THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE - Uneasy Riders

As with my earlier essay on DJANGO KILL...IF YOU LIVE, SHOOT!, what follows is something I wrote for a DVD release that never made it to the final product. Our first episode(s) of our upcoming podcast will focus on Fulci's horror films, so I thought I'd resurrect this write-up on one of his finest films outside his trademark genre.

Lucio Fulci is of course primarily known for his violent and atmospheric horror films, but before cementing his reputation as the “Godfather of Gore” with ZOMBIE (ZOMBI 2, 1979), the director explored a number of other genres. After launching his career with a string of comedies, Fulci attempted to capitalize on the booming Spaghetti Western market with the solid but rather conventional MASSACRE TIME (TEMPO DI MASSACRO, 1966). The film featured Franco Nero, whose star was on the rise after his iconic turn as the title character in Sergio Corbucci’s earlier release, DJANGO (1966). Although MASSACRE TIME was not a great success, Fulci would collaborate with Nero again on WHITE FANG (ZANNA BIANCA, 1973) and THE CHALLENGE TO WHITE FANG (IL RITORNO DI ZANNA BIANCO, 1974), both based on the work of author Jack London.  In 1975 a fourth film—entitled TERAPIA MORTALE—was planned for the pair but the project was put on hold (later filmed without Nero as THE PSYCHIC, 1977) and Fulci’s output during that year was confined to the quickie comedy YOUNG DRACULA (DRACULA IN BRIANZA, 1975) and the far more ambitious THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE (I QUATTRO DELL’APOCALISSE, 1975).

THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE is certainly one of the strangest examples of the Spaghetti Western and it is by far the best of Fulci’s work in the genre. The film takes on a sprawling, epic feel that isn’t present in most of his other, more claustrophobic work. The episodic and rambling narrative—reputedly based on the pulp novels of Brett Harte—is typical of Fulci, but here he and scriptwriter Ennio De Concini shot for something far grander in both scope and style. The loosely constructed plot, concerning a ragtag quartet of outcasts on the hellish road to the big city, is bound together by unifying themes of family and community. These humanistic undercurrents are used in sharp contrast against the bleakly pessimistic worldview viewers have come to expect from the director. Fulci’s other cinematic explorations of Good vs. Evil are far more one-sided in their outlook, but THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE balances dread with hope. Even the birth of a child, a vessel for Evil in many of Fulci’s horror films, is used as a symbol of faith and redemption. These four of the apocalypse may not find the salvation that they seek, but instead of being damned for all eternity as they may have been in the director’s other films, they each find their place or their shining moment in a cruel and inhospitable world. Their fates may not be victorious, but in a world where a descent into madness can be joyfully transcendent, a peaceful death is the best one can hope for.  Optimism peeks through even in the film’s darkest moments, and these glimpses of humanity amid the violence and mayhem add a depth of emotion that audiences may not expect from Fulci. The plot dynamics and characterizations may seem routine, but when viewed in the context of the director’s entire oeuvre there appears to have been a definite effort to engage the audience on emotional levels that were rarely explored in his other films.

It was a bold move on Fulci’s part to attempt a slow-paced, melancholy epic at a time when the Italian Western had already lost the box-office battle to the action-packed poliziotteschi. Fulci himself felt that the final film failed to meet his ambitions and he placed the blame on De Concini, who had previously worked with the likes of Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio De Sica and Mario Bava. In an interview with journalist Luca Palmerini, Fulci stated, “Unfortunately, the film was very badly scripted by Ennio De Concini, so it didn’t make one single penny worldwide.  De Concini’s script was useless, proving that he’s only good for soap operas on RAI.” While the film is very disjointed at times, it should be noted that Fulci wasn’t always the best judge of his films and throughout his career he carried on strained and often antagonistic relationships with many of his scriptwriters.

The picture marked the first collaboration between Fulci and cinematographer Sergio Salvati, who was responsible for the look of Fulci’s most popular horror films, including ZOMBIE, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (PAURA NELLA CITTÀ DEI MORTI VIVENTI, 1980), THE BEYOND (L’ALDILÀ, 1981) and THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (QUELLA VILLA ACCANTO AL CIMITERO, 1981). Salvati came to Fulci with a fully formed aesthetic that viewers of the director’s films have since come to associate with the best of his work. With THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE he helped to realize Fulci’s unromantic view of the American West while marking it with the stark beauty and otherworldliness often found in their later collaborations. The talented cinematographer memorably depicted the elements of the fantastique found in De Concini’s screenplay, so it is no surprise that Fulci relied on Salvati’s skills for his later, more overtly horrific work.

