The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

Full Fathom Thrive

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
USA 1953 Directed by Eugène Lourié
Warner Brothers/HMV UK Exclusive
Blu Ray Zone B

I think I must have been four or five when I last watched The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms... which would have been a TV broadcast in the early 1970s. So it’s good to finally revisit this classic film on a nice Blu Ray edition because, frankly, I remembered absolutely nothing about it. At the time I first saw it, I certainly wouldn’t have been that aware of the pedigree of the movie. I may have associated the spectacular stop motion animation with the great Ray Harryhausen as something similar to what I might have seen in a Sinbad movie. This was only the second feature length film on which he’d worked, after his uncredited contributions to the great Mighty Joe Young. I’d certainly not yet quite heard of (I suspect) his friend on whose short story the film was cribbed as a starting point, the great writer Ray Bradbury. But I’m pretty sure I would have enjoyed it at the time, although I might well have gotten it mixed up with Gorgo in my head, to some extent... which I’ve just myself found out was directed by the same guy.

Okay, so the plot is simple... a giant dinosaur is awakened from hibernation due to a test nuclear explosion overseen by some scientists in the arctic. Two of the people who go out onto the snow to bring back some post explosion readings, see the dinosaur but, one is killed and the other injured. That other being the film’s main male protagonist, Professor Tom Nesbitt, played by Swiss actor Paul Hubschmid. Everyone thinks he’s crazy... even his friend Col. Jack Evans, played by Kenneth Tobey, the star of 1951’s sci-fi/horror classic, The Thing From Another World (reviewed by me here). However, after meeting a paleontologist played by Cecil Kellaway (who you may remember from The Mummy’s Hand, reviewed by me here) and his gorgeous assistant Lee Hunter, he finds the dinosaur in some sketches and gets corroboration from a witness who has also seen the ‘sea serpent’. Hunter is played by Paula Raymond, who eventually ended up in Al Adamson’s movies Blood Of Dracula’s Castle (reviewed here) and Five Bloody Graves (reviewed here)... not to mention playing Margot Lane in an unsuccessful 1954 TV pilot of The Shadow.

Eventually, the creature makes its way to New York but the army have trouble dealing with it because, in a detail which is not usual with these kinds of movies (at least it seems that way to me), exposure to the blood and general vicinity of the monster leads to catching a debilitating virus. Luckily, Nesbitt is a nuclear physicist and suggests shooting the creature with a radioactive isotope into an open wound caused by a bazooka earlier in the film. I’m not very scientific myself but I can only assume this is a good cure for destroying both the creature and the virus... which is what they eventually do, killing the creature as it demolishes a rollercoaster in Long Island, standing in for Coney Island.

So yeah, simple plot but an entertaining film... if not one you have to keep your brain turned on for. Other actors of note in the film are the wonderful King Vidor from such movies as Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (reviewed here) and Singin’ In The Rain (turning up as the psychiatrist asked to diagnose Nesbitt after his crazy dinosaur sighting) and the youngish, unknown actor portraying the army sharpshooter who is none other than the legendary Lee Van Cleef, who would go on to ‘appear’ in such westerns as High Noon (reviewed here) before finding his star in a variety of classic spaghetti westerns (For A Few Dollars More, The Big Gundown, Days Of Anger and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly... among many such oaters) and, of course, in his wonderful turn in John Carpenter’s Escape From New York.

And while the film is simple, it does have some nice touches to it, such as a wonderful shot of a whirlpool on which the title card is superimposed and, some pretty good and thoughtful animation by Harryhausen of the titular beast, it has to be said. Okay, so maybe on occasion the lines where the live action footage is matched up to the stop motion animation footage can be a little blurry at times but, it’s mostly pretty good stuff with a lot of attention to detail, I would say. I mentioned the inclusion of Kenneth Tobey from The Thing From Another World in the cast but, it’s interesting to note that when they first bring in Nesbitt to the arctic camp infirmary, they are reusing a set from that film. 

