor, I would have mandated that civilians wear blaze orange vests to minimize the number accidentally plugged by undisciplined bounty hunters.

To return to this movie, we find Sartana, with a somewhat different look, still with a nasty habit of offending people. This time around, most of the people he offends don't have much time to nurse a grudge before he ventilates them.

The plot involves shipments of gold that keep getting stolen, or do they? There are double, triple, and quadruple crosses until it's impossible to guess who has what and who plans to take it. And then, when a gunfighter named Sabbath who reads Shakespeare's sonnets shows up, things get really confusing.

As bad as Fistful of Lead is as a title, it beats the original English title, I Am Sartana, Trade Your Guns for a Coffin. That, I'm afraid to say, is the translation of the Italian, C'è Sartana... vendi la pistola e comprati la bara.

Dialogue

"Damn this gringo, he killed seven of us. And my woman got away. He fooled Mantas. He's one clever hombre. Si, this gringo, he thinks with his head."

Story

Well, it's all stolen from something or another, but at least the writers put the pieces together in a new and interesting manner. On the whole, about as good as it gets for one of these.

Music

The soundtrack benefits greatly from a lack of a theme song. The background music has a surf guitar meets men's choir vibe going that works pretty well all around.

Acting

George Hilton, who was originally from Uruguay, does a more than acceptable job as a low-rent Clint Eastwood. This would be his only time playing Sartana. Charles Southwood, who plays Sabbath, is a good-looking SoCal actor who spent a few years bouncing around the European movie circuit before fading away. The supporting cast was surprisingly good, especially Nello Pazzafini, who played Mantas, and who appears to have been in in half of the movies and television shows filmed in Italy from 1959 through 1989.

This Man Can't Die (1968)

Cast

• Guy Madison
• Lucienne Bridou
• Rick Battaglia
• Peter Martel

Inventory

• A bugle
• Trick #1^†
• Trick #2^††
• One coot
• Two codgers
• Chorus-line fu
• Bodice ripping
• A saloon gunfight

^†Trick #1 is the old "put a stuffed blanket near the fire so that the bad guys will shoot it and give themselves away" routine. It is now officially the oldest trick in the book. It appeared in Johnny Yuma and at least one other movie already reviewed, but I don't feel like re-screening them to find out which one.

^††Trick #2 is the old "let the bad guys follow my riderless horse, while I hide behind a rock" routine. This one also appeared in Apache Blood, as well as many others. It is apparently part of the villain recruiting process that only candidates that fall for one or both tricks can qualify for a position.

Summary

A bounty hunter takes a commission to find out who is running guns and whiskey into an Indian reservation. The commission is offered by the commander of the local fort, who is aiming for a promotion and who offers our hero a chance at redemption. What he is being redeemed from is, at least for now, a mystery.

We now cut to the Benson family, which consists of three brothers, one of whom has never come back from the war, although he sends the occasional parcel back home, and a pair of rather fetching sisters. While the two brothers and one sister are in town collecting the latest package, a band of brigands rides in and offs Ma and Pa, while having their way with the younger sister. One of the bandits catches a bullet and misses the departure, which leaves the siblings to decide that he is the man who cannot die, for if he recovers, he'll lead them to the other bandits.

Now, the sheriff shows up at the ranch and offers to help (the siblings hide the man who cannot die), but the elder brother waves off the help. His sister repeatedly implores him to let the sheriff help, but the elder brother brushes him off. The doctor, whom they bring blindfolded to the cave to perform surgery urges them to let the sheriff do his job, but the elder brother waves him off.

If you get the idea that the elder brother is both stubborn and thick as a brick, you're not far off the target.

The bounty hunter, we soon learn, is the eldest brother. He demonstrates his superior skills with a rifle, a horse, and in the sack, the latter by saying hello to an old friend, despite being shot in the arm.

In style, this movie falls somewhere between John Ford and Sergio Leone. That's not to say that it's in their class, but it has many of the characteristics of both the traditional and the spaghetti western. There are an impressive number of well-built sets that don't look familiar. Clearly this movie had a bigger budget than did the average pasta special.

Once again, the title appears to have wandered around a bit. While the DVD has this title, IMDB uses Long Days of Hate. The original Italian title is I lunghi giorni dell'odio which Google Translate mangles as "I hate long days." This is, by far, the best possible title for this movie, so it's a shame that the others seem to have won out.