At times, Salvati’s photography on THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE recalls Laszlo Kovacs’ work on EASY RIDER (1969), and the presence of Michael J. Pollard in the cast implies that another seminal American film of the 1960s may have influenced the filmmakers.  Co-star Tomas Milian confirmed that Pollard, known for his roles in BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967) and DIRTY LITTLE BILLY (1972), affected the shaping of his character, Chaco. “Playing that character and having Michael Pollard there in front of me…What Michael Pollard represents in the American movie [BONNIE AND CLYDE] fed my character,” said Milian in an interview with journalist Eric Maché.  In another nod to ‘60s American culture, Milian claimed that Charles Manson also loomed large in his mind while playing Chaco. “This is Lucio Fulci.  Lucio Fulci is a very…you know, he loves all that violent stuff,” said Milian. “So if you have a director you know, you can flirt with his morbidity.” Milian was very familiar with Fulci’s morbidity having worked with him twice previously, on the brutal historical drama BEATRICE CENCI (1969) and the disturbing giallo DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING (NON SI SEVIZIA UN PAPERINO, 1972).

Milian and Pollard were joined in the cast by Fabio Testi, a veteran of the Italian film scene who would later star in Fulci’s CONTRABAND (LUCA IL CONTRABBANDIERE, 1980); Harry Baird, whose other Spaghetti Western credits include COLT IN THE HAND OF THE DEVIL (UN COLT IN MANO DEL DIAVOLO, 1972) and TRINITY AND SARTANA ARE COMING (TRINITA E SARTANA FIGLI DI…, 1972), in which he starred as the title character Trinity; and Lynne Frederick, who previously appeared in the Hammer Films production VAMPIRE CIRCUS (1972) as well as Saul Bass’s strange science-fiction effort, PHASE IV (1973). Frederick later married actor Peter Sellers and retired from making films shortly before his death in 1980. She passed away in 1994.  Also in the film was Irish character actor Donal O’Brien, who appeared in many Italian Westerns but is best known for playing the title role in DR. BUTCHER, M.D. (ZOMBI HOLOCAUST, 1980). As was often the case in his Italian films, O’Brien’s first name was misspelled as “Donald” in the credits for THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE.  O’Brien also worked on Fulci’s second WHITE FANG movie and later appeared in the director’s final Spaghetti Western, SILVER SADDLE (SELLA D’ARGENTO, 1978).

Although SILVER SADDLE fared better at the box office than THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE, it is the least of Fulci’s three Westerns. Conceived as a children’s film along the lines of the WHITE FANG pictures, SILVER SADDLE fails to engage even on that level.  Despite the participation of Sergio Salvati, the poetically surreal atmosphere of THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE was completely absent, as was the gritty violence of MASSACRE TIME, and SILVER SADDLE signaled not only the end of Fulci’s participation in the genre, but also the end of the Spaghetti Western in general. Other filmmakers attempted to revive the moribund genre, but the last gasp of quality provided by THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE, Enzo G. Castellari’s KEOMA (1976) and Sergio Martino’s A MAN CALLED BLADE (MANNAJA, 1977) was not to be repeated.

Interestingly, Fulci himself offered a strange reading of his first two Westerns in various interviews. He maintained that MASSACRE TIME was a “Western that went beyond time and space,” and frequently referred to it as “oneiric,” claiming that French critics called it a “Western reve,” or “dreamed.” It's tempting to assume that Fulci simply got his own films mixed up since these descriptions bear little resemblance to MASSACRE TIME, but could easily be applied to the richly atmospheric FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE. The more likely scenario is that Fulci’s rift with Ennio De Concini affected his opinion of the film and he chose to embellish the reputation of his first Western with the qualities achieved by his second. Regardless of his own opinions, Fulci’s THE FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE is his finest entry in the genre, successfully bridging the gap between his earlier work and his later horror pictures by striking a rare balance of warmth and cruelty.

References

-- Palmerini, Luca M. and Mistretta, Gaetano, Spaghetti Nightmares (Fantasma, 1996), Interview with Lucio Fulci, pp. 58-66.

