Friday, June 16, 2017

Junesploitation Day 16: Westerns!

He aims for the money...his gun does the rest!

49 comments:

  1. FERDINANDO BALDI WESTERN! DOUBLE FEATURE:

    DJANGO, PREPARE A COFFIN (1968, 92 min.) on Amazon Prime
    for the first time.

    You can do a lot worse than having Terence Hill playing the titular character in your "Django" ripoff spaghetti western, complete with wacky theme song (not as good or memorable as Luis Enríquez Bacalo's '66 original). There is even a Mrs. Django introduced and promptly killed in the first ten minutes by a gang of gold thieves working for a big bad (Horst Frank), setting-up our hero's five-years-in-the-making revenge plot. It's a pretty good plan, too: working as an executioner, Django spares the lives of the people wrongly accused of crimes by henchman Lucas (George Eastman) and recruits them to work for him as a shadow army. Django gets more than he bargains for when an Indian named Garcia (José Torres, excellent) tries to talk his fellow "ghost" outlaws to go against Django's plan and strike it rich on their own. The final shootout is anti-climactic because we all know what Django carries around in that coffin, but a siege on a saloon in flames (complete with Django having the shit beaten out of him, a tradition from the original most of the sequels/ripoffs maintained) works as both western action and unintentionally-hilarious drama (because DUB-FROM-HELL-SPLOITATION!). In FTM lexicon, "Django, Bring a Coffin" 'its fine.'


    FORGOTTEN PISTOLERO (1969, 80 min.) on Amazon Prime for the first time.

    Most westerns have thinly-veiled plot beats leading into action sequences. This Italy-Spain co-production, shot in many of the same sets/locations seen in Amando de Ossorio's "Blind Dead" series, flips that equation on its ear. There are shootouts and what not, but the melodramatic tale of a family driven apart by the greed of matriarch Anna Carrasco (Luciana Paluzzi) betraying hubby Juan (José Suárez) for power-hungry Tomas (Alberto de Mendoza) is front and center throughout "Forgotten Pistolero." It's up to Juan's grown-up children to avenge their father, including daughter Isabella (the gorgeous Pilar Velázquez) pretending to sleep with stepfather Tomas in order to get Anna all riled up. There's a season's worth of telenovela plot crammed into this flick's short-but-tightly-edited running time. Not for everybody, but a refreshing attempt by a journeyman director to put plot and character ahead of the carnage we've come to expect in spaghetti westerns from this era. 'Its fine,' again. :-)

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    1. i almost bought the Arrow release of Django Prepare a Coffin. it's only 20$, but you've convinced me to save that money for something else

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    2. If you have Amazon Prime test drive it before committing to buying it on BD. It's not a worthless flick, it's just not THE "Django."

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  2. Bone Tomahawk: Because who doesn't want to see a man get split in half with a bone tomahawk?

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  3. Seven Men from Now

    I didn't love it as much as most people do but Lee Marvin is really great.

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    1. Yojimbo in 35 mm at NFSA Australia for the first time

      Is this a western? I'd say it fits, y'know. Anyway, this is as good as a moviegoing experience gets.

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    2. Technically not a western, but so many westerns ripped it off that it qualifies by osmosis. Love B&W anamorphic widescreen movies made in Japan in the 1960's. So cool. :-)

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    3. Agreed. If you like Yojimbo, make sure to see its sequel Sanjuro. It has one of the most iconic deaths in cinema history.

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  4. Hannie Caulder (1972)

    Another new favorite of mine thanks to Junesploitation. I mean, how great is the combination of Raquel Welch out for revenge with Robert Culp as her bounty hunter mentor? With Christopher Lee in a small part as a gunsmith, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, and Strother Martin as the villains, and some damn good cinematography, this movie is an underrated classic.

    Cat Ballou (1965)

    On the more comedic side of the spectrum Cat Ballou stars Jane Fonda as the titular character who ends up forming a gang when the Sheriff of Wolf City refuses to arrest the outlaw who killed her father. Lee Marvin is great in a dual role as the outlaw and the drunken washed up gunfighter Cat hires. He provides a lot of the comic relief, occasionally to the point of slapstick but he still brings a lot of humanity to the role as well. There are some singing interludes with Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye that also add to the lighthearted feeling. To be honest I probably could have done without those parts, but as a whole I had a pretty good time with this movie.

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    1. Hannie Caulder sounds amazing. It's on the list thanks!