Dialogue

"I'll have to operate. But even then, there isn't much hope."
"Then do the impossible, Doc."
"I'll need a lot of boiling water, Susie."

Story

Okay, it's not The Searchers. It's not even Fistful of Dollars. It is watchable, though. The quality of plot and writing isn't any worst than the grand old prime time dramas, like Dynasty.

Music

The theme song sounds as if it were intended for a Bond movie. The first chase scene also sounds as though it were written for a spy movie. After that, it settles down into average western fare, with just a touch of the spaghetti on the side.

Acting

Guy Madison is good looking and delivers his lines as though he means them. He made his career playing in westerns and this film, while probably not his best, was probably no where near his worst acting job. The remaining actors were, for the most part, serviceable.

Apache Blood (1975)

Ray Danton
Dewitt Lee

Inventory

• Bear fighting
• Cactus calthrops
• A music box
• Rattlesnake chucking
• Wild pigs
• Biting the head off a live lizard

Summary
The movie opens with the notorious Apache war chief Yellow Shirt chasing, killing, and scalping an army courier. A narrator provides a bit of back story, which shows Yellow Shirt to have a legitimate beef with the U.S. Cavalry. The courier, we soon discover, was bringing a message to a small surveying team consisting of a Major, five troopers, and a civilian scout, telling them to return to the fort because Yellow Shirt is on the war path.

The directing, camera work, and editing are unspeakable. For some reason, this movie contains a lot of extreme closeups, occasionally of miscellaneous body parts, such as feet, and more frequently with the camera not well centered on the actor's face. These are normally reaction shots, either one of the troopers trying his best to look concerned or Yellow Shirt simply looking inscrutable. The frequent and inexplicable cuts within a scene bring to mind a seriously low-end music video.

This film actually made a respectable effort to depict the Apaches as great and mysterious warriors. None of them speak, which meant that they didn't have to fake Apache and pay for subtitles. The sad fact is that they end up looking like the least competent group of bad guys since Hogan's Heroes as the entire band is killed, one-by-one, by a nearly dead cripple. The climactic chase scene at the end could easily have been called the The World's Slowest Indian.

The movie staggers to an end three times. In the first, our hero is shot dead by a soldier a hundred yards from the safety of the fort. Not shot dead, as in Dawn of the Dead, where it was bitterly ironic, or as in Platoon, where it was allegory. This is clearly a case of the two Lee brothers, sitting around the table, trying to find an ending.

"Wait, I know. What if I shoot him just before he gets to the fort? No one will see that coming."

The movie then has a five-minute montage of the key scenes, in a slightly jumbled order. This may have been an attempt to get arty, as Sam dies, but he wasn't present for many of the scenes, so it makes no sense at all. Finally, the movie ends a third time with the camera panning slowly over a charcoal portrait of Yellow Shirt for three minutes, while someone sings a song called, "A Man Called She", which is just as bad as it sounds.

Dewitt Lee was one of the co-writers, along with his brother Jack, both of whom figure in the ridiculous ending. What's interesting is that they appear to have made exactly one more film, The Legend of Jedediah Carver, that would appear (according to IMDB) to have the exact same plot.

Ray Danton had a successful acting career that ended soon after this disaster (go figure), but not before he played Derek Flint in a television movie. He did go on to become a highly successful television director. On a personal note, Danton went to school at Carnegie Tech, as did your humble reviewer.

Since the cast and crew are all clearly American, this doesn't actually qualify as a spaghetti western, particularly as it was filmed in central Arizona. I'm including it for completeness, since it showed up on the DVD.

Dialogue
Considering that almost two-thirds of the movie has no one speaking and that less than half the cast say a single word, it's just not possible to find a single quotation that captures the dialogue in this movie.

Story

If this isn't the worst movie that I've ever seen, I must have suppressed the memories of those that were worse. Honestly, a high school drama class could have done a better job.

Music

The oddest part of this movie, which is saying a lot, is that the soundtrack is actually pretty good (excepting the completely bizarre concluding song). Ed Norton is listed as having provided original music, but considering that he only composed for three movies (and based upon "A Man Called She", I've got a good idea why), but served as sound editor for literally hundreds of television episodes, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that much of it was put together using stock music. At least Norton made a serious effort to find music that fit the action on the screen, even when the dialogue, acting, or cinematography didn't.