-- Maché, Eric, Westerns...All'Italiana, Issue #25, Spring 1990, Interview with Tomas Milian.

--MW

Another Friday...Another Enzo G. Castellari Shot

Well, we took a week off, but we're back with another behind-the-scenes Enzo G. Castellari photo. This time we've got Enzo and Bo Svenson in the trenches on set of the Inglorious Bastards (1978). That's Enzo's son Andrea peeking out from behind dad.

Click the pic for a large file.
--MW

T.G.I...Enzo! A Rare Behind-the-Scenes Enzo G. Castellari Shot Every Friday.

The third week of the blog comes to an end and we've got another rare Castellari still for you. This week it's from the set of the slapstick Western, CIPOLLA COLT (1975), which features Franco Nero treading in Terence Hill territory. Here Enzo and Martin Balsam discuss a scene, while an unnamed crew member prepares Balsam's mechanical hand prop.

Click for the large size, and as always, give us a link back if you want to use these for anything. We're keeping them high res and free from watermarks.

--MW

Two For Tuesday - Poster Art Appropriation

The original 1963 paperback edition of We Have Always Lived in the Castle features a beautiful cover painting in gouache by William Teason, an artist whose work was widely seen on book covers and movie posters throughout the '60s and '70s. The painting provides a few visual clues about the novel's plot and its teen protagonist Merricat Blackwood, who practices her own personalised form of witchcraft and may or may not have had something to do with the poisoning deaths of her family.

Two of these clues were eliminated in the unsigned bastardization of Teason's painting that appeared on the poster for Mario Bava's SHOCK (1977). Notice how the original artist's signature has also been conveniently cropped from the image. While it's still a powerful image, even with the details altered and washed out, it really doesn't bear much of a resemblance to anything seen in Bava's final feature film.

Just as blatant and inappropriate is this copying of Boris Vallejo's 1979 painting, Vampire's Kiss, which was slightly retooled for Mario Bianchi's sex and horror mash-up, SATAN'S BABY DOLL (1982). Funny how Bianchi's raunch-fest ended up the more demure image.

Below are a couple shots of Michele Soavi's own use of the Vallejo painting in his visually striking second film, THE CHURCH (1989). However, I think this definitely falls more under the category of homage than the poster examples above.

--MW

T.G.I...Enzo! Rare and Unseen Enzo G. Castellari Photos Every Friday.

We started this last Friday, and we've got enough rare Enzo G. Castellari behind-the-scenes production stills to keep this up for a couple years. These are all courtesy of Enzo and his daughter Stefania Girolami. They span his entire career and they're all terrific.

This week's pic is a beautiful shot of Enzo and Franco Nero on the set of the action packed poliziotteschi HIGH CRIME from 1973. Why is this not on DVD/Blu-ray?

Click for the full size version. Please give us a link back if you want to use this for anything, because I'm keeping all of these watermark free.

--MW

Amer

The giallo is indigenous to Italy - it somehow seems to embody the culture with its emotion, passion and flare, as well as with its conservative religious undertones of guilt and innocence. The giallo is an opera of sex and violence and Italian filmmakers created and perfected this form before it ultimately died out in the late ‘70s.

Amer is a French-Belgian co-production whose title translates to "bitter." Directors Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani have crafted a modern-day homage to Italian gialli that is at once derivative and original. It is a visually stunning dream fugue of a film that will captivate with evocative imagery and possibly frustrate some viewers with its lack of character and narrative. Amer takes a black gloved switchblade to the giallo formula and slices out all the expository and character scenes, leaving only the stylistic excesses and psychological underpinnings. 

The film focuses on three events in the life of the protagonist, Ana, at three different life stages: child, teenager and adult. As a child, Ana lives in a seaside villa that, despite its outward beauty, exudes a darkness and menace. The viewer is shown the house and Ana’s family life through her young eyes, literally. The film tells us that we will be seeing this world through Ana’s eyes from the opening shot – a triple split-screen close-up of Ana’s eyes looking at the viewer. Watching eyes seem to be everywhere in Amer, and everywhere Ana looks she sees something sinister. The house is populated with strange, shadowy figures, mysterious noises, eyes peeping through keyholes, the corpse of her dead grandfather, and a grandmother who appears to be a witch.

