Whew what a great flick. Yesterday before going to bed I noticed it’s on TV, so today I popped in my awesome Koch Media disc and gave this masterpiece a rewatch.
Man, I am so hooked on that great title song… “neeeever!!! neeever!!! lalalalalaaaaaaaaaaaa neveeeer! neveeeer!!”" great. just great.
Milian is also outstanding in this film…
No doubt about it, this is one of the best non Leone SW !!! Great acting, good plot, great music, superb atmosphere etc. !!! First they brought out a cut version (vcr) which I really liked but with the new remastered, uncut version I immediatly fell in love !!! Last winter, around christmas, Kabel1 broadcasted the full-version, including the Count von Schulenberg sequences etc. !!! Thumbs up for that !!! Where did they show it this time Sebastian ???
Well, the DVD is unbeatable of course !!! But Kabel1 did a great job presenting the uncut, full-version of the movie for the first time on German tv, even without commercial breaks. I was surprised !!! Back in the days they cut a bunch of scenes 'cause of political reasons !!! Didn’t know it was running a couple of nights ago, probably because it ran so late !!!
No doubt a classic, but did anyone feel the first half of the movie to kind of be awkward? Tomas Milian’s character is built up to be some sort of super-thief, but he is easily caught by Van Cleef and then gets beat up a lot in that weird house. Not really the typical introduction for a character like that. What was up with that house anyway? A bunch of big, evil thieves being controlled by that lone woman? I thought that was kinda unrealistic… and it felt like it was taken out of a greek tragedy or something. That whole part of the movie feels rather out of place and the pacing is off. It’s not until the 2nd half that I feel the movie really starts to pick up and Cuchillo gets to strut his stuff. Still, a great movie and my favorite Morricone soundtrack.
I finally had a chance to watch the remastered edition tonight and this film was even better than I remembered, and that’s saying a lot for a film I hold in such high regard.
I wouldn’t consider it’s slightly episodic nature to be a negative as that is the nature of all manhunt, chase, revenge or quest films; and that’s a large percentage of SWs. After all THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY could also be called episodic and GBU is one of the finest movies ever made.
Also this movie proves how important good actors are to a film, and Milan very very good. Imagine this film with Gilbert Roland and George Hilton - yes it would still be good, but it wouldn’t be great.
Another thing this film has that lesser spaghetti’s lack is character developement. By the end Cleef has changed, he has learned something about himself and become a better man for having know Milan. And the audience perception of Milan has changed, thus casting a new light on things he did early in the movie (for example: when he was playing with the 13 year old girl he was just playing with the little girl, it’s the preacher who was the villan as he had four wives and one of them was the 13 year old).
My thought for the day: if you have not seen the full length restored LA RESA DI CONTI you owe it to yourself to do so. Throw away the crappy public domain DVDs. Retire your video tape of the edited television version.
I wouldn't consider it's slightly episodic nature to be a negative as that is the nature of all manhunt, chase, revenge or quest films; and that's a large percentage of SWs. After all THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY could also be called episodic and GBU is one of the finest movies ever made.
Many spaghettis have episodic stories, it’s nothing unusual at all, and often very fitting!
Are you talking about the Franco Cleef reconstruction or the Koch Media version? I have Franco’s version and was wondering how it compares to Koch release.
In the US about 15 were cut from THE BIG GUNDOWN to make it shorter for theatrical release.
Also in the US people have to sit through commercial interuptions every ten to fifteen minutes when watching a movie. Can you imagine what that’s like? So the US TV version of THE BIG GUNDOWN has had another 10 or so minutes cut out of it so that it’s only 80 minutes long.
When a movie is scheduled to run for two hours on US television (say 9 PM to 11 PM) the movie has to be about 80 minutes long so it can be stopped often enough to show 40 minutes worth of advertisements!
There’s a lot on the Koch DVD that someone who has only seen the movie on US TV has never seen before.
I saw this film last night in a theater in NYC, with Death Rides a Horse. This is a great film. It has to be one of LvC’s best SWs and he has some nice costumes. Tomas Milian was great was Cuchillo. I had seen Run Man Run first and really liked the way he plays the character. Sollima is a great director, too bad he only did the three SWs. I liked that it had the social and political overtones, but it didn’t take away from the action. This has to be one of the best SWs, although my girlfriend likes Run Man Run better.