Acting

The best acting by far is by the spouses of the two protagonists, to whom the movie cuts at regular intervals. Neither speaks a line, but both do a nice job of wandering around the set and trying to look busy.

Trinity and Sartana (1972)

Alberto Dell'Acqua (Robert Widmark)
Harry Baird

Inventory

• An old gnome playing piano
• One saloon brawl
• A top hat with a spring
• Texas Rangers
• A lot of pink long johns
• A player piano
• A slingshot
• A Gatling gun

Summary
We have our first African-American primary character, Trinity, so called because he was born in Trinidad. This begs the question, if he had been born in Barbados, would he be called Barbie? These are the kinds of deep questions that watching very low budget movies can inspire. As is so often the tradition, he starts the movie in jail, with a sheriff who sports a hipster beard and a larcenous attitude. Before long, he runs into an old friend, Sartana, who tells Trinity that he can return to Trinidad in style with his share of one last holdup, the railroad payroll.

While Santana has a knack for offending people, Trinity makes friends easily, particularly after he repeatedly gives away their stolen loot. Along the way, they run into El Tigre, a bandit who looks like Ringo Starr. Sartana's gimmick is that he is remarkably gymnastic. Trinity spends a lot of time in his happy place. After an hour and forty-one minutes of this, I was definitely thinking about my happy place, as well.

This movie was originally shot in Techniscope at 2.33:1. Judging by the amount of cutoff in the opening credits, it was scanned at 1.85:1 at some time in the past. This causes some problems at times when conversations drift off the screen.

Dialogue
"That'll be two hundred and ten dollars."
"That's a pretty extravagent price. All I've got is a hundred eighty dollars."
"Ah, no. That won't be enough. Ahhh, am I mistaken or do you have a mule?"
"Yeah, Jonathan!"
"Jonathan. Let's make it a hundred and eighty dollars plus little Jonathan. He ain't a horse, but your ass is worth something, I guess."

Story

The intention is certainly low comedy and the violence is Three Stooges, rather than Sergio Leone. The results are incoherent and uncontaminated by continuity.

Music

The music is inoffensive, which is more than can be said about many other parts of the movie.

Acting

Ralph Zucker is listed in the credits as having performed dialogue direction and lip synchronization. Whatever he was paid was a crime. For some reason, Harry Baird, who was born in British Guiana and raised in Canada and England, is dubbed by someone with an Austrian accent. There are times when he sounds a bit like Conan the Barbadian (sorry).

Man from Nowhere (1966)

Giuliano Gemma
Fernando Sancho
Corinne Marchand

Inventory

• Exploding canteens
• Pink long johns
• A musical watch
• An on-going card game with no respect for the laws of probability
• One dead prostitute
• A drunk with a nose for money
• A Buntline Special
• Mixed martial arts

Summary
The movie begins with when Gordo Watch stages a breakout from a prison that appears to be guarded by the Foreign Legion, so that he can restaff his gang. One of the prisoners is an American named Arizona Colt. (Really. I don't make this stuff up.) Gordo is the kind of psychotic gang leader who demands real brand loyalty from his men, so Colt declines to join the merry band. As may be expected, Gordo takes the rejection to heart.

When Gordo decides to rob the bank in Blackstone Hill, we learn that Colt is pretty much equally inept as a bounty hunter, card cheat, and lover. Later, to no one's surprise, Gordo takes himself out of the running for boss of the year.

This movie has a lot of trouble deciding what it wants to be. There are sterotypical comic minor characters, but they are mixed in with Peckinpah levels of violence. There isn't really much of a plot and while Arizona Colt is clearly supposed to be a real western hero, he comes across as an oaf and a buffoon.

For some reason, a great deal of effort was made to keep track of how many bullets everyone shot and there are many scenes of characters reloading.

Last, and certainly not least, the opening credits appear to have been done by the people who did the llama credits for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Dialogue
"A couple of drinks."
"Two here." (starts to pour whiskey)
"Ah, no. Instead of that, some milk please."
"This is a bar, boy. This ain't no dairy."
"Oh. I thought it smelled like it."

Story

The movie started so badly that I worried about being able to watch the whole thing, but it got consistently better. The end was an amazing cat and mouse play in a darkened coffin-maker's barn.