In the next sequence Ana is a teenager out on a trip from the villa into a nearby town with her mother. Ana is now becoming a woman and she senses that the watching eyes are not just mysterious or sinister eyes but have now become the leering eyes of men on the streets and in the shops. The third and final sequence brings the story to a thrilling conclusion. Ana is now an adult and returning to the villa where she grew up. The dreamlike atmosphere continues – she walks from the train station through a town that is deserted in the middle of the day. The eyes looking at and menacing Anna continue to surface throughout this final sequence until it builds to a crescendo of suspense and violence.

Amer plays with extreme close-ups and enhanced ambient sound to build the surreal atmosphere throughout each sequence. The loud clicking of locks or the sound of a black glove being pulled over a hand replace dialog as the most important elements of the soundtrack. In fact, there are only about 3 sentences of dialog in the entire 90-plus minute film. The appropriation of classic giallo soundtrack music from Stelvio Cipriani, Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai works surprising well and is not used gratuitously.
The story is not complex and the characters are merely ciphers for the psychological drama that unfolds. However, the visuals that Cattet and Forzani present, and the fever dream atmosphere they create through both sight and sound are enthralling by themselves. I found myself thinking that this is what a giallo would look like if it had been made by David Lynch. It is best to experience this movie as a waking dream and just sit back, leave logic behind and experience this visceral dream and the nightmarishly beautiful images with your eyes and your mind wide open.

--TF

Two For Tuesday - Lucio Fulci Edition

Aenigma (1987) and Manhattan Baby (1982)

One On Top of the Other (1969) and The Beyond (1981)

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) and The Black Cat (1981)

Primal Impulse (Le Orme)

PRIMAL IMPULSE (LE ORME, "Footprints," 1974), aka FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON 

Directed by Luigi Bazzoni 

Written by Mario Fanelli based on his novel Las Huellas 

Cinematography by Vittorio Storaro 

Music by Nicola Piovani 

Starring Florinda Bolkan, Peter McEnery, Nicoletta Elmi, Caterina Boratto and Klaus Kinski.

In 1986, this "big box" release from Charles Band's Force Video label hit the rental shelves with a meaningless retitling, nonsensical tagline, slightly misleading cover art, and a wildly inaccurate plot synopsis on the back. It was an undercover gem, lying in wait until I had exhausted all the higher profile Euro-horror titles on my endless must-see list. By the late '80s, I hadn't even seen all the Argento, Fulci, Bava, et al. movies I'd been reading about, so this wasn't something that looked like it required my attention. Yet. I don't think it really caught my eye until I noticed the small print that read, "Starring Klaus Kinski," at the bottom of the cover. This of course turned out to be as highly deceptive as the rest of the box copy, but after seeing Werner Herzog's AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD in 1988, I was a bona fide Kinski completist. Anything with his name on it and I was there.

A brief flash forward almost 30 years later and LE ORME is widely known among Italian genre film fans and readily available on DVD as well as via multiple streaming services. It's been endlessly reviewed since the Shameless DVD release, so yet another obscure blogger review will only be redundant. We'll go ahead and be redundant anyway, but the real purpose of even bringing it up is to set a scene before the Internet, before this tiny subculture of ours had a network beyond the handful of hard-to-find xeroxed fanzines and the very small force of devoted journalists scattered across the globe who occasionally let us know that we weren't the only ones who were seeking out these movies. 

We knew we weren't the first to discover GATES OF HELL or INFERNO on VHS rental store shelves, but every now and then there would be a tape like PRIMAL IMPULSE or REVENGE OF THE DEAD (ZEDER) that would make us think, "Does anyone else know about this?" Does anyone else know that hidden behind this barely-related exploitation packaging is a beautiful art film that really elevates the genre? I remember trying to track down any info I could find on PRIMAL IMPULSE and its director Luigi Bazzoni and coming up empty. Every now and then there would be an entry in a video guide or a horror encyclopedia, but most of them seem to have been written based on the box synopsis and not based on an actual viewing of the film.

With all that in mind, what follows is a review I wrote in 1999, at least a decade after I'd first seen the movie. I wrote it because I had still not found anything substantial about the film or its director, and I'd become frustrated by the perpetuation of the false synopsis. I was also going a bit crazy, thinking that I really was one of the few people who had even seen this thing. Thankfully it's gotten it due at this point, but it still reminds me even now that there are still gems to be uncovered. So at the risk of being redundant...

