Here's a clip from the end of Hopper's much-maligned follow-up to EASY RIDER (1969). Hopper once said that he conceived this film as a response to experiences he had while acting in THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER (1965), a John Wayne western. During the filming of SONS in Mexico, the locals were so heavily influenced by Hollywood's glamorous portrayal of violence that they became increasingly violent themselves. The same thing happens in THE LAST MOVIE (1971): Hopper's character (a movie stunt coordinator) becomes so distraught over his role in the corruption of an innocent people that he can't return to Los Angeles.
Later, the locals offer Hopper a role in their movie. "They want me to die in the movie," he realizes, "just like [James] Dean did." When the cameras finally roll on him, the experience proves to be cathartic... Acting the part of a dying man restores the actor to life.
Rest in peace, Dennis.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Spaghetti Western Week, Day 5
Here's a rarity: a spaghetti western that focuses on the love story. Monte Hellman's CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 (1978) is sometimes referred to as "the last spaghetti western." It was shot in the Almeria region in Spain with an Italian crew, but it actually has a lot more in common with the American revisionist westerns of the 1970s than with the earlier spaghettis.
Hellman was no stranger to westerns. In 1966, he made two westerns back-to-back for producer Roger Corman: THE SHOOTING and RIDE THE WHIRLWIND, both starring a young Jack Nicholson. While bigger Hollywood westerns were mostly floundering at that point, these two films showed where the genre was headed: toward an ultra-realism that would eventually undercut the genre's myth-making agenda.
CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 begins with a mini-homage to Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH (1969). The first image is a closeup of a group of kids playing in the sand on a playground. Since THE WILD BUNCH began with closeups of children destroying an anthill, I can't help thinking that the absence of ants in Hellman's film is an illustration that his West is far different from Peckinpah's world of cruel violence; Hellman's West is a place of crushing loneliness and mostly reluctant violence.
The loneliest character in the film is a frontier wife played by Jenny Agutter (who horror geeks like me will remember from her role as the hot nurse in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON). She lives in the middle of nowhere with her emotionally distant husband, played by Peckinpah regular Warren Oates. When a soft-hearted gunslinger (Fabio Testi) comes along, she's tempted to run away with him. The result is a simple love triangle -- but whereas most westerns would emphasize sex and revenge, this one emphasizes genuine affection and humanity on all sides. These three characters don't want to destroy each other, but they can't help themselves... Theirs is a story about human tragedy, rather than good versus evil. I'm of the opinion that the best westerns of any era have a lot in common with the classic tragedies, whether they be Greek or Elizabethan. Usually, the characters don't recognize their own tragedy until the end of the film. CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37, however, begins with that recognition and asks, Where do we go from here?
Even when the film seems to be losing its story focus, Hellman maintains the tragic tone of the piece. There's a scene involving a group of circus midgets and a bottle of liquid cocaine that doesn't initially seem to have anything to do with anything... but, by the end, it becomes a strangely poignant moment for Testi and Agutter: a realization that they live in a strange and unpredictable world. Later, there's a scene in which Sam Peckinpah makes a cameo as a dime store novelist who wants to turn the gunslinger's story into fiction for people back east. These are "lies they need," he explains. To me, this seems like Hellman and Peckinpah's eulogy for the dying genre they love.
Testi and Agutter, and even Oates, are struggling to leave wanton violence behind, and show respect for the sanctity of human life. For a later western, and particularly a spaghetti western, CHINA 9 is surprisingly optimistic about human nature, and still completely realistic about the fate of the Wild West. As Oates says to Testi's character: "You ain't gonna last long, son. There ain't no soft-hearted gunfighters." I can't imagine a better note to end on.
Final thought: While I highly recommend this film, a quick search tells me that the version I have, as well as all other DVD release copies, is edited by about ten minutes. If you want to see the full version (and hopefully with better sound quality), a file sharing site may be the way to go.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Spaghetti Western Week, Day 4
“The thing about playing a heavy is don’t make yourself so completely invincible. That’s what I’ve been trying to do with every damn picture since I knew what I was doing. I don’t want to be so completely invincible, because I don’t think that’s human.” - Lee Van Cleef
Four of twenty films in the Spaghetti Westerns collection I'm tackling this week feature Lee Van Cleef. There's a reason: He was the genre's most prolific actor, and arguably its most iconic. Unlike other American actors who grudgingly went to Italy, took the money and ran, Van Cleef set up shop in Rome for several years. Like the characters he played, he was savvy enough to know a good deal when he saw it.
Van Cleef got his start in Hollywood with a small role (as a villain, naturally) in HIGH NOON (1952) and he continued to turn up regularly in westerns for the next ten years. Despite minor roles in some major films (GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL, THE TIN STAR, THE BRAVADOS, RIDE LONESOME, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE), he was so broke in 1964 that he couldn't pay his phone bill. Then along came Sergio Leone, who cast him opposite Clint Eastwood in FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE. The rest is history.
Van Cleef brought a distinct dignity and maturity to Leone's films, and to the smaller films that followed: THE MERCENARY (a.k.a. THE BIG GUNDOWN, 1966), DEATH RIDES A HORSE (1967), DAYS OF WRATH (1967) and BEYOND THE LAW (1968). He embodied the genre's answer to James Bond in SABATA (1969), a film so successful that it altered the tone of many spaghetti westerns to come. At the end of the "classic period" of spaghetti westerns, Van Cleef was still going strong. He didn't make his last spaghetti western until 1977... or 1980, if you want to count John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK as a spaghetti western. And I do. (Kurt Russell can almost out-Eastwood Clint Eastwood.)
I won't suggest that all (or even most) of Van Cleef's westerns of the 1970s are as dignified or mature as his early work... but there is one shining exception: THE GRAND DUEL (a.k.a. THE BIG SHOWDOWN, 1972) I've been meaning to watch this one for a while because it's listed on SWD as one of Quentin Tarantino's favorites (obviously he's a big Lee Van Cleef fan) - and, within the first two minutes of THE GRAND DUEL, one can tell that this film had a major influence on him. The opening credits scroll across the screen in much the same fashion as in all of Tarantino's films, accompanied by a theme song that he re-purposed for KILL BILL (2006). Stylistically, the film remains compelling from frame one through the end credits.
Even more exciting is the fact that the story is so strong. THE GRAND DUEL has an ensemble of captivating characters, thrown together in surprisingly complex ways. Van Cleef plays an ex-sheriff who rescues and defends an alleged murderer from bounty hunters... though it's initially unclear why. Does he simply want to collect the bounty for himself, or does he have a more altruistic motive? Like the best spaghettis, this one doesn't offer easy answers about who the "good guys" are. Van Cleef and his prisoner remain perpetually at odds with each other, as with the bounty hunters, and finally with a family of creepy corporate raider-types. ("In a violent country," the leader explains, "he who seizes today controls tomorrow.") Director Giancarlo Santi keeps us guessing until the very end, by expanding on Sergio Leone's notion that "all have some bad in us, some ugliness, some good."
Thus THE GRAND DUEL is a rare 1970s western that actually expands on the themes of the classic period of spaghetti westerns. It dispenses with the later-era tendencies toward slapstick and parody, in favor of sincere and nuanced storytelling. In the process, Lee Van Cleef secures his position as the best of the bad: he's smart enough to stay one step ahead of his enemies (as well as one step ahead of the audience), fast enough to catch a bullet in his teeth (or at least clever enough make his enemy think he has), and admirable enough to make us fall in love with the genre all over again. This film alone (uncut and letterboxed) is worth the price of the Mill Creek box set.
I had also planned review one of Van Cleef's last spaghetti westerns today, but I only got about twenty minutes into GOD'S GUN (a.k.a. DIAMANTE LOBO, 1976) before I decided to quit while I was ahead. The film features Van Cleef in two separate roles (as a priest and a bounty hunter), plus Jack Palance as the lead villain... but both actors are embarrassingly dubbed. I took that as a sign.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Spaghetti Western Week, Day 3
Another day, another fistful of dollars. Today's double feature: JOHNNY YUMA and TWICE A JUDAS, both of which feature well-known American cult movie stars.
Maybe "star" is too generous a word for Mark Damon, but he's recognizable to this particular movie geek as the leading man in Roger Corman's THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1961) and as an over-the-top villain in the wildly eccentric spaghetti western REQUIESCANT (a.k.a. KILL AND PRAY, 1967). According to the Spaghetti Western Database, Damon was also considered for the title role in Sergio Corbucci's DJANGO. Corbucci and Damon were working together on the film JOHNNY ORO (1966) when Corbucci bailed to make DJANGO. Damon, I guess, stuck to his guns and finished the first movie, then went on to play another "Johnny."