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  5. Ride Lonesome (1959)

    This is movie is the strong and silent type. When it flexes it's muscles it can be quite the badass. I liked it, Ride Lonesome is incrediably calm movie that takes it's takes it's time (and it's only something like 75 minutes. There is some striking imagery, especially the last shot.

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    1. I also watched a Boetticher flick due to the love he's been getting on Pure Cinema Podcast. That comment about the movies taking their time even though their so short is really smart. Anyway, I intend to see more.

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    2. Thanks. I watched this for the exact same reason. I'm also going to try and check out more as well.

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  6. Django, Prepare a Coffin

    I really liked this one. As said above, and as in a lot of spag. westerns, the story and plan is rather fun. When it's revealed the film does a good job of selling it with the reactions and the score. Would recommend.

    Lone and Angry Man

    Also liked, would also recommend. Revenge movie, you've seen it before, but since it's not a Django movie and doesn't employ any known faces it kind of feels different.

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  7. Sabata (1969)

    Nearly every Junesploitation has me watching a movie and saying to myself, “How in the hell have I never seen this before??” Sabata looks to be that film for this year. Lee Van Cleef plays the title character, who is basically a superhero in a duster. The plot is of little consequence. Suffice to say the film is loaded with colorful characters, terrific music, and stylish direction by Frank Kramer. Franco Ressel is great as the Western equivalent of a Bond villain, and William Berger is a deadpan delight as “Banjo,” a mercenary wanting to profit off both sides. Van Cleef is such a badass in this, I just might have to root for Angel Eyes the next time I see The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

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    1. Lee Van Cleef is one of the few actors that could play hero or villain by delivering almost the exact same performance. I'm surprised he didn't join Bronson and Norris as one of the 'Cannon boys' and appearing in a dozen disposable during the 1980's.

      For $5 you can get a BD with "The Grand Duel" and "Keoma" on Amazon (the former with Van Cleef and the latter with Franco Nero). It's the most bang-for-buck spaghetti western bargain you can get right now. :-)

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  8. The Long Riders (1980)

    This movie is, well, magnificent. Not only for seeing the Keach, Carradine, Quaid and Guest Brothers all on screen. But it's Walter Hill, he knows what he's doing. It has my favourite shoot out so far this Junesploitation.
    The movie feels very compact, unlike most Westerns, which are usually feel expansive by nature.

    Oh and I fell a little in love with Pamela Reed in this, She fills the whole screen when ever she appears in the movie.

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    1. I wasn't the biggest fan of this one when I watched it last year, but you're absolutely right on about Pamela Reed. :)

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  9. The Salvation (2015) (First Time Viewing)

    Mean little western revenge tale. Mads Mikkelsen is wronged and gets revenge, but turns out the revengee’s brother is an evil Jeffrey Dean Morgan, now HE wants revenge on Mads! The two dudes then try to out-machismo each other in an old-west town. It’s pretty grim, violent, and great. The only mis-step is under-utilizing Eva Green, she plays kind of a catatonic character. Either way, don’t let this one slip under the cracks though, see it!

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    1. Eva Green was a bit under-utilized although I thought she was great even playing a character that doesn't talk. I've had a thing for her since Kingdom of Heaven though to the point of having seen that Miss Peregrine movie and the 300 sequel (not the Sin City sequel though, but at least it gave us the poster).

      But yeah, good movie. Too bad they couldn't work Daniel Craig and Judi Dench in there also.

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  10. The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008)
    I realized it had been way too long since I'd watched Kim Jee-Woon's take on the western.
    This film is epic. Sweeping landscapes, amazing action set pieces, witty humor, and a grand sense of adventure fill this colorful epic.
    Easily one of my favorite movies of the last ten years.

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  11. ¡Three Amigos! (1986): I haven't seen this in a while and enjoyed myself. Some really witty bits in this film.

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  12. A Few Dollars for Django (1966, dir. Leon Klimovsky)
    I thought this was the first Django knock-off while I was watching it (which means nothing more than it being an unrelated spaghetti western re-titled as a Django movie,) but it's actually the second. It is, though, Enzo G. Castellari's first spaghetti western credit, as he claims to have ghost directed (his father was producer on it.) It's enjoyably typical of the genre (Leone had by now already codified everything that would be imitated from this point onward,) but also pretty dull. The story is some noodletry about a bounty hunter looking for a bandit's twin brother by posing as a town sheriff, and evil land barons threatening farmers, and there's a lot it from I was sitting. Enjoyable cheap and derivative, but not seedy enough, haha. Anthony Steffen played Django roles a lot, but he channels Eastwood over Nero (doing a bad job of either,) and looks kinda like Henry Fonda. Also aka: Bravo Django, Django: A Bullet for You, and A Few Dollars for Gypsy. I've long planned to make my way through the whole Django filmography, and I expect the most fun part to be figuring out which movie is actually which.