Florinda Bolkan (DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING, INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION) stars as Alice, a translator working in Italy, who one morning awakens from a disturbing dream to discover that she has lost all memory of the past three days. She arrives at work and is told that she ran off in the middle of a job at an international conference three days prior and then failed to turn in another important assignment. Desperate to discover the reasons behind her memory loss and disappearance, Alice returns to her apartment to sift through the few clues that may point her in the right direction. A postcard of an old hotel, labeled "Garma - Hotel Garma," that has been ripped into quarters and a yellow dress that has mysteriously appeared in her closet are Alice's only leads. After phoning her friend with the news that he has almost certainly lost her job, Alice packs the dress and sets off for the (fictional) Turkish isle of Garma.

To reveal any more of the plot would risk spoiling this unique film, but it is worth mentioning that there seems to be a few widespread misconceptions about just what kind of movie LE ORME is. It is not a science fiction film, a reading that can probably be attributed to the hilariously wrong-headed synopses available on the PRIMAL IMPULSE video box and various review encyclopedias, and it could only loosely be considered a giallo, a label that may have mistakenly been placed on the film due to its inclusion in books like Blood & Black Lace and Spaghetti Nightmares. Approaching the film with expectations of black-gloved killers or sci-fi thrills will only end in disappointment. Imagine something midway between Nic Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW and Robert Altman's IMAGES, but minus the violence found in the former, and you'll have a better idea of what to expect.

It may sound contradictory to what I've written above, PRIMAL IMPULSE begins with a scene of an astronaut being abandoned on the moon. Nicola Piovani's haunting score plays over eerie images of the astronaut awakening from unconsciousness to find his lunar lander has departed without him. This sequence is a recurring dream of Alice's. She explains to a friend that it is a dream of a strangely disturbing movie that she once walked out on ("It was called BLOOD ON THE MOON...no...no, FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON"). The dream appears throughout the film, but with great subtlety, director Luigi Bazzoni (THE FIFTH CORD) gradually removes the cinematic indicators that say to the audience, "This is a dream." It becomes apparent that this "dream" is a subconscious warning, but one that Alice is unable to decipher as she becomes lost in the netherworld between what is real and what is imagined, between sanity and insanity. Bolkan plays the character with strength and conviction, only allowing Alice's confusion and doubt to seep through in small, ever-increasing doses. Her sympathetic performance and the elliptical storytelling by Bazzoni and Fanelli place certain demands on the viewer who comes to the film expecting a conventional mystery with a crowd-pleasing solution. The solution to the mystery is a simple one, but one that has apparently been rejected by many viewers, given the numerous incorrect synopses that have been reported. PRIMAL IMPULSE is slow-paced and unconventionally plotted, but viewers who are willing to place mood before narrative will find much to enjoy here.

Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (THE CONFORMIST, APOCALYPSE NOW) gives the film a unique look that enhances the mystery of the plot. Lush colors and magic-hour lighting create a haunting mood that lends the film an almost supernatural atmosphere. His camera often studies seemingly inconsequential objects and interiors, giving them as much narrative importance as the emotions that run across Florinda Bolkan's face. The viewer is left wondering which details are there to be read and deciphered and which are simply stylistic flourishes. This is also a feature of Piovani's terrific score, which initially takes the viewer off guard with some odd instrumentation choices, but eventually pays off when it is revealed that the music refers specifically to certain plot points in the film. Piovani plants subtle musical clues that go beyond the standard music box/nursery rhyme device used in countless Italian thrillers before and after DEEP RED. Because of this attention to detail, the film almost demands multiple viewings and a second look may even be more rewarding to viewers who are already prepared for the unconventional ending.

In addition to Bolkan's superb performance, the other actors deserve mention as they elevate the film above standard expectations. Despite some awkward dubbing, Nicoletta Elmi (DEEP RED, FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN) is a stand-out in what may be one of her lengthiest roles. Fellini fans may recognize Caterina Boratto (8 1/2, JUILET OF THE SPIRITS), who turns in a warm and realistic performance with just a hint of ambiguity, and finally, Peter McEnery is a likable male lead with an appropriate air of mystery to mask his oblique motives. Klaus Kinski appears for what amounts to about 20 seconds of screentime, but he is invariably top-billed with Bolkan in the film's advertising material.