The strange thing about JOHNNY YUMA (1967) is that the title character really isn't vital to the success of the film. He's just your standard Ringo-esque hero: initially charming, eventually detestable, quick with a gun, slow to remember the names of the women he's slept with. What's interesting about him is the fact that his mortal enemy is his step-mother Samantha, a woman so wantonly sleazy that she seduces her own brother and gets him to kill her husband. The character, played by Rosalba Neri, reminds me a bit of Barbara Stanwyck in THE VIOLENT MEN (1955).
Yuma manages to evade her venus fly trap (though just barely), so she hires a bounty killer to bump him off. Unfortunately the bounty killer (played by Lawrence Dobkin) has fallen a little too hard for her Lady Macbeth routine, and he doesn't appreciate it when she turns him out like a cheap trick. In the end, Damon and Dobkin (the real hero of the film) shoot it out with Neri's army of hired guns, leading up to a priceless final kill.
The result is a worthwhile, if not exceptional, spaghetti western. It has well-staged (though sometimes silly) action sequences, enough gritty melodrama for a hard-boiled gangster movie, decent acting and a tantalizing bath scene involving a horny parrot. What more can you ask for? (The Mill Creek DVD even boasts a pretty good picture transfer.)
TWICE A JUDAS (1968) features a much weaker hero (Antonio Sabato) but an equally compelling villain in Klaus Kinski, who has been in dozens of cult classics, including Jess Franco's COUNT DRACULA (1970) and Werner Herzog's NOSFERATU (1979). In the spaghetti western world, he had a small but memorable role as a renegade priest in the Zapata western A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL (1966) and he played the ultimate bounty killer in Sergio Corbucci's best film THE GREAT SILENCE (1968). His performance here is not as interesting as in any of those films, but the actor's distinctive glowering gives this already slightly gothic western an even more menacing vibe.
Like JOHNNY YUMA, TWICE A JUDAS is the stuff of classical melodrama: It begins with Sabato waking up in the desert among bloody bodies and buzzards. We soon learn that he took a bullet to the head during some kind of fracas and he can't remember what happened. He then wanders into a nearby town, where someone is waiting for him... to help him kill his brother. Sabato, confused about what kind of man would kill his brother, decides to play nice with Kinski, but finds him suspiciously unforthcoming about the details of their family history. The Cain and Abel-with-amnesia schtick is a great premise, but it's developed in very boring fashion: Kinski mostly broods, Sabato mostly overacts, and the details of the mystery are withheld until one ridiculously long, ridiculously random flashback in the third act. I don't think I'm giving anything away by revealing that Kinski murdered his family... I mean, just look at the guy. Does this look like a face you can trust?
For some reason, the filmmakers decided that it's not enough for Kinski's character to simply be a mean son of a bitch, so they gave him a long-winded, politically-motivated diatribe in the midst of his final showdown with Sabato. It goes something like this: "Our mother was the daughter of a chief. This land belonged to the Indians before the Yankees got here. So it was mine by right. We had the same father, but I was born before you or Victor... blah blah blah."
I hate it when movie villains do this. I mean, the guy barely says a word for the whole movie, and then he's going to give a five-minute monologue so that that the hero can sneak around behind him and take aim with a friggin' blunderbuss? Anyone who's dumb enough to deliver a soliloquy in the middle of an action sequence simply deserves to get shot with a blunderbuss. If that doesn't make one yearn for THE GREAT SILENCE, I don't know what will.
Tomorrow's guest star: the immortal LEE VAN CLEEF!
Maybe "star" is too generous a word for Mark Damon, but he's recognizable to this particular movie geek as the leading man in Roger Corman's THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1961) and as an over-the-top villain in the wildly eccentric spaghetti western REQUIESCANT (a.k.a. KILL AND PRAY, 1967). According to the Spaghetti Western Database, Damon was also considered for the title role in Sergio Corbucci's DJANGO. Corbucci and Damon were working together on the film JOHNNY ORO (1966) when Corbucci bailed to make DJANGO. Damon, I guess, stuck to his guns and finished the first movie, then went on to play another "Johnny."
The strange thing about JOHNNY YUMA (1967) is that the title character really isn't vital to the success of the film. He's just your standard Ringo-esque hero: initially charming, eventually detestable, quick with a gun, slow to remember the names of the women he's slept with. What's interesting about him is the fact that his mortal enemy is his step-mother Samantha, a woman so wantonly sleazy that she seduces her own brother and gets him to kill her husband. The character, played by Rosalba Neri, reminds me a bit of Barbara Stanwyck in THE VIOLENT MEN (1955).
Yuma manages to evade her venus fly trap (though just barely), so she hires a bounty killer to bump him off. Unfortunately the bounty killer (played by Lawrence Dobkin) has fallen a little too hard for her Lady Macbeth routine, and he doesn't appreciate it when she turns him out like a cheap trick. In the end, Damon and Dobkin (the real hero of the film) shoot it out with Neri's army of hired guns, leading up to a priceless final kill.The result is a worthwhile, if not exceptional, spaghetti western. It has well-staged (though sometimes silly) action sequences, enough gritty melodrama for a hard-boiled gangster movie, decent acting and a tantalizing bath scene involving a horny parrot. What more can you ask for? (The Mill Creek DVD even boasts a pretty good picture transfer.)
TWICE A JUDAS (1968) features a much weaker hero (Antonio Sabato) but an equally compelling villain in Klaus Kinski, who has been in dozens of cult classics, including Jess Franco's COUNT DRACULA (1970) and Werner Herzog's NOSFERATU (1979). In the spaghetti western world, he had a small but memorable role as a renegade priest in the Zapata western A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL (1966) and he played the ultimate bounty killer in Sergio Corbucci's best film THE GREAT SILENCE (1968). His performance here is not as interesting as in any of those films, but the actor's distinctive glowering gives this already slightly gothic western an even more menacing vibe.
Like JOHNNY YUMA, TWICE A JUDAS is the stuff of classical melodrama: It begins with Sabato waking up in the desert among bloody bodies and buzzards. We soon learn that he took a bullet to the head during some kind of fracas and he can't remember what happened. He then wanders into a nearby town, where someone is waiting for him... to help him kill his brother. Sabato, confused about what kind of man would kill his brother, decides to play nice with Kinski, but finds him suspiciously unforthcoming about the details of their family history. The Cain and Abel-with-amnesia schtick is a great premise, but it's developed in very boring fashion: Kinski mostly broods, Sabato mostly overacts, and the details of the mystery are withheld until one ridiculously long, ridiculously random flashback in the third act. I don't think I'm giving anything away by revealing that Kinski murdered his family... I mean, just look at the guy. Does this look like a face you can trust?
For some reason, the filmmakers decided that it's not enough for Kinski's character to simply be a mean son of a bitch, so they gave him a long-winded, politically-motivated diatribe in the midst of his final showdown with Sabato. It goes something like this: "Our mother was the daughter of a chief. This land belonged to the Indians before the Yankees got here. So it was mine by right. We had the same father, but I was born before you or Victor... blah blah blah." I hate it when movie villains do this. I mean, the guy barely says a word for the whole movie, and then he's going to give a five-minute monologue so that that the hero can sneak around behind him and take aim with a friggin' blunderbuss? Anyone who's dumb enough to deliver a soliloquy in the middle of an action sequence simply deserves to get shot with a blunderbuss. If that doesn't make one yearn for THE GREAT SILENCE, I don't know what will.
Tomorrow's guest star: the immortal LEE VAN CLEEF!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Spaghetti Western Week, Day 2
I only made it through one of the Giuliano Gemma movies on tap for today... but let me just say, in my own defense, that it was a LONG one. There's no excuse for the fact that MAN FROM NOWHERE (1966) lasts two hours. 80 minutes would have been more than enough time. Of course, I'm a bit biased. It's probably a form of movie geek sacrilege to say this, but I'm not a fan of Gemma's spaghetti western anti-heroes.
For the uninitiated, Giuliano Gemma rose to fame as the title character in A PISTOL FOR RINGO, one of the first spaghetti westerns to come along after Sergio Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS struck major pay-dirt. RINGO was wildly successful in Europe, but not so much in the States. The reason: Unlike Eastwood's Man with No Name, Ringo is clean-shaven and boyishly handsome. Somehow that makes him seem more smarmy than cynical, more bratty than tough... like a spoiled rich kid playing a gangster on the school playground. Nevertheless, A PISTOL FOR RINGO spawned an endless number of pseudo-sequels, including THE RETURN OF RINGO (a.k.a. BLOOD AT SUNDOWN) in which "Ringo" has a completely different (more mature and more intense) personality.