Music

Okay, the opening and closing songs are pretty cheesy, but the incidental music through the movie is very well done.

Acting

Fernando Sancho wants to be Eli Wallach and Corinne Marchand desperately wants to be Claudia Cardinale. As best I can tell, Giuliano Gemma wants to be an actor. They go 0 for 3.

It Can Be Done, Amigo (1972)

Bud Spencer
Jack Palance

Inventory

• A dirt-eating lunatic
• A sheriff who serves as preacher (or vice versa)
• Dance hall girls
• One saloon brawl
• One bank brawl
• One housewarming brawl
• A deed to a miserable dump

Summary
A drifter named Hiram Coburn finds a dying man who hands Coburn an envelope and asks him to take his nephew to Westland, the next town. Coburn is pursued by Sonny Bronston, a pimp and gunfighter, who is chasing him with the intention of making Sonny's sister an honorable woman. And then, immediately after the wedding, he plans to convert her into an honorable widow. To the dismay of everyone, Westland proves to be a little different than expected, particularly when Coburn puts his glasses on.

True Grit it ain't.

The DVD appears to have been mastered from a grindhouse print that had been cross-processed and then staked out in the sun to die. The result is a remarkable mixture of high-contrast black and white with hand-painted skin tones that range from tritium green to tangerine orange. The only description that comes to mind is Randolph Scott on acid.

Palance spends the whole movie puffing on a cigarette holder. Keeping it in his mouth requires him to clench his teeth so tightly that he apparently had to redub all of his own lines. How Palance didn't die from lung cancer after this film is one of medical science's great mysteries.

On a personal note, Bud Spencer bears a remarkable resemblance to the author of this review, minus a few white hairs.

Dialogue
"Shall I put my hands up or is this okay?"
"It don't matter. It's an informal execution."

Story

This is not the usual rehash of the same tired themes. Even when you think you've got it pegged, there are a few twists to be had.

Music

The only bit about the music that is at all interesting is that the title song is sung by a childrens' choir.

Acting

Spencer does a very nice job, bearing in mind that we are talking about a spaghetti western here, but Palance really mailed this performance in.

They Call Him Cemetery (1971)

[Meta-note: In this review, the scoring system is revised and defined. As a reminder, just as there are six bullets in a fully loaded revolver, there are a potential of six bulls-eyes that can be scored in each area of the grading.]

Gianni Garko
William Berger

Inventory

• A silver camp cup
• A dead-eye granny
• Four guys skinny dipping for no apparent reason
• A bullet-sucking baby
• A pair of knife throwing sidekicks
• Two saloon brawls
• A spinning coin

Summary
Two young dudes return home after growing up in Boston. When they stand up to the collector for a local protection racket, they bring all sorts of unpleasantness down on themselves and the rest of the locals. A gunfighter who goes by the name "Ace of Hearts" rides in on a white horse and teaches them how to defend themselves, at least until an old friend of his named "Duke" rides into town.

The title of this movie changes sides as often as do the characters. On the box, it's They Call Him Cemetery, while the DVD menu has it as They Call Him Graveyard (in the movie, they actually call him "Cemetery"). IMDB lists it as A Bullet for a Stranger. The Italian title is Gli fumavano le Colt... lo chiamavano Camposanto which translates to something like The Smoking Colt Called the Cemetery. Frankly, none of these really capture the movie. I'd go with Brothers of the Gun, which works on a couple of levels.

The movie steals Lee Marvin's closing line from The Professionals. What makes the theft even more embarrassing is that they use it as a throwaway line.

Dialogue
"On your feet, you son of a dirty whore."
"Ah, did you know her?"

Story

Please note that from this point on, I'm going to grade the "Story" and not the "Plot". Let's face it, most of these movies don't really have a plot. The question is whether the story is interesting and well told.
Music

In a spaghetti western, the music is a character. Ennio Morricone set this standard and we'll live and die by it. There are three primary pieces of music that will receive special attention: the opening, which usually becomes the theme, repeated throughout the movie; the incidental music, which sets the tone of a particular theme; and the closing credit music, which you have to listen to, if you hope to get the acting credits right.
Acting

The "Acting" score will tend to focus upon the movie's leads. The depth of the cast is pretty thin in many of these movies and it's hard to fault them for that. Considering that many of the roles are dubbed, blaming the actors seems pretty cruel. On the other hand, if necessary, the quality of the dubbing will be noted, either because it falls below the usually dismal expectations or... never mind, there is no alternative. It's either as bad as you expect or worse.