The 1986 Force Video VHS release is cropped, but features an otherwise attractive transfer of the film. The colors are strong and the picture is sharp with pleasing contrasts. The box lists a 90 minute running time, but it is closer to 93 minutes. The title "PRIMAL IMPULSE" is as meaningless as the tagline on the over-sized video box, which reads, "Ecstasy beyond passion. Possession beyond lust. It is the ultimate fulfillment."

...

And just as a little bonus addendum for some laffs, here's the full synopsis on the back of the box:

"Beyond Star Wars, military powers are already experimenting with the next battleground: mind invasion and control through space. With world dominance at stake, they'll stop at nothing. In the name of research, a young astronaut is deliberately abandoned on the moon during a space mission so the potential of his mental power can be tested. The fury he unleashes is beyond all expectations--his mental scream and death throes reach out to beautiful young European interpreter Alice Campos, taking control of her mind.

"The cruel deadly experiment she sees in her mind as a film flashback pales as she is engulfed by a frightening reality beyond the wildest of dreams. Psychological terror explodes with vivid new dimensions in the nightmare of primal impulse."

--MW 

T.G.I...Enzo! Rare and Unpublished Enzo G. Castellari Photos

I'm sitting on a mountain of unseen Enzo G. Castellari behind-the-scenes production stills, courtesy of his daughter Stefania Girolami, so I thought it would be a fun idea to post a new one here every Friday. There are a couple hundred, some color, most black and white, so let's see if we can keep this going for a couple years.

The first is the only shot I have that doesn't feature Enzo himself, so it's as good a place as any to start. It was taken in 1968 in Almería, Spain during the filming of the action-packed Kill Them All and Come Back Alone (Ammazzali tutti e torna solo).

Click for the large size. Give us a link back if you want to use these for anything. I'm keeping them watermark free.
--MW

The Skin I Live In (La Piel que Habito)

Pedro Almodovar is the most successful and acclaimed Spanish director of the last 30 years. Although he makes accessible, adult movies that blend comedy, melodrama and pop culture into his own unique style, Almodovar is categorized in the U.S. as an art-house director and his films have never received mainstream commercial success. Although he has won an Academy Award for best foreign language film and several Cannes Film Festival awards, Almodovar has never abandoned his native Spain for the lure of Hollywood money.

The Skin I Live In (2011) is somewhat of a departure for Almodovar in that it incorporates traditional horror film elements into his melodramatic formula. Antonio Banderas plays Dr. Robert Ledgard, a renowned scientist who is attempting to develop synthetic human skin. His wife died years earlier in a car accident and he is trying to create skin that will be impervious to fire and cuts. However, Dr. Ledgard is soon revealed to be an obsessed “mad scientist” that has actually kidnapped a young woman named Vera in order to have a test subject for his skin experiments. 

Dr. Ledgard keeps Vera locked in his isolated mansion, bound in a compression bandage to keep her synthetic skin graft in place. Vera is a morose and mysterious figure who looks more like a mummy than a living woman. After a visit from the housekeeper’s son ends in brutality and violence, the film begins to reveal the tangled web of sinister events that has led both Ledgard and Vera to this dark and twisted existence. 

At times, the film’s outlandish plot has comical coincidences but they always lead to gruesome and disturbing developments. The Skin I Live In reminded me a of a modern-day giallo with its sometimes absurd but always diabolical plot twists and turns amidst the picturesque European locations. It is difficult to discuss any events in this movie without giving away the myriad of surprises Almodovar presents throughout the film. Suffice to say that Ledgard and Vera both have vicious secret pasts that are revealed in flashback, and eventually they become lovers. However, as one is captor and the other captive this affair always carries an ominous undertone of menace.

While The Skin I Live In is filled with dark and violent scenes, Almodovar keeps the tone from being overly bleak through his vivid mis-en-scene and the melodramatic quality of the script and performances. Casting Antonio Banderas in the lead is part of the key to keeping the film from becoming a parade of misery. Banderas, who Almodovar made a star through numerous early movies, brings those movie star looks to the role of a mad scientist. The audience wants to like him and feels sympathy for him at times because even when he is committing atrocious acts he never projects the quality of someone who is truly evil. Whether Banderas is capable as an actor to even project those emotions is debatable but you can judge that for yourself.