MAN FROM NOWHERE, which is known as RINGO III and ARIZONA COLT in some quarters, splits the difference. The first half is a tiresome game of cat-and-mouse between Gemma's smug gringo and a gang of crude, dumb Mexicans led by El Gordo (a character who could have been lifted right out of a Looney Tunes sketch). Then, about an hour into the picture, things take a slight turn for the better when Gemma promises to infiltrate El Gordo's gang for the princely reward of $500 and the hand ("or something like that") of one saloon keeper's daughter. He fulfills his mission, but also manages to get himself shot in both legs and both hands. Ouch.
I've read other reviews that say Gemma's character, Arizona Colt, is a cad throughout the film - constantly dismissing every possible commitment in life with the phrase "I'll think about it" - but it seems to me that he actually becomes vulnerable at this point in the movie. He doesn't want to be vulnerable to the saloon keeper's daughter, but he can't help himself... He's falling in love, and under circumstances that make him feel like less than a man. Consider the following exchange, which takes place as the hero is being nursed back to health:
Arizona: "Were you hoping I'd be killed?"
Jane: "I was hoping that you'd reconsider... That you were only joking."
Arizona: "I guess you were..."
This short, simple dialogue made me interested in Gemma's character for the first time. And that got me thinking about why I hated him so much to begin with. Western heroes almost never want to "settle down," but different filmmakers offer different reasons... Some of the heroes are mature enough to recognize that they're too wild or violent or solitary to make a good husband/father. When they wander off alone at the end of the film, it's with a mild sense of self-defeat. Other western heroes are too immature even to know what to do with a woman once they've got her; they flee because they don't know what else to do. Arizona Colt eventually falls into the latter category.
In the third act, Gemma miraculously recovers, learns how to shoot again and promptly dispatches El Gordo's entire gang. Unlike Django (another classic spaghetti western hero), who needed a gatling gun who wipe out an entire army of bandits, Arizona just needs a six-shooter. I don't think he even had to re-load. Once he's reasserted his masculinity and restored the status quo, he can go back to being Ringo. In the final scene, as Gemma prepares to ride out of town, the saloon keeper's daughter approaches him for the first time with lust in her eyes. This is how their second significant exchange goes:
Arizona: "I believe there's something you still owe."
Jane: "Anytime you want to collect it, you're welcome to... You could even stay."
Arizona: "For always?"
[She smiles]
Arizona: "I'll think about it."
With that, the terminal adolescent bails. He doesn't really want to marry the girl. Apparently, he doesn't even want to sleep with her. He just wanted to play cat-and-mouse. Once he caught the mouse, he didn't know what to do with it.
On the surface, the ending isn't all that different from the conclusion of John Ford's classic American western MY DARLING CLEMENTINE... but there is a world of difference between the heroes in these two films. At the end of MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, Wyatt Earp leaves town with a vague promise to the woman he loves that he might be back some day. But - and here's the distinction - Wyatt isn't running away. Rather, he's running toward other responsibilities: he's a peace-keeper by nature, and he's needed elsewhere. Arizona is just running toward a less emotionally complicated world. In my mind, that makes him a pretty uninteresting hero. Why should anyone idolize a man who simply wants to be a 12-year-old boy forever?
For the uninitiated, Giuliano Gemma rose to fame as the title character in A PISTOL FOR RINGO, one of the first spaghetti westerns to come along after Sergio Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS struck major pay-dirt. RINGO was wildly successful in Europe, but not so much in the States. The reason: Unlike Eastwood's Man with No Name, Ringo is clean-shaven and boyishly handsome. Somehow that makes him seem more smarmy than cynical, more bratty than tough... like a spoiled rich kid playing a gangster on the school playground. Nevertheless, A PISTOL FOR RINGO spawned an endless number of pseudo-sequels, including THE RETURN OF RINGO (a.k.a. BLOOD AT SUNDOWN) in which "Ringo" has a completely different (more mature and more intense) personality.
MAN FROM NOWHERE, which is known as RINGO III and ARIZONA COLT in some quarters, splits the difference. The first half is a tiresome game of cat-and-mouse between Gemma's smug gringo and a gang of crude, dumb Mexicans led by El Gordo (a character who could have been lifted right out of a Looney Tunes sketch). Then, about an hour into the picture, things take a slight turn for the better when Gemma promises to infiltrate El Gordo's gang for the princely reward of $500 and the hand ("or something like that") of one saloon keeper's daughter. He fulfills his mission, but also manages to get himself shot in both legs and both hands. Ouch.
I've read other reviews that say Gemma's character, Arizona Colt, is a cad throughout the film - constantly dismissing every possible commitment in life with the phrase "I'll think about it" - but it seems to me that he actually becomes vulnerable at this point in the movie. He doesn't want to be vulnerable to the saloon keeper's daughter, but he can't help himself... He's falling in love, and under circumstances that make him feel like less than a man. Consider the following exchange, which takes place as the hero is being nursed back to health:
Arizona: "Were you hoping I'd be killed?"
Jane: "I was hoping that you'd reconsider... That you were only joking."
Arizona: "I guess you were..."
This short, simple dialogue made me interested in Gemma's character for the first time. And that got me thinking about why I hated him so much to begin with. Western heroes almost never want to "settle down," but different filmmakers offer different reasons... Some of the heroes are mature enough to recognize that they're too wild or violent or solitary to make a good husband/father. When they wander off alone at the end of the film, it's with a mild sense of self-defeat. Other western heroes are too immature even to know what to do with a woman once they've got her; they flee because they don't know what else to do. Arizona Colt eventually falls into the latter category.
In the third act, Gemma miraculously recovers, learns how to shoot again and promptly dispatches El Gordo's entire gang. Unlike Django (another classic spaghetti western hero), who needed a gatling gun who wipe out an entire army of bandits, Arizona just needs a six-shooter. I don't think he even had to re-load. Once he's reasserted his masculinity and restored the status quo, he can go back to being Ringo. In the final scene, as Gemma prepares to ride out of town, the saloon keeper's daughter approaches him for the first time with lust in her eyes. This is how their second significant exchange goes:
Arizona: "I believe there's something you still owe."
Jane: "Anytime you want to collect it, you're welcome to... You could even stay."
Arizona: "For always?"
[She smiles]
Arizona: "I'll think about it."
With that, the terminal adolescent bails. He doesn't really want to marry the girl. Apparently, he doesn't even want to sleep with her. He just wanted to play cat-and-mouse. Once he caught the mouse, he didn't know what to do with it.
On the surface, the ending isn't all that different from the conclusion of John Ford's classic American western MY DARLING CLEMENTINE... but there is a world of difference between the heroes in these two films. At the end of MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, Wyatt Earp leaves town with a vague promise to the woman he loves that he might be back some day. But - and here's the distinction - Wyatt isn't running away. Rather, he's running toward other responsibilities: he's a peace-keeper by nature, and he's needed elsewhere. Arizona is just running toward a less emotionally complicated world. In my mind, that makes him a pretty uninteresting hero. Why should anyone idolize a man who simply wants to be a 12-year-old boy forever?
Monday, May 24, 2010
Spaghetti Western Week, Day 1
This week I thought I'd take a cue from one of my favorite websites, The Spaghetti Western Database. If you're even remotely interested in Italian westerns made between the mid-1960s and the late-1970s, this is the place to go for information. There are no comparable English-language publications. Without this website, I'd have no way of even identifying the films I really want to see, because most spaghettis have at least six different titles. SWD helps me sort through the shelves at Eddie Brandt's prolific video store, as well as through the titles on ultra-cheap public domain collections -- such as the one I'm tackling this week.