And like I said, the movie has a few things which you wouldn’t expect from a relatively formulaic monster movie, such as the inclusion of a virus subplot... not explored in detail but it’s certainly there and relevant to the plot mechanics, for sure. But another unusual thing it does is keep up the bluff of people not believing various eye witness reports (including that of Nesbitt) for a good deal of the way through the movie, focussing on the professor going to great lengths to get people to believe him, with odd punctuations of the dinosaur attacking more people who won’t be believed until the dinosaur finally pitches up in New York city.

One last thing though. If you are a lover of 1930s Hollywood Screwball comedies (and frankly, why wouldn’t you be?), you might want to take note that the big fake, prop dinosaur skeleton seen in Cecil Kellaway’s work area is actually the same model used in the truly great 1938 Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant movie Bringing Up Baby. So, yeah, now you know... a good prop not wasted.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was made in response to the massive success of a re-release of the 1933 version of King Kong (reviewed here) from the year before (that must have been the slightly censored version of the film) and this movie was also a runaway success at the box office. So much so that Toho studios in Japan turned their gaze westward to come up with their own beast, which would of course materialise the very next year in the form of Godzilla (which I reviewed here). That being said, although the film is vastly entertaining and probably better written than many of the other 1950s behemoth movies, this isn’t up near the top of them for me. I prefer a whole host of others before I get to this one but, regardless, I would still recommend it to anyone who likes their giant monster movies and it would certainly be a great one to include in a marathon viewing session of such creature features for sure. Worth having a look at if you’ve not seen this one before.

Return Of Sabata

 

Derringer Harbinger

Return Of Sabata
aka 
È tornato Sabata...
hai chiuso un'altra volta!
Italy/France/West Germany 1971
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Minor spoilers. 

“Nine fingered man, four barrell derringer, Sabaaaaaata, he’s the only invincible man in the countryside...” Main title song from Return Of Sabata.

Okay, technically the third film in the Sabata trilogy and, due to that marketing decision, the third and final film in the recent Blu Ray set from the Eureka Masters Of Cinema label... Return Of Sabata sees Lee Van Cleef return in the role for what is actually the only real Sabata sequel (for more on that, see my review of Indio Black, aka Adiós Sabata, right here). And, of course, along with Van Cleef we have Sabata’s trademark gadget, his trick pistol, referred to as a ‘four barrel derringer’ in the main song but, as we all know from the first film (which I reviewed here), it actually also has three additional barrels concealed in the handle, which we also get to see in use again.

And, naturally, a Parolini film means part of his repertory cast such as Aldo Canti performing his usual trampoline tricks and Ignazio Spalla, are on hand to work with Sabata and his new, somewhat untrustworthy ally played by Reiner Schöne. The plot is the usual shenanigans with a corrupt head of a town and various bought elected officials trying to diddle the town with their counterfeit notes while getting all the gold out of the county. Sabata, of course, steps in to try and relieve them of their gold and also help out the townsfolk. And that’s all I’ll say about the plot.

The film itself has been included in a book called The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way) but, honestly, I don’t know why it’s in there and, I have to wonder how many movies the authors have seen if they saw fit to include this one in its ranks. In terms of the three Sabata films (or two if you are a purist), then yeah, it’s the least entertaining of them perhaps... but it is still very watchable and there are some really beautiful sequences in here too.

For instance, the film has a very strong opening pre-credits sequence... probably the best scene in the movie actually, it’s so striking. This film involves various gun men in an enclosed space... a kind of cross between a barn and a fun house... hiding and waiting for Sabata, to take him out. It’s a really wonderful sequence and its very colourful. Amongst the white shirts of the gun men and the red of the blood on them as they each fall victim to Sabata’s guns in elabourate set ups (falling off a level and into a coffin which slides down a beam etc), the lighting is a visually exciting blend of colour washes... greens, violets and reds, which invoke the spirit of Mario Bava perhaps. This set up scene also serves, not only as a rug pull moment, when it turns out everyone’s guns were loaded with some kind of red paint balls, as Sabata has joined a side show troupe... but also serves to set up the logic of a scene near the end where Sabata is shot dead by the bad guy, only to resurrect himself from the grave having loaded the bad guy’s gun with similar paint pellets, once he’s heard the villain’s disclosure of where ‘the gold’ is hidden after his fake death. So it’s a long game Parolini’s playing here with his foreshadowing of one of the end scenes of the movie (the producers and writers of the James Bond films did exactly the same thing with the start and end sequences of The Man With The Golden Gun, of course... reviewed by me here).