Hey, Look at That!

The 2016 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards have been given out. Head over to check out all of the animals that don't grace the covers of National Geographic.

Johnny Yuma (1966)

Cast

• Mark Damon
• Rosalba Neri

Inventory

• Card cheating
• A saloon brawl
• Two bathtubs
• A stereotypical comic sidekick
• An urchin who never forgets a favor
• A gratuitous swap of a gun belt that leads to confusion
• A branding iron
• A wall safe hidden behind the Stargate ring

Summary

Rosalba Neri plays a scheming wife who sends her husband to an early grave. This should allow her to inherit the ranch, except for the inconvenience of a nephew to whom everything has been bequeathed. Mark Damon is Johnny Yuma, a gunslinger with a George Hamilton tan, a Southern California accent, and a collection of shirts in primary colors. In between him and his fortune is his aunt's slimy brother and a gunfighter who honest enough to stay bought, sort of.

Mark Damon, who had a long career as an actor, had a much longer career as a producer, so he must have learned something along the way. We'll assume that this movie fell into the category of learning from a bad example.

Update

Mark Damon is a lot more impressive than this film would ever lead you to believe. I had done a quick glance at his IMDB page, but I hadn't checked out his producing credits until I discovered that he is the producer for The Ledge. He has been producer or executive producer of the following movies (among many others):  Monster, Bat*21, The Lost Boys, Flight of the Navigator, Short Circuit, 9½ Weeks, Clan of the Cave Bear, The Neverending Story, and Das Boot. While I won't claim that these were all great art, there are some big budget movies in this mix.

Dialogue

"Sorry, but one needs to be careful about who dies, you know. Seems to me you're new around these parts. You just can't imagine how many false cadavers we have around here. We buried at least six Jesse James within a year."

Plot

This movie was directed without any of those fancy Hollywood special effects, including, unfortunately, a screenplay. If a thousand monkeys were to pound on a thousand keyboards for a thousand years, this would have been the result of the first twenty minutes.

Music

The title song marries third-rate surf rock, bad singing, and lyrics like, "Johnny Yuma don't go, Johnny Yuma stay here. What do you think that you'll find beyond the mountains?" The rest of the music is thankfully unmemorable.

Acting

Grand Duel (1974)

Cast

• Lee Van Cleef
• Peter O'Brien (Alberto Dentice)
• Jess Hahn

Inventory

• A town run by a band of smarmy brothers, including an effete smallpox scarred sadist
• Revenge for murdered fathers
• Bounty hunters
• A dynamited stage coach
• A belt-fed machine gun massacre of peasants
• A hidden lode of silver
• A brothel
• A one-eyed bartender

Summary

A sufficiently twisty plot is interrupted by a few quick action sequences. Continuity is a bit weak, and there are a few loose threads left at the end. Okay, there are a couple of genuine hawsers that are left hanging.

Alberto Dentice plays Philip Wermeer, who is an escaped murdered. Lee Van Cleef is Marshall Clayton, who is hunting him (or is he?). Dentice must not have had much in the way of English skills, because this is his only credit on IMDB, despite his good looks and passable acting. Van Cleef plays his usual role as the man with the mysterious past. One other notable is the lovely Dominique Darel, who's short life included a role in Andy Warhol's Dracula.

Dialogue

"Dear, you could have everything. A beautiful life, a family. What does it take to make you say yes to me?"
"Easy. Just ten dollars, like everyone else."

Plot

Music

Acting

Spaghetti Western Reviews

In order to keep me blogging about something, I'm going to post reviews of spaghetti westerns.

Yes, I have a weakness for these, and I recently acquired Mill Creek Entertainment's collection of forty-four pasta specials. Don't expect brilliant reviews, as I've never done this before, but I'll try to keep them brief and entertaining. There may be spoilers, but I'm not particularly worried about that; for one, these movies are three to five decades old, and for another, they're horse operas, not Citizen Kane.

In addition to the key actors, I'll include a brief summary, a sample of the dialogue, and I'll grade the movie on plot, acting, and the music. Grades are on a scale of one to six bullets.