The Skin I Live In obviously borrows heavily from the surreal classic Eyes Without A Face, but it does so with a knowing wink. Almodovar uses both Eyes Without A Face and Frankenstein as the genre canvas on which to paint his own original piece of modern pop-gothic art. He takes horror genre elements and builds a 21^st Century version of those classic tales by adding a layer of sexuality that those earlier films could only hint at through obtuse subtext. The classic mind-body schism is contemplated through the lens of gender identity, sexuality and even love. Almodovar is contemplating not only what makes us human but also what makes humans male or female and asking where human sexuality fits on the continuum between the mind and body.

While this is an enjoyable film for all the reasons I have mentioned, it is not in the same league with Eyes Without A Face. That film may not ever be equaled for the quality and subtlety it used even while incorporating elements of medical horror in its contemplation of the pain of human loss and suffering. Almodovar’s modern version of medical horror is an interesting experiment and it is nice to see a filmmaker step out of his comfort zone and tackle an unfamiliar genre with such genuine affection and verve.

Available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures.

--TF

Django, Kill...If You Live Shoot! - Notes From The Unhappy Place

Back during the heyday of Euro Cult movies on DVD, I was lucky enough to write a bunch of liner notes for many of my favorite movies, and for various reasons some of them never made it to the final product. While we're leading up to the launch of our podcast, I thought it would be a good time to resurrect some of those unused essays and present them here. The Blue Underground release of Django, Kill featured a booklet with an essay by the far more accomplished and knowledgeable William Connolly of Spaghetti Cinema fame, so I didn't mind getting bumped from this one. I'm not sure if the blu ray upgrade (which looks miles better if you compare it to the DVD screenshots I posted here) contains this same booklet, but it isn't mentioned on the box or in any of the reviews I looked at.

Sergio Corbucci’s landmark Spaghetti Western, DJANGO (1966), inspired dozens of imitators seeking to cash in on the popularity of the title character, none of them more unusual than Giulio Questi’s DJANGO, KILL!…IF YOU LIVE SHOOT! (SE SEI VIVO SPARA, 1967). Some filmmakers and producers attempted unofficial sequels or fashioned quick knock-offs of the original Corbucci picture, while others simply incorporated the name “Django” into the title of their film and performed a quick character name change in the dubbing. Giulio Questi’s film belongs to the latter group, but he neglected the final step in the process (Tomas Milian’s character is only referred to as “The Stranger” in most versions), and aside from the expected nihilism and violence, his film actually has little in common with Corbucci’s picture. DJANGO, KILL! is perhaps the most excessively bizarre film in the entire genre, a wildly overwrought Gothic horror melodrama that earns its place alongside the classics for sheer audacity alone. The film’s combination of extreme violence, outrageous characters, stylized costumes, seizure-inducing edits and impressionistic storytelling was simply unprecedented in the Western genre.

Giulio Questi––who directed the mind-bending giallo DEATH LAID AN EGG (1968) the following year––was more concerned with subverting genre expectations than with simply retracing the footsteps of those who came before him, but it would be a mistake to deny the multitude of influences on this, his sole Western. In its opening moments, DJANGO, KILL! echoes the horror films of Mario Bava––specifically HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD (1961)––with rugged landscapes bathed in a supernatural green light and eerie visions of the dead rising from the grave (the fact that Bava repeated a sequence involving a shower of molten gold and an unfortunate victim in his 1968 film DIABOLIK is perhaps more than a coincidence). The influence of Luis Buñuel’s LOS OLVIDADOS (1950) can also be seen in the image of an outstretched hand reaching from the earth—an iconic moment that was recreated in the artwork for the film’s Italian ad campaign. After the supernatural overtones and horror film histrionics of the credit sequence comes a disorienting montage of flashbacks filled with Godardian edits and dizzying camerawork. The experimental editing of Questi’s longtime friend Franco (Kim) Arcalli is the driving force behind this striking sequence.  Arcalli co-wrote and edited both DEATH LAID AN EGG and DJANGO, KILL! and Questi has acknowledged his partner’s significant creative input in the films. Arcalli, who once commented that he did his best work after two bottles of vodka, would go on to collaborate with Louis Malle, Bernardo Bertolucci and Michelangelo Antonioni before his premature death in 1978.