There’s some other nice cinematography too, such as a scene where Van Cleef is standing in the middle of the screen ready to draw his gun... the director manages to somehow catch two simultaneous, long strips of lens flare coming from where Van Cleef is standing and thrown off at opposite diagonals from the central character. I’m not quite sure how he managed it and, in general, lens flares in movies have never been my friend... but it does look quite spectacular here, I’d have to admit.

As usual with this director, as well as all the acrobatics, he also works a fair few gadgets into the mix, to go alongside Sabata’s trick derringer. So we have an acrobat using braces stretched from between his feet to fire balls at various guards (with the camera fast zooming in on a target to mimic the journey of the ball bearing as the mark falls over), a blow dart coming from a trick cigar, a magnet cigar to influence the outcome at a roulette table and a guy with a mirror stuck to the inside top of his hat so he can take it off and see who’s approaching from behind.

Now, many people probably don’t realise that Van Cleef has the top of one of his fingers missing. It’s said that he got it taken off while building a play house for his daughter but I don’t think he went out of his way to publicise it. Here, though, Parolini works it into the foreground of the film in three ways. The most obvious, perhaps, being the opening title song from Marcello Giombini’s gorgeous score referring to Sabata as the ‘nine fingered man’. Secondly, it’s mentioned that the injury to the Sabata character was self inflicted, having chewed it off to convalesce in a military hospital in order to get more than a little friendly with a Colonel’s wife for a few months.

Thirdly... and perhaps more interestingly, when it looks like Sabata is about to kill his traitorous, ‘out for himself’ ally right at the end of the movie, instead of killing him he just shoots his trigger finger off, so the other can learn to live with the same disability. It’s a nice but unusual moment, taking a real life but, not that noticeable disability and thrusting it into the limelight, so to speak, like this.

And, yeah, I’ve not got much to add to this one, it has to be said. It may be the least entertaining of the three films but, almost contradicting this, it’s also probably the most lively and the one making the most of the humour, playing fast and loose with the trappings usually associated within the Spaghetti Western. Since the first two Trinity films came out either side of it (the second being released into Italian cinemas just a month after this one), this slow rebellion against the tropes of the genre makes a lot of sense, I guess. Return Of Sabata is definitely worth a look if you liked the first film and, if you’re into the scores on these things, the soundtrack is wonderful.

Sabata

Lock, Stock &
Seven Smoking Barrels

Sabata
aka
Ehi amico...
c'è Sabata. Hai chiuso!
Italy 1969
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Minor spoilers.

It’s been a while since I last watched the Sabata films... fortunately I was gifted with the new Eureka Masters Of Cinema The Sabata Trilogy Blu Ray set for Christmas*. That being said, anyone who knows the movies will know (or soon come to realise) that, like Sergio Leone’s ‘Man With No Name’ trilogy, the three films don’t form a trilogy at all but, at least in the case of the Sabata movies, the third one, Return Of Sabata, is actually a direct sequel to first movie. And, yeah, I’ll talk about that more when I look at the ‘second’ film, Adios Sabata (aka Indio Black) for this blog.

Okay, after a load of pepla, secret agent moves and the like, Sabata was only around about the third Western directed by Gianfranco Parolini, following on from his Johnny West and Sartana movies. Well, it’s more like an assault on the genre actually because, while he certainly goes out of his way to bring in the popular tropes, he also brings a lot of his own baggage with him and injects it into the movie.