    Take a Hard Ride (1975, dir. Antonio Margheriti)
    The second collab of Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, and Jim Kelly. The first, Three the Hard Way, was a straight (though wacky) modern-day crime picture, but here, Brown's a cowboy, Fred's a card sharp, and Kelly's a mute indian(!). It's straight, and not wacky.) I wasn't expecting much, and it still didn't deliver. Everything just feels too safe. Brown's delivering a large sum of money to a ranch in Mexico, and most every other character in the movie is after him to steal it, led by Lee Van Cleef, who's excellent. They set up a sequel, but I guess nobody wanted it.

    Gunfighter Johnny (1972, dir. K.S.R. Das)
    Okay, now we're in weirdsville. A Tollywood-made musical western... which I can't tell if it's a spoof or not. Bad guys are after a buried treasure and kill our hero's parents trying to find out where it is. He hunts them all down with his girlfriend, whose dad they also killed, and a bandit he's befriended; they do the same 'shooting the noose' bit from The Good the Bad and the Ugly several times together. The characters all wear old-fashioned Roy Rogers-style cowboy outfits in garish primary colors, neck bandanas included. The villains sport handlebar mustaches. The acting is very, very, very broad, and though there's an hour's worth of plot at most, this baby's over 2 and a half hours long. It's fun for the first hour, but that second one and a half are a struggle. I mostly made it all the way through thanks to the female cast, who have huge legs and butts. I've looked at a couple of his other movies, and this K.S.R. Das guy seems to be the Russ Meyer of thighs! I will now definitely be watching his entire ≈100 filmography.

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    1. Oh, yeah, and as you'll see in the above link, there's catfights. Big-legged, big-butted catfights. I hope at least one of these 3 hour long epics he directed is around 90% big-lady catfights. -_-

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  13. Shane (1953):

    Fell asleep watching Logan Noir last night, so this one just felt right for this morning.

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  14. GET MEAN (1975)
    An Old West gunslinger is hired to escort a princess to Spain, where they encounter Mongol hordes and Shakespeare’s Richard III. It’s best not to overthink this one. There’s also a psychedelic freak-out scene in a church, and a whiz-bang ending with lots of explosions. I guess I liked it well enough, but I doubt I’ll ever watch it a second time.

    THE COURAGEOUS AVENGER (1935)
    A cowboy who’s also a secret agent (there are a lot of these in old Westerns) fights criminals in a remote mine. It’s slow going except for the big chase at the end, which has some great Indiana Jones-style stunts.

    LUST IN THE DUST (1985)
    Paul Bartel directs this wacky Western comedy, starring a bunch of familiar faces like Lainie Kazan, Tad Hunter, Cesar Romero and Divine. It’s no Blazing Saddles, but it has its moments. Divine is especially funny, with an “anything for a laugh” performance. The rest of the movie slows to a crawl when she’s not on screen.

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  15. Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966)

    This movie is adorable. Dracula comes to town to cause havoc but in a very wholesome way. Billy the Kid has hung up is gun and is trying to settle down with the town's hot blonde. Her uncle is...different. He's not really her uncle and wants her to be his undead wife. The violence is pretty much Mr. Underhill putting his face by someone's neck and they faint. I kind of loved it because it's such a weird mix of cute horror and a western. Oh, and it's a smooth 78 minutes. 8 out of 10

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  16. An Eastern Westerner (1919)

    An absolute delight. A cheat because it's only 24 minutes, but what a great way to spend 24 minutes! Harold Lloyd is a pampered young man whose parents send him out west to make a man out of him. The laughs are consistent throughout and Lloyd's physicality is a joy to watch. Everybody should watch this immediately (and dig the image I posted on Twitter which inspired one of the posters for John Wick Chapter 2). Because this was so short I watched a feature as well:

    Young Guns (1988)

    I've always had a major soft spot for this movie. Emilio Estevez is Billy the Kid, and Charlie Sheen gives one of the worst performances of his career as a member of Billy's posse with a truly horrendous accent. Just try not to laugh every time he calls Billy "Billeh," I dare you. Younger Sheen brother aside (I always thought Emilio was the younger one, but that's the cost of hard living I guess), it's a crazy entertaining movie. Lots of fun if you're in the mood for violent silliness (and it's Junesploitation so of course you're in the mood for violent silliness).