Federico Fellini is another obvious influence on the film and it should come as no surprise that Questi cut his filmmaking teeth as an assistant for the great director on LA DOLCE VITA (1960). Fellini’s considerable skill at creating surrealist tableaux is emulated by Questi and cinematographer Franco Delli Colli, who began his career as a camera operator for Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolini.  Delli Colli also brought to the picture the influence of Sidney J. Furie’s THE APPALOOSA (1966), a stylishly shot film that took a few visual cues from Leone, but in turn provided inspiration for many Italian Westerns to follow. Furie’s director of photography Russell Metty fashioned intricate compositions that employed various props and architectural details to create multiple frames within a single shot. Similarly, Delli Colli used wagon wheels, hanging laundry, hitching posts and various other props to frame his compositions, creating a sense of depth and infusing the film with its own unique visual poetry. One such image, of Milian’s Stranger peering through a broken wicker basket, was used for some of the film’s advertising materials.

In an interview with the excellent fanzine Westerns all'italiana (issue #25) Tomas Milian referred to Questi as “an intellectual revolutionary” and likened him to Antonioni because of his emphasis on imagery over acting. Milian is a performer who usually enjoys being left to his own devices, so that he may rework his characters to suit his own creative needs. Here, the Stranger is something of a cipher, a Wild West zombie with only a passing interest in the warm embrace of his pyromaniac lover and no need at all for the precious gold he uses to exact his cold vengeance. Milian used props and costume details, like his ever-present white headband, to enhance his character, but the actor eventually surrendered to the idea that Questi was more interested in the visual and symbolic value of his characters than he was in portraying real people with real motives and emotions.

Questi and Arcalli took the basic plot outline––which has a mysterious outsider positioning himself between two rival factions in a hostile town––from Sergio Leone’s seminal A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964) (itself of course derived from Akira Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO, 1961), but unlike Leone or Corbucci, they weren’t interested in creating a crowd-pleasing anti-hero like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name or Franco Nero’s Django. This skeletal plot was only a framework used to hang a series of increasingly bizarre and violent episodes in which the Stranger would pass through, meting out punishment to the evildoers and providing comfort to the weak and deranged. For much of the film Milian’s Stranger is not even the focal point of the action, and the plot often finds the character reacting to or being victimized by the outlandish happenings rather than actually propelling the narrative forward himself. He may seem to be an ineffectual hero when compared to other Spaghetti Western protagonists, but the religious connotations hint at a greater depth to the character. The Stranger’s resurrection and crucifixion provide the most explicit Christian imagery, but many of his trials and tribulations result in violence of biblical proportions and every deadly sin seems to be accounted for in the circle of hell that his Native American spiritual guides call “The Unhappy Place.” Sin and temptation reign supreme in this turn-of-the-century Sodom and Gomorrah and the Stranger only moves on after everything has ended in a hail of fire and brimstone.

Possibly commenting on the regressed amorality they perceived in the genre, Questi and Arcalli populated their hellish town with characters that behave like cruel children. The film’s final moments, where a little girl and boy attempt to out-ugly each other, support the idea that the entire movie can be read as a variation on a sadistic children’s game. Sam Peckinpah would later incorporate this idea into the opening sequence of his Spaghetti Western-influenced picture, THE WILD BUNCH (1969). Perhaps the most blatant example of this theme of childlike regression is found in Zorro and his boys-only club of costumed muchachos. Like spoiled brats playing at pirates, Zorro––who even keeps a talking parrot––and his gang egg each other on, raping, pillaging and throwing tantrums until they are all tuckered out and curled up on the floor. Zorro is even allowed a moment of childish emotion when he confides to his parrot, “It’s a pity you don’t understand what my muchachos mean to me.  They make me so happy in their black uniforms.” Not since Nicholas Ray’s JOHNNY GUITAR (1954) had the Western been such a hotbed of heightened sexuality and exaggerated stylizations.

Whether read as a Freudian critique of the genre, a horror film subversion of Spaghetti Western conventions, a Christian allegory about temptation and vice, or simply taken at face value, DJANGO, KILL! is a strange and unsettling film designed to provoke extreme reactions. Graphic violence is intercut with slapstick humor and visual puns, while soap opera plot twists and fairy tale logic challenge the expectations of audiences open to even the most radical genre fare. If you thought that the films of Leone or Corbucci took the horse operatics as far as they could go, then prepare yourself for the genre-bending insanity of DJANGO, KILL!…IF YOU LIVE, SHOOT!

––MW