The production designer was Carlo Simi, who worked on many a spaghetti Westerns including, of course, a few for the maestro of the genre, Sergio Leone. Perhaps the biggest element of familiarity for the genre trappings of the film was Parolini’s decision to hire the nine fingered actor Lee Van Cleef (he’d lost the top of one digit while building a playhouse for his daughter) to play the title role. And, yes, his costume in this is very similar, if not identical, to the one he wore playing Colonel Mortimer in the first of his big hits, For A Few Dollars More... opposite Clint Eastwood, for the aforementioned Leone. In the Leone film he played a bounty hunter and, Sabata is not much different to that character except there’s no history between him and the villain of the piece waiting for a surprise reveal in this one... although he does have a history with the secondary lead, William Berger playing the banjo playing character... um... Banjo.

The plot is simple. The evil planners of the town of Daugherty are ripping off the army by stealing money, in a bank robbery shown early on in the film, which sees a lot of soldiers killed. The film’s primary villain, Stengel, played by Franco Ressel, needs the money to buy some land which will at least double in price when the railway comes to buy it from the owner. However, very quickly, the new drifter in town, Sabata, kills many of the robbers and returns the stolen safe to the town. It then becomes a game of the villains trying to get Sabata, who has evidence against them, out of the way and not pay his ransom for silence... while also trying to kill anyone else who knows about their evil doings. But mostly just by trying to kill Sabata in various ways, which the title character is far too smart to fall for, leaving a trail of hired killer corpses in his trail.

There are betrayals, double crossings, surprise reveals, plenty of action, a very satirical look at how the governing bodies try and rip off the little people (hmm... I wonder if the current UK Government have been taking lessons from this movie) and a wonderful score by Marcello Giombini.

Helping Sabata are Ignazio Spalla, as the knife throwing Carrincha and Aldo Canti as the acrobatic Alley Cat (or Indio, depending on which country’s version you watch). And talking of acrobatics... it’s one of the two big things which director Parolini brings to the fight, so to speak. He always had a lot of acrobatics in his movies. And, of course, especially hot off of the various secret agent movies released then, there’s a whole host of gadgets and surprise weapons that Sabata or his enemies use against each other. Indeed, in the US and UK, the movie was promoted with a kind of ‘James Bond in the West’ spin to it, although that really isn’t what this is.

For example... and it’s no surprise due to both some posters and also the obviousness of the fetishistic nature of some of the accoutrements of the main characters, Banjo’s banjo also includes a hidden rifle as part of its make up. What is a surprise are some of Sabata’s gadgets. He has a screw on extended barrel for his Winchester which allows him to shoot much further than an ordinary rifle could... some of the posters heralded him as ‘The Man With The Gunsight Eyes’. But there’s also his tricky Derringer. Not only does it have four barrels in place of the standard single shooters, it also has another three barrels hidden in a drop down piece from the handle, first revealed when Sabata flips his pistol 90 degrees and shoots from the stock, so to speak.

There are also lots of other trick moments which make the movie entertaining, such as a pull thread on the derringer hidden in a bag so that when Sabata pushes the bag to a killer disguised as a priest, it activates it and shoots the villain from the inside of the bag. There’s a nice moment at the end of this sequence too, when Sabata throws a coin across the room to snuff out a candle.

But another thing that makes it watchable is the heart behind some of the characters. Sabata and Banjo, who are mostly allies in the film (to an extent), both knew each other from opposite sides of the civil war. Also, the down on his luck ex-civil war veteran Carrincha bemoans that nobody will take his medal to put up for a gambling stake or to swap for a bottle of whisky. Luckily, the medal saves his life from a stray bullet later in the movie and, for the ‘not dead after all’ reveal for the character, Parolini gives that medal a lot of foreshadowing throughout the film.

Finally, it’s really not a bad looking film technically. Parolini moves the camera about in various spaces with his characters, revealing new details about their environment and their positioning in it as he does so... but he’s not above adding in a quick close up insert before returning to the camera movement from a slightly closer angle, also making use of the zoom lens when required. He also uses the positioning of the camera to reveal Sabata’s trick of appearing in a frame as a painting, before he’s rumbled... the shots hitting a mirror which has been framed perfectly somehow in the villains view by the ‘human canvas’.

