Whew… Halloween sure is an extremely busy time of year around these parts. Outside of all the epic awesomeness that I have brought to you throughout Chucktober here on CNAMB, I have also had my devilish little hands dipped in all sorts of other wicked things that you should certainly enjoy on this All Hollow's Eve!!
First up, the master blaster of disaster, Aaron of The Death Rattle, was kind enough to ask me to partake in a special Halloween edition of 13 Questions. Aaron put together some fantastic questions that I truly enjoyed answering, so if you love you some me and would love to learn a whole lot more about what makes my blackened Halloween loving heart tick, then please take a moment to stop by The Death Rattle. And while you're there, check out all the other maniacal little goodies that Aaron always has up his sleeve (and sometimes in his pants)!
Next up, Ryne of the always fantastic The Moon is a Dead World was gracious enough to ask me to partake in his super celebration of all things All Hollow's Eve with the Halloween 15, which features a slew of wonderful guest bloggers sharing their thoughts on 15 different films hand selected by Ryne himself. When Ryne sent me the list of films to choose from, one movie immediately jumped off the email: director Aldo Lado's Who Saw Her Die?, a Giallo that I have been itching to review for quite some time for reasons you will have to read about for yourself.
Please take a moment to check out my thoughtful take on the near fantastic Who Saw Her Die? over at The Moon is a Dead World, and since your heading over there, you might as well take a stroll around and check out all the other Halloween horrors that Ryne has up his sleeve!
That does it for the time being. Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you enjoy these egotistical Halloween treats I have brought you, but more importantly, I hope you are having a frightfully fulfilling Halloween!
Taking a vastly different route from the usual dance party antics that can be found here every Friday night, this week I am showing some love for one of cinema's greatest contributors, Ennio Morricone. The man's work is vast and he has done many memorable scores, but I have a personal favorite that I will be focusing on this evening, which comes to us from 1971's Duck, You Sucker aka A Fistful of Dynamite.
What sets this party apart from most is the fact that I will be providing an entire sequence from the film, but it is a sequence that encapsulates why Morricone and Duck's director, Sergio Leone, worked so brilliantly together. It's also my favorite part of the film, so it's a no-brainer. The scene in question is the siege on the Mesa Verde bank, where Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger) believes he is robbing a bank, but instead, he is actually releasing political prisoners of the Mexican revolution, making him a great hero.
This segment starts with a little sampling of the Duck,You Sucker title theme, Invention for John, and sets up the entire segment in a nice way. After a little chit-chat, thing really gets going at the 3:05 mark when the song March of the Beggars begins to make its presence known and then plays throughout the rest of the sequence. What I love about this section of the film is how it shows what music can add to a film, as the music simply compliments everything that is happening on screen - which is essentially the point of a score - but this is a perfect example of it being done right.
Before I send you off, I should note that the 6 and 7 minute marks are SOOOO GOOD!! Sorry, I could resist.
Alright, this party's about to "blow up," shun (shun-shun-shun)!
Set in Utah during the Great Blizzard of 1899, the small town of Snow Hill has gone through some tough financial times, forcing some of the less than privileged citizens to rob and steal just so they can eat and stay alive. With no other choice for survival, these unfortunate citizens have become considered outlaws by the town and with prices on their heads, they are targets for bounty hunters (or bounty killers as they're called) who now infest the area. The leader of these bounty hunters, a madman named Loco (Klaus Kinski), kills a man in cold blood that has a bounty on his head, resulting in the victims wife, Pauline (Vonetta McGee) hiring a gunslinger named Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant) to seek revenge and kill Loco.
Silence is not the biggest fan of these powerful money hungry bounty hunters and he makes it his hobby to shorten their life span when he can. When Silence was a young boy, he watched as his mother and father were killed by bounty hunters, who thought it a good idea to slit the young boys throat to keep him from saying anything, ever again, thus the name, Silence. To keep within the law, Silence doesn't just go up and buck shots into dudes, he goats them into shooting first, so it is considered self defense and completely legal when this quick on the draw, outlaw kills his victims.
1968's The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio, or The Big Silence) is a Spaghetti Western with all the right moves in so many ways. It has a grand and gorgeous setting, an amazing Ennio Morricone score, and stars some of the best actors of the genre. While this film and the performances are slightly hindered by bad dubbing, there is a nice and to be expected, squirmy, Luigi Pistilli as Pollicutt, who is Show Hill's Justice of the Peace and the one paying for the bounties on the outlaws heads. I also really enjoyed Frank Wolff, who plays the Sheriff of Snow Hill. He starts off almost bumbling, but he quickly makes the transformation into a very self assured and honorable man of the law, who only wants things to be fair for everyone. However, he isn't liberal when it come to holding the bounty hunters accountable to the laws of the town, no matter if they are a threat to him or not. While there are two stars of The Great Silence and despite the title of the film, Jean-Louis Trintignant and his character, Silence is not one of them. I liked the character of Silence and J.L.T. does a competent enough job in this role, but he is nothing spectacular either (Nero would've been much better). He has the right look for the emotionless gunslinger, but he just seems to lack that certain charisma needed to be great. I don't claim he is not one of the stars because he doesn't have the magnetism of other Spaghetti Western leads, it is because he is not really meant to be the main focus of this film.
The real focus and star of The Great Silence is without a doubt, Klaus fucking Kinski and the character of Loco. This film is a true showcase for the talents and lunacy that is Klaus Kinski and he is as good as ever in this film. He steals every scene playing a character that is as mean as it gets, but is also kind of a wise guy that can easily keep his cool in most any situation. I have seen a decent amount of Kinski films and his portrayal of Loco may be the best I have ever seen of him on screen. Except for Crawlspace of course!
Director Sergio Corbucci treads territory that is not the norm of the genre. As with his best known film, 1966's Django, which was set in a town completely engulfed by mud, The Great Silence is entirely set in the snow. There are very few Westerns, Italian or American that have been set in these conditions and the only ones that come to mind are Pale Rider and Unforgiven, both of which are not entirely snow bound. Though, both are pretty damned fantastic and directed by Clint Eastwood, who apparently was rumored to direct a remake of The Great Silence, so the inspiration is fitting.
So when I said there were two stars of The Great Silence, if Kinski is one, then the other is the snowy backdrop of this truly frigid film. I've said before how much I love winter/snow set movies and this may be one of the best uses of the purdy powder. Mixed with the amazing Silvano Ippoliti cinematography, the presence of epic winter is engulfing to the senses and as I watched, I couldn't help but feel like I too, was as cold as these outlaws. It also gives the characters a reason to wear very nontraditional western garb, where these dudes really need to gear up for the blistering elements. How often do you see a gunslinger wear a fur coat? I'd like to see someone splash fake blood on Loco in protest.
I have seen more than my fair share of Westerns and I am a pretty big fan of Django and consider it an upper echelon film of the Italian Western genre, but it is not quite up there with the Leone films. The Great Silence, on the other hand, is certainly on par with the master filmmakers movies and may be one of the best Westerns, Italian, or whatever, that I have ever seen. It has some flaws with an muddled plot and while Corbucci can be an amazing director, he doesn't seem to mind having little flubs of imperfection in his movies. Even then, The Great Silence is a masterpiece of the genre and of cinema period. I didn't even go near talking about the crazy ending of this film, but that is a major spoiler that needs to be seen by you when you watch this movie. It is a must see.