Mill Creek Entertainment's 20-film collection features the following titles:
APACHE BLOOD (1975)
BETWEEN GOD, THE DEVIL AND A WINCHESTER (1968)
BEYOND THE LAW (1968)
CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 (1978)
DEATH RIDES A HORSE (1968)
THE FIGHTING FISTS OF SHANGHAI JOE (1972)
FIND A PLACE TO DIE (1968)
FISTFUL OF LEAD (1970)
GOD'S GUN (1975)
GRAND DUEL (1974)
GUNFIGHT AT RED SANDS (1964)
IT CAN BE DONE AMIGO (1973)
JOHNNY YUMA (1966)
MAN FROM NOWHERE (1966)
MINNESOTA CLAY (1965)
SUNDANCE AND THE KID (1969)
THIS MAN CAN'T DIE (1967)
TRINITY AND SARTANA (1972)
TWICE A JUDAS (1969)
WHITE COMANCHE (1968)
I've already seen DEATH RIDES A HORSE and BEYOND THE LAW, with Lee Van Cleef, as well as MINNESOTA CLAY, one of Sergio Corbucci's earliest efforts... which narrows the list a little bit. I figure I can tackle two movies a day (everybody loves a good double feature) and get through ten more titles by the end of week. As for the rest... Well, let's take this thing one day at a time and see how it goes.
#1. GUNFIGHT AT RED SANDS (1964)
I'm starting here because this is the oldest film in the set -- made before Sergio Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964) kick-started a genre. At the time, the Italian film industry was suffering from a Hercules hangover, following several years worth of cheap sword-and-sandal pictures. Everyone was looking for a new, exploitable genre. GUNFIGHT failed to open the floodgates for Euro-westerns, not because it's a bad movie but because it's not especially innovative. Watching the first few minutes of the film, I couldn't help thinking that it could have been any other American TV western shot at Iverson Ranch in the San Fernando Valley. I guess maybe that was the goal. In the early days, the Italian filmmakers even gave themselves Anglo-sounding pseudonyms in the hopes that American audiences might confuse the films for domestic products.
Perhaps the biggest name on the credit of GUNFIGHT AT RED SANDS is "Dan Salvo," better known as Ennio Morricone. I don't think I need to say much of anything about Ennio Morricone... If you don't know his work, shame on you. His name is synonymous with spaghetti westerns -- he scored all of the most famous examples of the genre, putting his mark on more classics than any single director or actor. He's also had an extremely impressive career in Hollywood, contributing unforgettable scores to films like THE MISSION (1986) and John Carpenter's THE THING (1982). Last year, my parents sent me a birthday card that played Morricone's theme to THE GOOD, THE BAD AND UGLY when I opened it. That's how indelibly this guy has made his mark on American pop culture.
Most of the music in GUNFIGHT AT RED SANDS isn't particularly memorable. (According to legend, when Sergio Leone hired Morricone to score A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, he told the composer that he hated the GUNFIGHT score and wanted something completely different.) The exception is this jaunty theme song:
This chorus tells you everything you need to know about GUNFIGHT AT RED SANDS. On the surface this is lighthearted Saturday matinee stuff, but it carries a very cynical message: "Don't trust anyone -- especially an American." Americans, in the world of spaghetti westerns, tend to be immoral... mostly greedy, rarely idealistic. They're usually on the wrong side of the Mexican Revolution, which represents the timeless struggle between fascism and socialism, capitalism and humanism. In this film, the American villain is a deceitful sheriff who hates "greasers." The hero is also American, but he was raised by Mexicans and so has a better sense of justice.
GUNFIGHT starts out as a pretty traditional revenge story. After the hero's father is murdered, he goes looking for the killers. Things get more complicated when the killers - men with plenty of money and political influence - try to turn an entire town against him, simply based on the color of his skin. I'm going to give the credit for the story's most interesting nuances to co-screenwriter Albert Band, because he also wrote and produced two other spaghetti westerns that explore the ugliness of racism with remarkable intensity (see THE TRAMPLERS and THE HELLBENDERS, both featuring Joseph Cotten in the lead).
Naturally, the whole thing culminates with a face-off on a dusty street... shot and edited in the style that would become standard in spaghetti westerns: lots of closeups and quick cuts. I was genuinely surprised at how effective it was. In general, I'd recommend this film to any western fan, though you might want to track down a better copy. This DVD is made from a VERY poor quality print, and the picture is cropped.
#2: WHITE COMANCHE
I decided to watch this one next because Joseph Cotten is in it. Unfortunately, he doesn't have much to do here. His performance as the sheriff of Rio Hondo is relatively dignified, but not very interesting. The real draw is William Shatner, playing BOTH the hero and the villain of the piece. As Shatner himself says, "Leave the sheriff out of what's between me and myself."
As a laconic cowboy, Shatner fares pretty well. As a wild Indian (the "white Comanche" of the title), not so much. I laughed out loud the first time he appeared onscreen, shirtless, his face bearing a few casual streaks of warpaint, his surfer-blond hair held back by a thin bandanna. I laughed even harder when he issued his first Indian "battle cry." Seriously, the whole movie is worth watching just for this sublime comic moment.
We soon learn that Shatner #2 is supposed to be the Jim Jones or Charlie Manson of the Comanches. The problem is that he's not particularly fearsome OR charismatic. For an angry war chief, he laughs and smiles way too much. I can only assume he's eaten too much peyote. (At one point, when the two brothers come face to face for the first time, the dour-faced cowboy Shatner out-draws the proto-hippie Indian Shatner, and mocks him: "Next time, don't eat the peyote - maybe then you'll be quick enough.")
This face-to-face routine is entertaining enough to make the film worth watching right up to the finale, when Shatner and Shatner face of against each other in a horseback jousting match. In the cutaways, it's difficult to tell which one is the "good" Shatner and which one is the "bad" Shatner because they both have their shirts off. I think maybe the editor simply reversed the same shot a few times... then added that hilarious battle cry to the sound track. If so, God bless him.
I don't know what else I can say about this one. If you like to watch the star mugging for the camera, WHITE COMANCHE will be hard to pass up. It is to the Shatner fan what DOUBLE IMPACT is to the Jean Claude Van Damme fan.
Tomorrow's double feature: Giuliano "Ringo" Gemma in MAN FROM NOWHERE (1966) and SUNDANCE AND THE KID (1969)
Mill Creek Entertainment's 20-film collection features the following titles:
APACHE BLOOD (1975)
BETWEEN GOD, THE DEVIL AND A WINCHESTER (1968)
BEYOND THE LAW (1968)
CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 (1978)
DEATH RIDES A HORSE (1968)
THE FIGHTING FISTS OF SHANGHAI JOE (1972)
FIND A PLACE TO DIE (1968)
FISTFUL OF LEAD (1970)
GOD'S GUN (1975)
GRAND DUEL (1974)
GUNFIGHT AT RED SANDS (1964)
IT CAN BE DONE AMIGO (1973)
JOHNNY YUMA (1966)
MAN FROM NOWHERE (1966)
MINNESOTA CLAY (1965)
SUNDANCE AND THE KID (1969)
THIS MAN CAN'T DIE (1967)
TRINITY AND SARTANA (1972)
TWICE A JUDAS (1969)
WHITE COMANCHE (1968)
I've already seen DEATH RIDES A HORSE and BEYOND THE LAW, with Lee Van Cleef, as well as MINNESOTA CLAY, one of Sergio Corbucci's earliest efforts... which narrows the list a little bit. I figure I can tackle two movies a day (everybody loves a good double feature) and get through ten more titles by the end of week. As for the rest... Well, let's take this thing one day at a time and see how it goes.
#1. GUNFIGHT AT RED SANDS (1964)
I'm starting here because this is the oldest film in the set -- made before Sergio Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964) kick-started a genre. At the time, the Italian film industry was suffering from a Hercules hangover, following several years worth of cheap sword-and-sandal pictures. Everyone was looking for a new, exploitable genre. GUNFIGHT failed to open the floodgates for Euro-westerns, not because it's a bad movie but because it's not especially innovative. Watching the first few minutes of the film, I couldn't help thinking that it could have been any other American TV western shot at Iverson Ranch in the San Fernando Valley. I guess maybe that was the goal. In the early days, the Italian filmmakers even gave themselves Anglo-sounding pseudonyms in the hopes that American audiences might confuse the films for domestic products.
Perhaps the biggest name on the credit of GUNFIGHT AT RED SANDS is "Dan Salvo," better known as Ennio Morricone. I don't think I need to say much of anything about Ennio Morricone... If you don't know his work, shame on you. His name is synonymous with spaghetti westerns -- he scored all of the most famous examples of the genre, putting his mark on more classics than any single director or actor. He's also had an extremely impressive career in Hollywood, contributing unforgettable scores to films like THE MISSION (1986) and John Carpenter's THE THING (1982). Last year, my parents sent me a birthday card that played Morricone's theme to THE GOOD, THE BAD AND UGLY when I opened it. That's how indelibly this guy has made his mark on American pop culture.