And, yeah, that’s me about done on the first Sabata film. It’s a heck of a lot of fun and so rides up there with some of the best of the Spaghetti Westerns, certainly from that late 1960s/early 70s period of the genre. If you like your Westerns then this one is definitely one to take a look at. And I’ll get onto the next ‘unofficial’ entry in the series, also made by the same writer/director, for my next Sabata review.

*Christmas 2021... it takes me a while to get the reviews up sometimes.

High Noon

From Miller To Post

High Noon
US 1952 Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

High Noon really is one of the all time great American Westerns. It’s been a fair few decades since I’d watched it last (I used to love it as a kid) but I recently bought my father the new Eureka - Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray and, of course, I sat down to watch it with him. I was blown away all over again by it’s stark, black and white photography, the driven Dimitri Tiomkin score with the important song Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling and some interesting actors doing their thing - including Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly (later Princess of Monaco), Katy Jurado, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney Jr (the monster man is billed here as simply Lon Chaney, for some reason), an uncredited Jack Elam and, not forgetting, the screen debut of one Lee Van Cleef... as one of the four men gunning for Cooper’s Marshal character Will Kane.

Actually, I have to say, I didn’t realise this was Van Cleef’s debut until after I watched it again and looked him up. I mean, it’s a pretty rare debut. Okay, so he’s not the bad guy... Frank Miller (played by Ian McDonald) or even the main villain of the three gunfighters waiting for Frank to return to town on the noon train (that would be Frank’s brother Ben, played by Sheb Wooley)... but he has a large portion of the opening credits solo, while he gets ready and joins the other two gunmen to ride to the railway station. He really looks like a villain and, with his scarred face and wild eye reactions, which feature a couple of times in the film, I have to wonder if Sergio Leone maybe looked at this film long and hard over the years before making the actor a household name and using him in two of his famous Spaghetti Westerns. When we think of those Leone movies, we think of the stylised poses, the expressive eyes and the constant waiting and... well, it’s all here in High Noon, long before the Italians started doing it, mostly, better than the Americans. Or at least as interestingly. As the three wait for the train, you will certainly be reminded of Leone’s later masterpiece Once Upon A Time In The West and I would bet this is one of the films he looked at for inspiration.

The plot, if you’ve never seen the film before, goes something like this...

Will Kane (Gary Cooper) marries his quaker lover Amy (Grace Kelly) but finds out that the murderous Frank Miller has just been released from jail (from up north!) and is returning on the noon train to get together with his fellow thugs to gun down the marshall in an act of revenge and then, as implied, take over the town with their hoodlum ways. The town’s folk try to get Mr and Mrs Kane to leave in a buckboard but Kane soon turns back to pick up his tin star (the new marshal doesn’t get into town until the day after) and try to get help to fight off these four cold blooded killers in an attempt to protect the community. Amy doesn’t understand this course of action and tells him she will be on that noon train when it arrives. His former girlfriend, the Mexican Helen Ramírez (played wonderfully by Katy Jurado) also ends things with the marshal’s deputy, played by Lloyd Bridges. She is also set to leave on the noon train.

Meanwhile, in a searing metaphorical indictment of the Hollywood anti-communist black list as experienced by one of the producers about to be put on that list, Kane calls on the various friends and acquaintances in town, only to be met with inaction or untenable conditions to the required help. Bridges character quits over the matter and, even the one man qualified enough to help, changes his mind just before the villains show up. Which leaves just Kane and, as one of two strong female characters in the film, his wife Amy... who shows up to aid him in ways which I won’t spoil for you here if you’ve never seen it.

