No Spaghvember without a genuine classic. This year’s choice was My Name is Nobody, a film learned to love the hard way. When I First saw it, in cinema, I was virtually the only one who didn’t like it. I like some things, but the film was ruined imo by Hill’s silly comical antics. But the comedy western was hot in those days and the movie was very popular among boys of my age. When I sa wit again, in the 80s, on VHS, I enjoyed it a lot more, but it took me another couple of decades before I could really appreciate the mix of styles. Today it’s definitely Top 20 material for me
Yes, same here. Didn’t recognize for what it was when I rediscovered it in the beginning of my sw journey, but now it is in my Top 50. It somehow grew on me. I’m reading a book about Tonino Valerii, and can’t wait to get to the stuff about Nobody.
Top 5 now for me. I don’t buy any comedy SWs, with this being the exception. With Fonda as a fine link to the serious (spaghetti-? and/or American ?) western, there are sort of two western worlds that meet here in a very entertainable way IMO.
I see My Name Is Nobody as the “Once Upon A Time In The West” of the comedy western genre. Both are as perfect as you can desire.
For one hour, boring stuff. Then enters a saloon girl, Rosy (Franca Polesello), and the film picks up considerably. A Richard Harrison film, but José Torres and Federico Boido are here, too.
5/10
Now, for the next five it seems I have Italian audio only.
Due to too much sangria yesterday I got very sleepy so my next movie was today’s Amazon DVD arrival The Ruthless Four which had got several really positive comments in its thread on this web site. I think the music more reminded of an epic American adventure movie (or nearly Lawrence of Arabia even if the main theme from the latter movie is very good and suitable to that epic film). Only in the end there was a nice accoustic guitar in.
The plot is vaguely similar to Sierra Madre’s Treasure which I watched last summer. The actors are good but I didn’t find the story in The Ruthless Four or the psychology or the tension between the 4 main characters so very much entertaining.
The scenery from Tabernas Desert and sand dunes of Cabo del Gata are always nice.
This SW was supposed to be partly shot in Sierra Nevada but I didn’t notice that this first time. On the other hand there were some scenes from a big lake or river with distant rather “flat mountains” that I didn’t recognize.
Maybe I will rate The Ruthless Four as a weak 6/10.
Tonight I was going to watch His Name was King. But as I couldn’t find it, I went to The Last Traitor, also on my list for Spagvember. First it seemed familiar, then I thought I hadn’t seen it before, wondering how I could have overlooked it, then I recognized some dialogue. And there is no denying it, as it is on this thread for 2017 (inserted below), I have seen it before. An uneven film, still for me great, somewhere among top 60 I think.
This afternoon I had my second viewing of Oggi a Me…Domani a Te! (Today it’s You…Tomorrow it’s Me!)
Just as good the second time around, and Tatsuya Nakadai still steals the show as the demented bad guy. I know a lot people believe the final duel is uneven and anti-climactic, but given in real life the killing of a Commanchero was seen as an act of justice, it probably wouldn’t of mattered how Halsey’s guy did it.
Steno:Twins from Texas
-Another early western comedy with the popular doppelganger theme. Bandits steal a wagon with two pairs of baby twins and while the soldiers are chasing them they throw two of the babies out of the wagon. 2 babies end up to grow up with soldier and end up being jerk journalists while the other pair grown up with the bandits an en up being jerk bandits. 3/10
Another nice above-average SW from a director that didn’t stay too long in the genre before moving along into the territories of crime and horror films. Just like with Fulci and Margheriti there’s some nice horror touch here and there like the zombie-like mental patients going bananas (…splendid performance from Eduardo Fajardo). The cast is amazing - John Ireland, Peter Lee Lawrence and of course Piero Lulli that has some really funny lines, like when he refers to PLL as “The idiot that only drinks water”. Another thing that I appreciate with this movie is the fact that the staff at the costumes department wasn’t high on LSD, going for the crazy screamy bright colours like pink, yellow and green but kept it classy and nice instead. Slow at times but overall, I like it a lot!
SPAGVEMBERFEST 2019: DAY 23
Ah, today is Micro-Budget-American-Western-Included-For-No-Good-Reason day, in honour of the f#ckawful Apache Blood’s appearance on the Mill Creek Spaghetti Western 44-Movie Collection. However, I’d rather drop my ballbags into a deep fat fryer than ever watch Apache Blood again, so today I’m going with The Legend of God’s Gun (Bruce, 2007), a long-form promotional video made to accompany the 2002 western-themed album of the same name by Los Angeles-based psychedelic rockers Spindrift, starring the band themselves plus a few of their mates. It’s awful (so bad in fact that even our own @Reverend_Danite, a purveyor of trash himself who found this movie in a charity shop, had to abandon it and pass it onto me, for which I’m eternally grateful), the band can’t act, and it appears to have been made with a low-end camcorder on a budget not exceeding $50. But I find it endearing and enjoyable anyway and if that heady blend of crap and charm doesn’t scream “Spagvember!”, then I don’t know what does. Now, let’s get cheap and nasty!
I also just watched this again recently … and I’m a little confused by the amount of praise it gets here - Could it be because of the Dario Argento involvement or the Samurai guy, Tatsuya Nakadai ???
I found it just ordinary and a little silly,
‘Bill Kiowa’ to the very effeminate barber, “I’m looking for a man, … a big man, a big man with a beard!” … this had me laughing out loud, though it’s played absolutely dead straight faced.
Also the scenes when the Magnificent Five are riding parallel towards the camera, with the hero music playing, is just so cheesy !!!
The murder scene of Kiowa’s wife is suitably disturbing … but I don’t know why Bill needed 4 supermen pistoleros to fight his battle ! …. Anyway, I didn’t hate it … 6/10 from me.
The line between cheesy and cool is in spaghetti land obviously very thin.
That’s like asking why Yul Brynner needed six pistoleros to fight their battle. Why would you need help of few superpistoleros against small army of bad guys, hmmmm, just why.
Haven’t seen it in ages, and since I’m reading a book about Tonino’s movies, it’s the right time to rewatch some of them.
A solid spagh, which drags a bit in the middle - best parts are imo first thirty minutes (when he is after Sancho and first town battle) and last twenty or so. I was disappointed by the lack of use of hero’s sniping abilities in the second half. Why introduce a sniper and let him blow up the bandits with dynamite instead of showing him doing some neat sniping tricks. At least few. Nothing in the second half. Nothing. The final duel is quite cool though, also big battles are handled pretty well, I’d say better than in Leone’s westerns. On the other hand, George Wang and one other bandit during the climactic showdown are killed off quite slapdash - I wasn’t even sure who killed them.
There’s a note on an index page, that Tonino was just a copyist without his own original style. Simply not true. 7/10
Nah, I don’t buy that. Elfego was surrounded by his cohorts, hard to get to him. But even if we play along with the idea that Kiowa should just somehow assasinate/duel him, his numerous henchmen would then go after our hero to avenge their boss.
Only possibility is that Kiowa would somehow secretly assasinate Elfego, but the movie is quite clear about that he didn’t want to do that this way. To bring on knees his whole gang and in the end him is quite another matter.