Most of the music in GUNFIGHT AT RED SANDS isn't particularly memorable. (According to legend, when Sergio Leone hired Morricone to score A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, he told the composer that he hated the GUNFIGHT score and wanted something completely different.) The exception is this jaunty theme song:
This chorus tells you everything you need to know about GUNFIGHT AT RED SANDS. On the surface this is lighthearted Saturday matinee stuff, but it carries a very cynical message: "Don't trust anyone -- especially an American." Americans, in the world of spaghetti westerns, tend to be immoral... mostly greedy, rarely idealistic. They're usually on the wrong side of the Mexican Revolution, which represents the timeless struggle between fascism and socialism, capitalism and humanism. In this film, the American villain is a deceitful sheriff who hates "greasers." The hero is also American, but he was raised by Mexicans and so has a better sense of justice.
GUNFIGHT starts out as a pretty traditional revenge story. After the hero's father is murdered, he goes looking for the killers. Things get more complicated when the killers - men with plenty of money and political influence - try to turn an entire town against him, simply based on the color of his skin. I'm going to give the credit for the story's most interesting nuances to co-screenwriter Albert Band, because he also wrote and produced two other spaghetti westerns that explore the ugliness of racism with remarkable intensity (see THE TRAMPLERS and THE HELLBENDERS, both featuring Joseph Cotten in the lead).
Naturally, the whole thing culminates with a face-off on a dusty street... shot and edited in the style that would become standard in spaghetti westerns: lots of closeups and quick cuts. I was genuinely surprised at how effective it was. In general, I'd recommend this film to any western fan, though you might want to track down a better copy. This DVD is made from a VERY poor quality print, and the picture is cropped.
#2: WHITE COMANCHE
I decided to watch this one next because Joseph Cotten is in it. Unfortunately, he doesn't have much to do here. His performance as the sheriff of Rio Hondo is relatively dignified, but not very interesting. The real draw is William Shatner, playing BOTH the hero and the villain of the piece. As Shatner himself says, "Leave the sheriff out of what's between me and myself."
As a laconic cowboy, Shatner fares pretty well. As a wild Indian (the "white Comanche" of the title), not so much. I laughed out loud the first time he appeared onscreen, shirtless, his face bearing a few casual streaks of warpaint, his surfer-blond hair held back by a thin bandanna. I laughed even harder when he issued his first Indian "battle cry." Seriously, the whole movie is worth watching just for this sublime comic moment.
We soon learn that Shatner #2 is supposed to be the Jim Jones or Charlie Manson of the Comanches. The problem is that he's not particularly fearsome OR charismatic. For an angry war chief, he laughs and smiles way too much. I can only assume he's eaten too much peyote. (At one point, when the two brothers come face to face for the first time, the dour-faced cowboy Shatner out-draws the proto-hippie Indian Shatner, and mocks him: "Next time, don't eat the peyote - maybe then you'll be quick enough.") This face-to-face routine is entertaining enough to make the film worth watching right up to the finale, when Shatner and Shatner face of against each other in a horseback jousting match. In the cutaways, it's difficult to tell which one is the "good" Shatner and which one is the "bad" Shatner because they both have their shirts off. I think maybe the editor simply reversed the same shot a few times... then added that hilarious battle cry to the sound track. If so, God bless him.
I don't know what else I can say about this one. If you like to watch the star mugging for the camera, WHITE COMANCHE will be hard to pass up. It is to the Shatner fan what DOUBLE IMPACT is to the Jean Claude Van Damme fan.
Tomorrow's double feature: Giuliano "Ringo" Gemma in MAN FROM NOWHERE (1966) and SUNDANCE AND THE KID (1969)
Friday, May 21, 2010
Massive Attack: Live at The Wiltern
This week, I was one of the thousands of fans who flocked to see Massive Attack in their 3-day residency at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. I don’t think I possibly could have had higher expectations, since I’ve been waiting more than a decade (since the they began touring for Mezzanine) for an opportunity to see the band in concert. I was there at 7pm on Wednesday night, as soon as the doors opened… which, admittedly, was a bit ridiculous since Massive Attack didn’t go on stage until 10pm, and since we already had reserved seats in the mezzanine and didn’t have to fight for a space on the main floor. As it turned out, the mezzanine was not the place to be for this concert (go figure)… the acoustics just weren’t as good. I’ve been spoiled by the Hollywood Bowl, where every seat is a good seat. Massive Attack, as the name implies, delivered a very heavy sound – I remember, at one point, thinking that we wouldn’t know if an earthquake hit Los Angeles because the walls were already shaking – and it was arguably too heavy for the venue.
But I digress. Here’s the song-by-song experience:
United Stakes
The band (currently fronted by two of the original members: 3D and Daddy G) took the stage and immediately dived into one of their most pulse-pounding tunes: a b-side from the new album Heligoland. The thundering bass was so overwhelming that I could barely hear the vocals by 3D. Over the course of the night, he was the one vocalist who was consistently overpowered by the music, which is a shame since he’s become the focal point of the entire group. It’s been said that 3D brings the “trip” to the “trip hop” sound, as the album 100th Window (essentially a solo effort) proves. Massive Attack’s best album tracks are often thoroughly-produced, depending heavily on stereo dynamics, voice and guitar distortion, overlapping bass loops, and swelling orchestral arrangements – all of which contribute to a hypnotically complex sound. It’s hard to get that mix right in a live environment. It’s easier to pull off hip hop than trip hop, and in my opinion the live music occasionally became a little too bombastic for its own good. Such was the case with the show opener. On the other hand, I have to admit that the supporting light show was worthy of Pink Floyd, and went a long way toward generating the right atmosphere. There’s no question that, by the end of the first song, the air was super-charged with anticipation.
Babel
Perhaps the most striking thing about the current incarnation of Massive Attack is the addition of Martina Topley-Bird, who provides vocals on the new album. She performed a short solo set before Massive Attack appeared, and endeared herself to the audience. When she came back on stage to sing “Babel,” she was in a different mode: less light and playful, more “let’s get down to business.” Like many of the tracks on the new album, “Babel” does get down to business… but only at the end of the song. Around 4:30, the simple melody begins to build promisingly. Then the song comes to an abrupt end. A few months ago, Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker reviewed Heligoland enthusiastically, saying it was a return to the relaxed, detail-oriented sound of the band’s first to albums (Blue Lines and Protection) and a move away from the “vague… noise and dissonance” of Mezzanine and 100th Window. I disagree strongly with the implied criticism of Mezzanine – which, in my opinion, is a perfect album (and I don’t use the word lightly) that achieves a perfect balance of detail and “noise” – but I recognize the distinction she’s making. In its final moments, “Babel” threatens to transform itself from a pre-Mezzanine song into a post-Mezzanine song – but doesn’t. The song, like the album, could probably be used as a litmus test for two different breeds of Massive Attack fans.
Rising Son
Since I’ve identified myself as a Mezzanine fan, it should come as no surprise that I was thrilled when the band followed up with “Rising Son,” the second track on that album. This is a song that showcases the dark, brooding side of the band – with haunting vocals by 3D and deep-voiced Daddy G. It also features the kind of lyrics that get stuck in your head for days. 3D chants, “Toy-like people make me buoy-like” over and over until it begins to sound like a Zen koan. Unfortunately, I could barely hear those words in concert.
Girl, I Love You
This was the first song on the new album that hooked me – probably because it was the most familiar. I've since come to appreciate Heligoland on its own merits, but this is the closest that Heligoland gets to Mezzanine. The appearance of vocalist Horace Andy on the album and in concert is more than welcome. This man does for Massive Attack what Richie Havens does for Groove Armada, and because his vocals were the grounding force on the fan favorite “Angel,” his voice has become an indelible part of the Massive Attack identity.
Psyche
This song, which follows “Girl, I Love You” on both the album and in concert, dramatically changes the tempo of the set. It gives Topley-Bird a chance to shine, and the audience a chance to catch its breath.
Future Proof
This is 3D’s moment to shine. Since Massive Attack didn’t really tour in support of 100th Window, it’s telling that he has chosen this as the only featured song from that album. On the album as a whole, the magic is in the mix. For me, a better highlight would have been “Everywhen,” which is the closest the band has come to duplicating the power of “Angel.”
Invade Me
This unreleased track has given rise to much discussion about things to come. 3D has projected a 2011 release for the next Massive Attack album. You be the judge:
Teardrop
After exploring a fair amount of new material, the band offered up a generous helping of hits from Mezzanine. The first was this now-classic chill out tune, with Topley-Bird standing in for Elizabeth Fraser. It’s tough to make such a familiar song sound new, but she pulls it off. The minimalist musical arrangement was also a welcome respite… or, rather, a beautiful calm before the storm.