And it’s a staggeringly good movie. There are probably a fair few moving camera shots in the film but the absolutely beautiful 1.33:1 black and white photography set ups coupled with the pacing make the film appear static and, it has to be said, feel somewhat claustrophobic, as the characters and audience count down the minutes until the train gets into town. Which is something the audience can actually do in this film because, aside from some stuff at the start (and we’re only talking minutes), the entire film is shot... or at least edited... in real time. The various shots of clocks of all shapes and sizes included in the visuals to give you a constant reminder (and surprisingly accurate one, considering how a Hollywood movie is shot) of just how long you’ve got until the shooting starts... underlined by the fairly regular, tick tock percussion of the main title theme which, actually, I think was the first time a movie song had been written into the actual score to add emphasis. Can you imagine a Bond film that didn’t do this? Well, okay, there have been a few of them over the last decade but they’re all the poorer for it.

It’s also a film of mounting tension and unsaid or understated plot points. Nothing is directly said and, though there are some dense sections of scenes heavy with dialogue, a lot of the film plays out like a silent movie in terms of lack of conversation and it’s stronger for it (something else I suspect Sergio Leone learned from films like this). For instance, it’s never explicitly stated that Helen is the marshal’s ex but, as various comments are thrown about a picture is painted that she has history with the main antagonist of the film and you can piece together that the main protagonist, Will Kane, got her out of some problems before hitching up with her himself. It’s something an audience can sew together in their mind, just as Will’s new wife Amy does about half way through the film.

So, yeah, brilliantly minimal but carrying a lot of meaning in a way which almost seems a forgotten art in Hollywood nowadays, where teen audiences have lit a fire which ignorantly blazes through the subtlety of the art of cinematic implication and helped boil things down to a lowest common denominator of clear but stifling explanations and clarifications before the latest heroic incarnations can even get their clothes on. In this way the film is, perhaps, of its time but, honestly, it also feels strikingly timeless, especially with it’s criticisms of the common people on the street failing to do their duty and arguing their way out of harms way by justifying their stance in inventive rhetoric which never, quite, seems all that convincing.

And that’s me done on High Noon. One of the all time great movies that Hollywood ever put out and as entertaining a film as you’re likely to see. It holds up really well over the years and this new Blu Ray from Eureka is stacked with some interesting extras which, alas, I probably wont have time to watch for a very long time, if ever. But, as a recommendation, my dad absolutely loved it too and so do I and I reckon it’s a ‘must see’ for any fans of the art of the medium in general. Do not forsake this new release of an all time classic Western because, honestly, you’d be missing out.

La Resa Dei Conti (The Big Gundown)

Cleefhanger

La Resa Dei Conti (The Big Gundown) 
1966 Spain/Italy 
Directed by Sergio Sollima
Screening at the London Film Festival 2012

Warning: Spoilers standing off against each other, 
waiting to be the first one to fire. 

Well... I was more than a little surprised when I found that the organisers of the London Film Festival had chosen to acquire a restored print of one of my all time favourite spaghetti westerns, The Big Gundown, and screen it as part of their Treasures Of The National Archive section in this year’s programme of events. Particularly as I couldn’t remember if I’d actually ever seen it projected on a big screen or not. Hey, it’s actually two years older than I am (so it’s positively ancient) and when you get to my age all those revival and restored re-release screenings over the years blur into one. I just can’t remember all the ones I’ve seen projected at a cinema.

I’ve certainly seen the film a number of times on TV screenings and bootleg DVDs over the years though, so I was positively wetting my lips at the prospect when I found out, a few days before I went, that the definitive print they had restored was longer than anything we’d seen before (it was pretty much butchered on its initial American release and I think the US version is the one which gets shown on TV from time to time). Well I have to say that, if this sounded to good to be true... in some ways it certainly was. And in other ways, I guess it wasn’t.

That is to say... aww, heck... lets get the main disappointments out of the way first... before I remind you how amazing this movie is.

