My Arrow release of The Shootist arrived today. What is the first thing staring at me when I open the case? 
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I’ll bet ‘The Duke’ wouldn’t have cared much for, ‘Matalo’ either ! 
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I can almost guarantee it!
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Recently revisited this one. Neither do I love nor hate this one. The opening is remarkably solid with its roaring guitar riffs, over-the-top phasing effects and ferocious shootouts, I mean it’s just fantastic. Then the movie takes a nosedive and grinds to a halt and well, not a whole lot happens then. The storyline is basically lifted from Kill the Wicked, except that it is stripped to bare essentials here insofar as it is quite hard to follow at times. If I had not seen that movie, I could have had trouble understanding what the heck was going on, there are basically no dialogues whatsoever, especially in the Italian version, so the viewer is forced to do the guesswork to fill in the gaps.
The movie is essentially an all-style-no-substance work, it kinda feels like spaghetti western’s equivalent of Duchamp’s Fountain to me. Anyway, the issue with the midsection lies in that the film has almost no story to fall back on and the style in the middle is hardly anything exceptional: most of the camerawork simply comes down to swirly shots and the likes; the editing is outlandish, but it does not really hold a candle to, say, Arcalli’s work on Django Kill for instance, it just feels weird for weirdness’s sake if you will. Then there comes that great killer horse scene which is easily one of the oddest scenes in the history of the genre and definitely one of the few things this movie certainly improves upon. The showdown is stupid, but I guess it kinda works.
I dunno, it’s okay I guess, but if I view this ever again, I will simply watch the first twenty minutes, skip the entire midsection and then watch the last thirty minutes, as these are the best bits. The rest of it is kinda meh in my book.
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I think I have identified Mirella Pamphili - not assigned a role on cast listings - as a woman on a balcony watching the hanging at the beginning of the movie. No dialogue but she is seen in several shots.
Spoiler alert but here are the major differences between Kill the Wicked and Matalo. Overall, Matalo is pretty much a scene for scene remake but stylistically the films are quite different and the Pani character has been given more airtime than the equivalent figure in KTW by swoppong activities around.
- in KTW the outlaw being hanged is the older bloke and NOT the same outlaw who later feigns his death in a plot with the woman gang member. This older bloke is the gang leader.
- in KTW the other two gang members help the third escape from the gallows and are present in the town together with the ‘hired’ outlaw gang. All 3 gun down the hired gang. In M, the other two outlaws do not appear until Burt has killed all ten (!) members of the other gang which seems risky to me (they number only 5-6 in KTW)
- The blonde widow is seen burying her husband in KTW when the hero meets her. In M the burial is not shown and she meets the hero after he has collapsed.
- The hero doesn’t have any boomerangs in KTW and uses a rifle at the climax.
- The killings at the end are all different. The same people get killed but all of them are killed by different people!
- The money is burnt in KTM but disappears off on a donkey in M.
- And of course, KTW is a much more conventionally filmed western and the main characters aren’t dressed like hippies nor is there lots of swirling camera work or slow motion.
I did wander if the director or Pani had seen El Puro as I thought the Pani villain was similar to the main villain in El Puro.
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Anyone figure out any of the lyrics?
I don´t remember the Mátalo music, not a SW in my collection but watched it a couple of times on Youtube (5/10 ?), but the music in Kill The Wicked! (8/10) by Lavagnino is just great - my favorite composer after Morricone, but I didn’t know his background before now : So Morricone had a good taste
And his music för Requiem For A Gringo is just superb…SO beautiful in that case also. I ordered the soundtracks a few years ago,
“Lavagnino was very nearly the choice of Sergio Leone to score “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964) - having composed the music for the director’s “The Last Days of Pompeii” (1959) and “The Colossus of Rhodes” (1961). Leone was favorably disposed toward him, but the insistence of Leone’s distributor that he meet with Ennio Morricone led to the revelation that they had attended grammar school together, so the director gave the assignment to Morricone.”
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I watched a version of this on YouTube today. It was an English dub but had sections with no sound. I’m assuming this is because the English language version was shorter and the missing scenes have been added back without sound?
This added an extra oddity to what is already undoubtedly a unique, surreal, “cult?” SW. I have to confess I kinda liked it - and it could grow on me!
If I watch it again I would like to see it with sound throughout. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
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There is a BluRay from arrow video, no need for crummy YouTube vids of this
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