Mezzanine
As with “Rising Son,” the song gives 3D and Daddy G a chance to play off of each other. It would have worked better for me if I could have actually heard 3D, but the song wasn't a complete washout. There was something genuinely bone-chilling about G’s delivery: “You know you’ve got a heart made of stone…”
Angel
What can I say? Even the numbing acoustics in the mezzanine worked for this one. I can’t even watch the youtube video without getting chills…
Safe from Harm
It just gets better. I wasn’t sure how anything could top Horace Andy crooning “loveyou loveyou loveyou loveyou loveyou,” but then they brought out Shara Nelson for an extended jam version of “Safe from Harm.” This was a powerful reminder of just how vital the female vocalists are to the success of Massive Attack. I liken the sound to “honey from the hive.” The combination of those sultry vocals on top of thundering bass and screaming guitars is just plain sexy.
Inertia Creeps
Speaking of sexy. Massive Attack rounded out their main set with a track you might remember from a particularly provocative Victoria’s Secret commercial. I still can’t listen to 3D singing “she comes…” without picturing Stephanie Seymour in lingerie. Is that wrong? In concert, this one really brought out the guitar work.
Splitting the Atom
The encore began with this characteristically low-key track from Heligoland – featuring Daddy G and Horace Andy at their best.
Unfinished Sympathy
For me, the show could have ended here. It just didn’t get any better than hearing Shara Nelson hit those high notes on the band’s first major hit song. Fans of the early, reggae-influenced sound of Massive Attack may have been disappointed that there were so few cuts from the first two albums, but this song should have single-handedly dispelled the possibility of disappointment with the concert as a whole. The only way they could have topped this would have been by bringing out Hope Sandoval to sing “Paradise Circus.”
Atlas Air / Karmacoma
The band obligingly ended the concert with the final song from the new album – a good song that always leaves me wanting more. (Maybe my biggest complaint about Heligoland is that it’s too short.) Then they tacked on an excruciatingly sloppy version of “Karmacoma” – which they blamed on too much champagne and too many spliffs. It was a shame to go out on such a low note (could they not remember what the song was supposed to sound like?), but I’m not complaining. There are few bands today that can deliver a truly epic sound on CD or in concert, and Massive Attack did what they came for: they created an aural earthquake big enough to provide emotional aftershocks.
I'm left hoping that the band will indeed release a new album in 2011, and that 3D's parting joke "We'll see you in another five years" really does turn out to be a joke.
But I digress. Here’s the song-by-song experience:
United Stakes
The band (currently fronted by two of the original members: 3D and Daddy G) took the stage and immediately dived into one of their most pulse-pounding tunes: a b-side from the new album Heligoland. The thundering bass was so overwhelming that I could barely hear the vocals by 3D. Over the course of the night, he was the one vocalist who was consistently overpowered by the music, which is a shame since he’s become the focal point of the entire group. It’s been said that 3D brings the “trip” to the “trip hop” sound, as the album 100th Window (essentially a solo effort) proves. Massive Attack’s best album tracks are often thoroughly-produced, depending heavily on stereo dynamics, voice and guitar distortion, overlapping bass loops, and swelling orchestral arrangements – all of which contribute to a hypnotically complex sound. It’s hard to get that mix right in a live environment. It’s easier to pull off hip hop than trip hop, and in my opinion the live music occasionally became a little too bombastic for its own good. Such was the case with the show opener. On the other hand, I have to admit that the supporting light show was worthy of Pink Floyd, and went a long way toward generating the right atmosphere. There’s no question that, by the end of the first song, the air was super-charged with anticipation.
Babel
Perhaps the most striking thing about the current incarnation of Massive Attack is the addition of Martina Topley-Bird, who provides vocals on the new album. She performed a short solo set before Massive Attack appeared, and endeared herself to the audience. When she came back on stage to sing “Babel,” she was in a different mode: less light and playful, more “let’s get down to business.” Like many of the tracks on the new album, “Babel” does get down to business… but only at the end of the song. Around 4:30, the simple melody begins to build promisingly. Then the song comes to an abrupt end. A few months ago, Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker reviewed Heligoland enthusiastically, saying it was a return to the relaxed, detail-oriented sound of the band’s first to albums (Blue Lines and Protection) and a move away from the “vague… noise and dissonance” of Mezzanine and 100th Window. I disagree strongly with the implied criticism of Mezzanine – which, in my opinion, is a perfect album (and I don’t use the word lightly) that achieves a perfect balance of detail and “noise” – but I recognize the distinction she’s making. In its final moments, “Babel” threatens to transform itself from a pre-Mezzanine song into a post-Mezzanine song – but doesn’t. The song, like the album, could probably be used as a litmus test for two different breeds of Massive Attack fans.
Rising Son
Since I’ve identified myself as a Mezzanine fan, it should come as no surprise that I was thrilled when the band followed up with “Rising Son,” the second track on that album. This is a song that showcases the dark, brooding side of the band – with haunting vocals by 3D and deep-voiced Daddy G. It also features the kind of lyrics that get stuck in your head for days. 3D chants, “Toy-like people make me buoy-like” over and over until it begins to sound like a Zen koan. Unfortunately, I could barely hear those words in concert.
Girl, I Love You
This was the first song on the new album that hooked me – probably because it was the most familiar. I've since come to appreciate Heligoland on its own merits, but this is the closest that Heligoland gets to Mezzanine. The appearance of vocalist Horace Andy on the album and in concert is more than welcome. This man does for Massive Attack what Richie Havens does for Groove Armada, and because his vocals were the grounding force on the fan favorite “Angel,” his voice has become an indelible part of the Massive Attack identity.
Psyche
This song, which follows “Girl, I Love You” on both the album and in concert, dramatically changes the tempo of the set. It gives Topley-Bird a chance to shine, and the audience a chance to catch its breath.
Future Proof
This is 3D’s moment to shine. Since Massive Attack didn’t really tour in support of 100th Window, it’s telling that he has chosen this as the only featured song from that album. On the album as a whole, the magic is in the mix. For me, a better highlight would have been “Everywhen,” which is the closest the band has come to duplicating the power of “Angel.”
Invade Me
This unreleased track has given rise to much discussion about things to come. 3D has projected a 2011 release for the next Massive Attack album. You be the judge:
Teardrop
After exploring a fair amount of new material, the band offered up a generous helping of hits from Mezzanine. The first was this now-classic chill out tune, with Topley-Bird standing in for Elizabeth Fraser. It’s tough to make such a familiar song sound new, but she pulls it off. The minimalist musical arrangement was also a welcome respite… or, rather, a beautiful calm before the storm.
Mezzanine
As with “Rising Son,” the song gives 3D and Daddy G a chance to play off of each other. It would have worked better for me if I could have actually heard 3D, but the song wasn't a complete washout. There was something genuinely bone-chilling about G’s delivery: “You know you’ve got a heart made of stone…”
Angel
What can I say? Even the numbing acoustics in the mezzanine worked for this one. I can’t even watch the youtube video without getting chills…
Safe from Harm
It just gets better. I wasn’t sure how anything could top Horace Andy crooning “loveyou loveyou loveyou loveyou loveyou,” but then they brought out Shara Nelson for an extended jam version of “Safe from Harm.” This was a powerful reminder of just how vital the female vocalists are to the success of Massive Attack. I liken the sound to “honey from the hive.” The combination of those sultry vocals on top of thundering bass and screaming guitars is just plain sexy.
Inertia Creeps
Speaking of sexy. Massive Attack rounded out their main set with a track you might remember from a particularly provocative Victoria’s Secret commercial. I still can’t listen to 3D singing “she comes…” without picturing Stephanie Seymour in lingerie. Is that wrong? In concert, this one really brought out the guitar work.
Splitting the Atom
The encore began with this characteristically low-key track from Heligoland – featuring Daddy G and Horace Andy at their best.
Unfinished Sympathy
For me, the show could have ended here. It just didn’t get any better than hearing Shara Nelson hit those high notes on the band’s first major hit song. Fans of the early, reggae-influenced sound of Massive Attack may have been disappointed that there were so few cuts from the first two albums, but this song should have single-handedly dispelled the possibility of disappointment with the concert as a whole. The only way they could have topped this would have been by bringing out Hope Sandoval to sing “Paradise Circus.”