I’d been tipped off that this was going to be showing via the BFI earlier in the year chatting to the UK’s foremost authority on the Italian western, Sir Christopher Frayling, at a film fair (we always go to the same Italian soundtrack stall first, it seems). Well, he was there to say a few words about the movie before the screening started, as I knew he would be, and in it he impressed upon us how this was going to be a more complete version of the film than we’d seen before. I had a few alarm bells ringing in my head when he read an extract of a review out from the time of its original full length screening in the sixties, which described a particular scene. As he read it, I was nodding my head and thinking, “yeah, that’s a good scene and the score in that part is brilliant” etc... but then he said something along the lines of... “of course, we’ve never had the opportunity to see this scene ourself... so I hope to God it’s in there today.”

It was then that I started thinking... “Wait? What?”

So anyway... the screening starts and plays out and I am held spellbound but... it was, I have to say, no longer (and possibly not that much better quality too) than the bootleg edition which had been doing the rounds for over a decade and which could easily be picked up for a fiver. So this was a bit wrong. I sometimes wonder how these people who commission these things have never managed to get access to stuff which the fans have had for a while. It’s a bit bizarre.

A similar, surprising thing happened when I read a book about giallo movies about three years ago... the author had said that he just couldn’t get hold of the films he wanted to research so, in many cases, went with reviews and articles about them from the time. Since I seemed to have pretty much all the movies he was talking about not being able to get ahold of... well, all I can say is it’s about time all these various companies and academic types realised that we’re living in a global community nowadays. The internet and DVD as a universal format used as a bridge between various countries is a reality people are going to have to start getting used to... there are many fan edits and message boards for these kinds of things out there. Especially when it comes to stuff like spaghetti westerns.

The other eye opener for me is that they went with an Italian dub with English subtitles, even though the principal actors were both speaking English. it was understandable but... let me tell you how I think this works and how things like this happen...

The Italians don’t usually record sound when they’re making their movies, certainly at the time when these were made and I suspect things haven’t changed too much in recent years either, but I would be interested to hear if they have. Anyway, it’s all dubbed on after and the principal actors all speak whatever language they are comfortable with. This means that, as an actor, you have to know when a person’s going to stop speaking so you can come in on your cue because, more often than not, you won’t be able to understand a word they’re saying to you. The movie is shot like this and then dubbed, usually very badly, in various languages for release in different countries. Rarely, in any print, is the lip synch any good.

Now then, if the footage is cut out of a US release on its first run, there’s a chance that the sound for those scenes hasn’t been dubbed in English... so what usually happens with these things, when they are restored for the US and UK marketplace, is the language used is often English... but the reinstated scenes are Italian with English subs. For this screening the whole thing was dubbed in Italian with subtitles. I didn’t mind it myself, actually... but the best way to see this particular movie is probably in English for the scenes where they have the audio. If they want to spend money on it (aka, if they don’t want to be cheap about it), then they can always do what they did a few years back on the restored version of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly... which is get Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach back in the studio to dub the missing scenes and get another actor to impersonate the late, great Lee Van Cleef for his scenes. This seemed to work pretty well.

What’s the most interesting thing about this particular screening of The Big Gundown, though, is that in this version they chose to put the English language version of the song over the credits and end titles instead of the Italian vocal version. Not that I mind, I love the English performance of the song (by the same singer, Christy) but I just found it a strange choice, especially considering the proximity of the last word said in the film on screen in the English version and the deliberate juxtaposition of the crashing Christy vocal which follows it.

Which brings me to my other little grumble... Christopher Frayling apologised for the “screechy song”! I was gobsmacked... I love that song. What’s the world coming to when people can’t appreciate the opening title song to The Big Gundown.

Anyway... enough of that.

If you’ve not seen The Big Gundown before and you like spaghetti westerns... then you really need to check this one out. It’s one of the greats. Lee Van Cleef plays Corbett, a respectable bounty killer, who is more in it for justice than any money he may make from it. When a local big wig offers to fund Corbett’s future political ambitions, one of his “favours” is that Corbett track down a Mexican who has raped and killed a child... a Mexican by the name of Cuchillo (the knife). However, this is a film about political corruption and, as he tracks down, captures, loses and retracks down Cuchillo, who is played absolutely brilliantly by a scene stealing Tomas Milian, it becomes clear that Cuchillo might not actually be guilty of any crime other than being poor and that Corbett is being used to blame and kill a man to cover up the crime of the son-in-law of the man who sent him on his mission.