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  17. Jane Got a Gun (2015):

    This one caught a lot of flack, but I didn't think it was that bad. The flashbacks grind the already slow pace to a complete halt in some places, and it's more Edgerton's movie than Portman's, but I thought it was well shot and, at 90 minutes, doesn't overstay its welcome.

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  18. Terror in a Texas Town (1958)
    I watched this because the Amazon synopsis said "A greedy financier and a gang of gunmen force petiole to sell land in HD."

    Actually, this is an interesting little Western starring Sterling Hayden (Precious fluids guy in Dr. Strangelove) as a Swedish whaler who returns home to avenge his fathers death. It's simple, and Serling's performance is a little rocky at times due to his lack of commitment to the Swedish stuff, but it's also a great feel-good western. It has good characters, some interesting things to say, and a pretty fantastic final showdown at the end.

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    1. Forced 'people' to sell land. This is why I don't post from my phone often.

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  19. In a Valley of Violence (2016, dir. Ti West)

    Am I imagining things or is this a remake of First Blood?

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    1. Or I guess a mix between First Blood and John Wick would be more accurate.

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  20. BONE TOMAHAWK (2015)

    A modern day classic.

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  21. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

    Yes, I'm only now getting around to what many call the greatest western ever made. Is it for me? No.

    I was disappointed in this movie. Yes the production value, set design and music are all amazing. I just didn't care about the story at all, and that's a problem with a three hour movie. When we get to the final showdown... yes it's manufactured to be epic... but I didn't care at all about how it would turn out. It's a far cry from the Once Upon a Time in the West showdown that is so intense. I also found Eli Wallach as Tuco very annoying and he might have more screen time than anyone. It's fine, but I like a lot of Spaghetti Westerns better.

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  23. The Great Silence (1968)

    This one is about as bleak and bleary as they come, but man is it badass. The fact that it's a snow western is enough for me to be into it but throw in a Mauser wielding vigilante, Klaus Kinski as a villain, and and Ennio Morricone score and I'm over the moon.

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  24. In a Valley of Violence (2016)

    Even better the second time around.

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    1. Great cuz I really liked it the first go around!

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    2. That flick was SUCH a pleasant surprise for me. Travolta's best work in years, and the writing stuck me as Tarantino-esque without being derivative.

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  25. Death Rides a Horse (1967, dir. Giulio Petroni) on Amazon Prime

    The picture quality, sound and presentation of the print streaming on Prime are kind of shit, but sometimes that's what Junesploitation! is all about. And Riske is right: I'd so rather be Lee Van Cleef than Steve McQueen.

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  26. Companeros (1970)

    I don't want to yuck anybody's yum so I won't say much. I saw this as a bad movie with a brilliant final 20 minutes.

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  27. The Strangers Gundown (aka Django the Bastard) (1969, dir. Sergio Garrone)

    Decent if formulaic spaghetti western in which a man in black named Django (of course) seeks revenge on the men who double-crossed him during the war. The writeup on Amazon Prime talks about how it's violent enough to earn an X rating, which is totally misleading -- it's as violent as every other spaghetti western I've seen, and bloodlessly so. But it's directed with a ton of style and Anthony Steffen is always a welcome screen presence. I'm glad I saw it, even though I'm not sure how well I'll remember it after today.

    Cut-Throats Nine (1972, Joaquin Romero Marchent)

    I've owned this Blu-ray from Code Red for a year or two and finally had reason to put it on tonight, which is good because I've really wanted to see it since first hearing about it. It did not disappoint. It's as nasty and violent and ugly and mean-spirited a western as I've ever seen and clearly acted as an influence on The Hateful Eight, even down to the title. A terrible-looking version of the movie used to stream on Amazon Prime; whether it's there anymore or not, I would spring for the Blu-ray. It's worth it. Another really solid Junesploitation find.

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  28. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (2016)

    Not really an exploitation western in any way -- but it makes me very happy watching it.

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  29. It's a little late, and it only mostly counts, but I watched STAR WARS today. Also, this is my first day partaking in the junesploitation festivities because I'm lame.

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    1. If you weren't here reading and hadn't already posted then you'd be a lame-o. Instead you're in here with us, the cool kids. :-)

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