Atlas Air / Karmacoma
The band obligingly ended the concert with the final song from the new album – a good song that always leaves me wanting more. (Maybe my biggest complaint about Heligoland is that it’s too short.) Then they tacked on an excruciatingly sloppy version of “Karmacoma” – which they blamed on too much champagne and too many spliffs. It was a shame to go out on such a low note (could they not remember what the song was supposed to sound like?), but I’m not complaining. There are few bands today that can deliver a truly epic sound on CD or in concert, and Massive Attack did what they came for: they created an aural earthquake big enough to provide emotional aftershocks.
I'm left hoping that the band will indeed release a new album in 2011, and that 3D's parting joke "We'll see you in another five years" really does turn out to be a joke.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Hollywood Avalon
It’s always nice to escape Los Angeles for a few days. Sometimes I forget how hectic life can be here, until I get away. And there are so many possible escape routes. The cliché is true: Travel for an hour in any direction and you’ll be in a completely new environment. You can go north to the mountains, east to the desert, or south to the coast. This week we went west, to the island of Catalina – Hollywood’s resort paradise for more than a century.
The main attraction on Catalina is the harbor town of Avalon. Though it represents only 1% of the land, this is where 99% of the population resides. Avalon has been a major tourist attraction since at least 1910, when filmmakers discovered it. The first film shot on the island was an Essanay one-reeler titled “Feeding Seals at Catalina Isle” (1910). Two years later, pioneer filmmaker D.W. Griffith came to make his short film “Man’s Genesis” (1912). He was followed by Mack Sennett and Fatty Arbuckle, who made an international star out of the island’s oldest seal (“Big Ben”) in one of their Keystone comedies, called “The Sea Nymphs” (1914). Soon after, Charlie Chaplin’s brother Sid made the short film “A Submarine Pirate” (1915), which featured the first underwater scenes shot at Avalon. The stars of the silent film era were well entrenched on the island even before Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) transformed filmmaking into an art form.
Around the same time, Avalon experienced its own re-birth. In 1915, a massive fire destroyed half of the town. Director Thomas Ince used images of the devastation in his 1916 epic CIVILIZATION. That could have been the end of Hollywood’s love affair with Catalina, but instead it was just the beginning. In a sense, what rose from the ashes afterward was not the same island… but a mythic world, filled with heroes and monsters and mountains of melodrama.
In his book CATALINA IN THE MOVIES, Lee Rosenthal identifies the 1916 feature THE PEARL OF PARADISE as “probably the first South Sea Island movie made on Catalina.” For roughly the next four decades, Catalina was home to most of Hollywood’s shipwrecks, swashbucklers and swarthy pirates. Two versions of Robert Louis Stevenson’s TREASURE ISLAND were shot there, one in 1918 and another one in 1924. Catalina also hosted two versions of CAPTAIN BLOOD (1924, remade in 1935 with Errol Flynn) and two versions of THE SEA HAWK (1924, remade in 1940 with Errol Flynn), as well as the early Technicolor movie THE BLACK PIRATE (1926) starring Douglas Fairbanks, and the big-budget OLD IRONSIDES (1926)… notable for an early appearance by Boris Karloff. Most of these films were not shot at Avalon, but at the two harbors of Isthmus, a much smaller town on the northern end of the island. Cecil B. DeMille made this his home away from home – returning multiple times to shoot exotic scenes for MALE AND FEMALE (1919), THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1923), FEET OF CLAY (1924), and THE KING OF KINGS (1925).
The interior of the island was also used frequently… for westerns! In all likelihood, this happened not because the landscape was ideal for the stories (though I admit that Blackjack Mountain looks quite a bit like Calabasas, where Warner Brothers filmed most of their early westerns with Errol Flynn), but because writer Zane Grey and actor Tom Mix had made Catalina their homes. Both men built houses on the northern hill of Avalon in 1918. Grey promoted the island in his 1919 nonfiction book TALES OF FISHES; Rosenthal says that Mix shot his first one-reeler here in 1919. DRUG HARLON (1920) was the first feature-length cowboy movie shot on the island, and it was followed by an early John Ford western called ACTION (1921). Ford, who spent most of his time on a yacht when he wasn’t on a movie set, returned to Catalina for MEN WITHOUT WOMEN (1930), SEAS BENEATH (1931) and THE HURRICANE (1937). Two of Zane Grey’s novels were later brought to life on Catalina: THE VANISHING AMERICAN in 1925 and THE GOLDEN WEST in 1932. The first film made a significant impact on the local culture: The filmmakers brought a small herd of North American bison to the island for filming and, when they were finished, simply released the animals into the wild. Today, descendants of those wild “buffalo” still roam the hills of Catalina.
Not all of Hollywood’s new additions were pirates and cowboys. In 1926, director Tod Browning brought actor Lon Chaney to Catalina for one of his most memorable roles. In THE ROAD TO MANDALAY, Chaney plays a creepy one-eyed criminal who follows his estranged daughter through the jungles of the Far East. I saw an incomplete bootleg video of this a few years ago, and was impressed – as always – by Chaney’s ability to inspire pity as well as fear. Even more unsettling: H.G. Wells’s sadistic Dr. Moreau set up camp at Isthmus in the 1932 film ISLAND OF LOST SOULS – indisputably one of the greatest horror movies ever made. (Why is it still unavailable on DVD?!) Also, I could swear that I read somewhere that KING KONG and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME were shot back-to-back on Catalina… but Rosenthal only mentions SON OF KONG (1933), so maybe I’m making that up.
By the end of the 1920s, Catalina was thriving under the ownership of Chicago businessman William Wrigley Jr., who built the island’s crown jewel -- the Avalon Casino -- as a monument to his 10-year-anniversary as owner. The casino featured a state-of-the-art movie theater for “talkies” (believe it or not, that newfangled technology wasn’t expected to last, so Wrigley was making a bit of a gamble on this one) and a grand ballroom that drew the top performers of the Big Band era. Our tour guide said that there was never any gambling here, adding that the Italian word "casino" originally meant a building used to host civic town functions.
Even as the rest of America suffered through the Great Depression, the resort community thrived. In 1935, Isthmus hosted its most expensive film project yet – the $2 million production MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. In terms of film production, this was probably the high water mark. In 1942, Catalina was closed to visitors for the duration of World War II. (The Wrigley family leased the entire island to the U.S. military at a cost of $1 per year.) One of the very few films that were shot on the island during this period was the 1943 film GUADALCANAL DIARY – key scenes were filmed at Little Harbor, on the western side of the island. Many years later, Isthmus was used for WWII battle sequences in the film MACARTHUR (1977). Catalina made another significant contribution to film history during the war period: Merchant marine James Dougherty was stationed at Avalon, and he brought his young bride Norma Jean Baker. The future Marilyn Monroe got a job pulling taffy at Lloyd’s of Avalon. From there, she went on to a modeling career, which in turn led to an acting contract with 20th Century Fox in 1946. Marilyn Monroe returned to the island in 1958, to shoot a handful of scenes for SOME LIKE IT HOT.
By then, Avalon’s star was waning… at least in Hollywood. The advent of affordable air travel meant that filmmakers started going further from L.A. to find exotic locations for their films. Avalon hosted many lower-budget television productions in the 50s and 60s, but fewer and fewer feature films. One of the biggest remaining draws for filmmakers was Avalon’s famous glass-bottom boats – featured prominently in the 1966 Doris Day picture THE GLASS BOTTOM BOAT. These boats were famously used to shoot underwater sequences for JAWS (1974). I like to think of Spielberg's film as the culmination of a Catalina sea-monster tradition that goes back to an early screen adaptation of Herman Melville’s MOBY DICK (as THE SEA BEAST in 1926); it continued with the Howard Hawks film TIGER SHARK (1932), mutated into a pair of 50s b-movies (THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES and Roger Corman’s MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR) and evolved into JAWS, the perfect beast.
Another famous horror movie from the 60s features Little Harbor on the west side of the island. Remember Rosemary’s impregnation nightmare in ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)? She starts out by imagining that her bed is floating toward a tropical island. Unfortunately, when she gets to the beach, she’s suddenly surrounded by a bunch of naked old devil-worshippers. I suppose this sums up the island’s New Hollywood mystique. Beautiful shores, dark interior. Eternal sunshine above, terror down below.
On a similar note, Avalon’s historic Tuna Club served as the site of the first encounter between Jack Nicholson’s private eye and John Huston’s incestuous robber baron in CHINATOWN (1974) – a film entirely devoted to exposing the dark underbelly of Los Angeles.