The film includes various action sequences which highlight both Van Cleef’s stoic and sturdy ‘avenger of justice’ and Milian’s ‘young hippy’ of a character who relies on his animal cunning to always stay ahead of Van Cleef and the performances really are a joy to watch. We even have some sequences with Nieves Navarro (who giallo watchers will best know under the name Susan Scott) in them as a lady landowner of a ranch full of men she keeps fighting amongst themselves for the promise of her sexual favours (sexual favours which both Corbett and Cuchillo indulge themselves of, I might add).

Sergio Sollima is one of the more conscientious of the genre directors and this western is beautifully shot, much like you’d expect from something by either of the other two great ‘Sergios’ of the form, the genre’s kickstarter Sergio Leone and, equally, Sergio Corbucci. Vast landscape canvases with various shots showing figures large and small in contrast to each other, against the flat surface of the cinema screen... it’s all bold stuff and I can tell you, you really get a lot more out of Milian’s subtle facial reactions when you see this on a large screen. It’s just fantastic.

There’s a fair but of action and a lot of humour all put into the mix with a more serious political (possibly) subtext which ultimately leads to a heartwarming alliance for both of the characters you’ve been cheering all along. Lee Van Cleef’s opening sequence where he takes down three criminals after giving them each a bullet of ammunition (in a beautifully framed shot which would have echoes later down the road for the spaghetti western) and Cuchillo’s opening sequences, where he outsmarts Corbett before you even get to see his face... are equal delights.

And, of course, there’s the music.

Ennio Morricone’s masterful score (arranged and conducted by another great Italian composer, Bruno Nicolai) is almost overpowering but the film is strong enough to stand up to the pounding and lyrical humour that Morricone throws at it (a piece for this which specifically references one of the villain’s penchant for classical piano is even used, completely out of context, in the opening shots of Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds). The action writing is superb and it’s all mixed into the foreground like it needs to be... in those days the sound guys and the directors had a little more respect for the power of the score... not like these days where it’s often buried within the mix. Seeing it with this score coming out loud at the cinema was fantastic and I have to confess I was toe tapping to a lot of the movie as I was watching... hope the guy sitting next to me didn’t mind.

One thing about this screening which was very gratifying was that the venue was so full... it may even have been a sell out (and it wasn’t in a small screen either). To counter that, though, I thought it was kinda sad that the average age of the audience attending seemed to be people in their 50s and 60s... younger people need to see this great stuff and get inspired by it too. It blows away a lot of modern action movies!

Since this movie has been recently ‘restored’ (although I think it might be the same as the old Japanese Region 2 DVD in terms of content... if you quite rightly don’t want to go down the bootleg route) then I’m pretty sure that this is currently being prepped for either a US Region 1 or UK Region 2 release, although I’m told that the new German release DVD uses the same restored master as this one, from the same company.

Either way, it’s a film every fan of these kinds of westerns will want to see and, if you like this one, I can tell you now that the sequel, once again starring Tomas Milian as Cuchillo and from the same director, is at least as good as (if not better, although sadly without Van Cleef) than the first one. It’s called Run, Man, Run after the chorus from the song in The Big Gundown (Seeeeeee! It was popular enough a song to name a sequel after the lyrics!), has a blinding score by Bruno Nicolai (there are rumours as to who actually composed it, put about by the director in many interviews, but I’m told by a specialist in this field that those rumours are untrue) and it would, obviously, make a great double bill with this one. Curious thing about Sergio Sollima though, is that he’s a director who doesn’t like endings. So, while The Big Gundown has a lot of closure in it... you are left with the feeling that there is more to be told just around the corner. Run, Man, Run is even more blatant in ending the film at a point where you think you are in the middle of the story... so if you’re a fan of the traditional beginning, middle and end format of storytelling, you’ll just need to adjust your hat a little. You won’t want to miss out on either of these two movies.