What’s amazing is that, although Catalina doesn’t draw the trend-setting crowd like it used to, it still exudes the magic of its heyday. Everyone here seems to breathe a little easier (maybe because most of the fast-moving cars have been replaced by golf carts), and the locals are certainly proud of their island. Filmmakers still visit from time to time – mainly for pickup shots (see WATERWORLD, THE THIN RED LINE, PEARL HARBOR, etc.) – but the island belongs mostly to those who come to escape, and who instantly find themselves feeling “at home.”
The main attraction on Catalina is the harbor town of Avalon. Though it represents only 1% of the land, this is where 99% of the population resides. Avalon has been a major tourist attraction since at least 1910, when filmmakers discovered it. The first film shot on the island was an Essanay one-reeler titled “Feeding Seals at Catalina Isle” (1910). Two years later, pioneer filmmaker D.W. Griffith came to make his short film “Man’s Genesis” (1912). He was followed by Mack Sennett and Fatty Arbuckle, who made an international star out of the island’s oldest seal (“Big Ben”) in one of their Keystone comedies, called “The Sea Nymphs” (1914). Soon after, Charlie Chaplin’s brother Sid made the short film “A Submarine Pirate” (1915), which featured the first underwater scenes shot at Avalon. The stars of the silent film era were well entrenched on the island even before Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) transformed filmmaking into an art form.
Around the same time, Avalon experienced its own re-birth. In 1915, a massive fire destroyed half of the town. Director Thomas Ince used images of the devastation in his 1916 epic CIVILIZATION. That could have been the end of Hollywood’s love affair with Catalina, but instead it was just the beginning. In a sense, what rose from the ashes afterward was not the same island… but a mythic world, filled with heroes and monsters and mountains of melodrama.
In his book CATALINA IN THE MOVIES, Lee Rosenthal identifies the 1916 feature THE PEARL OF PARADISE as “probably the first South Sea Island movie made on Catalina.” For roughly the next four decades, Catalina was home to most of Hollywood’s shipwrecks, swashbucklers and swarthy pirates. Two versions of Robert Louis Stevenson’s TREASURE ISLAND were shot there, one in 1918 and another one in 1924. Catalina also hosted two versions of CAPTAIN BLOOD (1924, remade in 1935 with Errol Flynn) and two versions of THE SEA HAWK (1924, remade in 1940 with Errol Flynn), as well as the early Technicolor movie THE BLACK PIRATE (1926) starring Douglas Fairbanks, and the big-budget OLD IRONSIDES (1926)… notable for an early appearance by Boris Karloff. Most of these films were not shot at Avalon, but at the two harbors of Isthmus, a much smaller town on the northern end of the island. Cecil B. DeMille made this his home away from home – returning multiple times to shoot exotic scenes for MALE AND FEMALE (1919), THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1923), FEET OF CLAY (1924), and THE KING OF KINGS (1925).
The interior of the island was also used frequently… for westerns! In all likelihood, this happened not because the landscape was ideal for the stories (though I admit that Blackjack Mountain looks quite a bit like Calabasas, where Warner Brothers filmed most of their early westerns with Errol Flynn), but because writer Zane Grey and actor Tom Mix had made Catalina their homes. Both men built houses on the northern hill of Avalon in 1918. Grey promoted the island in his 1919 nonfiction book TALES OF FISHES; Rosenthal says that Mix shot his first one-reeler here in 1919. DRUG HARLON (1920) was the first feature-length cowboy movie shot on the island, and it was followed by an early John Ford western called ACTION (1921). Ford, who spent most of his time on a yacht when he wasn’t on a movie set, returned to Catalina for MEN WITHOUT WOMEN (1930), SEAS BENEATH (1931) and THE HURRICANE (1937). Two of Zane Grey’s novels were later brought to life on Catalina: THE VANISHING AMERICAN in 1925 and THE GOLDEN WEST in 1932. The first film made a significant impact on the local culture: The filmmakers brought a small herd of North American bison to the island for filming and, when they were finished, simply released the animals into the wild. Today, descendants of those wild “buffalo” still roam the hills of Catalina.
Not all of Hollywood’s new additions were pirates and cowboys. In 1926, director Tod Browning brought actor Lon Chaney to Catalina for one of his most memorable roles. In THE ROAD TO MANDALAY, Chaney plays a creepy one-eyed criminal who follows his estranged daughter through the jungles of the Far East. I saw an incomplete bootleg video of this a few years ago, and was impressed – as always – by Chaney’s ability to inspire pity as well as fear. Even more unsettling: H.G. Wells’s sadistic Dr. Moreau set up camp at Isthmus in the 1932 film ISLAND OF LOST SOULS – indisputably one of the greatest horror movies ever made. (Why is it still unavailable on DVD?!) Also, I could swear that I read somewhere that KING KONG and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME were shot back-to-back on Catalina… but Rosenthal only mentions SON OF KONG (1933), so maybe I’m making that up.
By the end of the 1920s, Catalina was thriving under the ownership of Chicago businessman William Wrigley Jr., who built the island’s crown jewel -- the Avalon Casino -- as a monument to his 10-year-anniversary as owner. The casino featured a state-of-the-art movie theater for “talkies” (believe it or not, that newfangled technology wasn’t expected to last, so Wrigley was making a bit of a gamble on this one) and a grand ballroom that drew the top performers of the Big Band era. Our tour guide said that there was never any gambling here, adding that the Italian word "casino" originally meant a building used to host civic town functions.
Even as the rest of America suffered through the Great Depression, the resort community thrived. In 1935, Isthmus hosted its most expensive film project yet – the $2 million production MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. In terms of film production, this was probably the high water mark. In 1942, Catalina was closed to visitors for the duration of World War II. (The Wrigley family leased the entire island to the U.S. military at a cost of $1 per year.) One of the very few films that were shot on the island during this period was the 1943 film GUADALCANAL DIARY – key scenes were filmed at Little Harbor, on the western side of the island. Many years later, Isthmus was used for WWII battle sequences in the film MACARTHUR (1977). Catalina made another significant contribution to film history during the war period: Merchant marine James Dougherty was stationed at Avalon, and he brought his young bride Norma Jean Baker. The future Marilyn Monroe got a job pulling taffy at Lloyd’s of Avalon. From there, she went on to a modeling career, which in turn led to an acting contract with 20th Century Fox in 1946. Marilyn Monroe returned to the island in 1958, to shoot a handful of scenes for SOME LIKE IT HOT.
By then, Avalon’s star was waning… at least in Hollywood. The advent of affordable air travel meant that filmmakers started going further from L.A. to find exotic locations for their films. Avalon hosted many lower-budget television productions in the 50s and 60s, but fewer and fewer feature films. One of the biggest remaining draws for filmmakers was Avalon’s famous glass-bottom boats – featured prominently in the 1966 Doris Day picture THE GLASS BOTTOM BOAT. These boats were famously used to shoot underwater sequences for JAWS (1974). I like to think of Spielberg's film as the culmination of a Catalina sea-monster tradition that goes back to an early screen adaptation of Herman Melville’s MOBY DICK (as THE SEA BEAST in 1926); it continued with the Howard Hawks film TIGER SHARK (1932), mutated into a pair of 50s b-movies (THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES and Roger Corman’s MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR) and evolved into JAWS, the perfect beast.
Another famous horror movie from the 60s features Little Harbor on the west side of the island. Remember Rosemary’s impregnation nightmare in ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)? She starts out by imagining that her bed is floating toward a tropical island. Unfortunately, when she gets to the beach, she’s suddenly surrounded by a bunch of naked old devil-worshippers. I suppose this sums up the island’s New Hollywood mystique. Beautiful shores, dark interior. Eternal sunshine above, terror down below.
On a similar note, Avalon’s historic Tuna Club served as the site of the first encounter between Jack Nicholson’s private eye and John Huston’s incestuous robber baron in CHINATOWN (1974) – a film entirely devoted to exposing the dark underbelly of Los Angeles.
What’s amazing is that, although Catalina doesn’t draw the trend-setting crowd like it used to, it still exudes the magic of its heyday. Everyone here seems to breathe a little easier (maybe because most of the fast-moving cars have been replaced by golf carts), and the locals are certainly proud of their island. Filmmakers still visit from time to time – mainly for pickup shots (see WATERWORLD, THE THIN RED LINE, PEARL HARBOR, etc.) – but the island belongs mostly to those who come to escape, and who instantly find themselves feeling “at home.”
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