Year Of the Knockoff! Evil Clutch (1988)

In honor of Ash vs Evil Dead season 3 kicking off, I figured I would take a look at a knockoff of the original Evil Dead film, 1988's Evil Clutch.

The film starts off with a three minute long credit sequence smash up that swings from lighthearted music with a series of polaroid photos showing a happy couple on vacation in Italy to ominus music that just lists the cast and crew. It is trying to set a tone of fun and dread but doesn't really land either. 

Then there is the title card itself. 

Rawr! claw claw claw!

This font/color scheme reminded me of another infamous knockoff. 

Who would have thought people would be upset at a professional
sports team treating mental illness lightly?

After the credits, the film shows a man, I believe his name was Fango (which is either the greatest or worst name ever, I can't make up my mind), being inexplicably drawn to a run down structure to see a woman, Arva. There, Arva seduces him and suddenly, mid passion, she turns demonic/gothy and a 3 talon claw emerges from between her legs and rips Fango's crotch off. He staggers away, now fangoless, and dies. 

And then we get this.

Just in case you didn't know that movies often tell their stories in sequence.

The film picks up with the happy couple we heard in the opening credit sequence. Cindy is an American and Tony is an Italian and I appreciate that the film let them keep their accents even with the Italian overdubbing process. They are driving into the mountains to spend some romantic time alone. Arva, with her clawgina put away and ungothed, appears alongside the road, distraught. The couple stops and picks her up and she tells them that she was being chased by someone and they agree to take her to the nearby town. They become weirdly fast friends.

In town, they exit the vehicle to have Arva freak out at the sight of a goggled man on a motorcycle. She runs away and the man, whose name is Algernoon, asks the couple if they know her. Algernoon has to use a electrolarynx (one of those boxes people that put on their throat to speak if they lost their voice box) to speak. It doesn't add anything to the plot, but it does add a little weirdness to the proceedings. 

Algernoon tells the couple that he is a writer and goes on to tell them a story. He says his story is about them, but only that he uses Cindy and Tony as characters in it. As the film moves forward, I thought Algernoon was going to be telling them different stories, anthology style, but no. It is just this one story about a man killing his girlfriend only for her to come back from the dead and stalk him in his home. This story has nothing to do with the actual plot of Evil Clutch at all. It is just a 5-10 minute aside that is fully acted with gorey special effects that feel like it overall belongs in a different film (and who knows, probably did). The couple, obviously weirded out, leave Algernoon, and head onto the woods for their romantic getaway.  

Somehow they cross paths again with Arva and she convinces them to spend the night in a nearby location in the woods. Cindy is creeped out by the building (it was the same location seen by us at the start of the film) and goes to get some air. Arva offers Tony some cocaine which he promptly drops into a bucket of black goop that happens to be right beside them. The goop explodes in his face and Arva tries to seduce Tony. Turns out Arva is a witch and does weird witch things from that point forward.

The rest of the film is Tony being possessed or not, Arva being gothy witchy or not, Algernoon showing up to immediately get killed and then turned into a zombie, and Fango returning from the dead (evidently mad his junk got ripped off). Cindy spends the rest of the film screaming and running away from things, aside from the time she finds a chainsaw and rekills Algernoon. 

...this film doesn't make much sense, to put it simply.

But that's not why we are here. The question is: how much does it attempt to knockoff 1981's Evil Dead? The answer is: A LOT.

Before we get into that, I just want point out that Evil Clutch came out in 1988, while Evil Dead 2 came out in 1987. Evil Clutch stayed within the lane of the first film released 7 years previously. This film does not attempt to ape the sequel though, which I would think would have been the bigger target if your goal is to attract people that wanted to see something like that. It is a curious choice. I did also see that this film was distributed by Troma, but something tells me that this was after the film was completed, so any input at chasing the sequel of Evil Dead was probably not discussed. 

Evil Clutch used the fast moving, low camera angle that Sam Raimi used very effectively in Evil Dead. Here is the very end of the first film to give you a refresher. 

The story of how that technique came to be is really fun and interesting and well worth the minute to read about. 

Evil Clutch used the 'shaky cam' so much through the runtime that it is clear that they liked it and wanted to showcase it as much as possible. At first I really appreciated it, but as the film carried on, it was obvious they had no other way to pad out the run time of the film. This ruined any attempt at suspense as you would know that the shot/scene would long outlast its welcome. The ending of Evil Clutch is a 2-3 minute running shot of Cindy from behind as she is screaming through the woods that should be redone in a better film. Had there been any emotional connection to what she went through, it could have been painful and haunting, but moments before she rekilled Fango(less) with just the reflection of sunlight cast form a pocket mirror, so I wasn't really relating to her situation. 

Other 'nods' to Evil Dead included a shot of a wall clock with it hands spinning wildly and direct close ups of Cindy's eyes as they dart back and forth. It felt like Evil Clutch had to tick off those boxes as well and did it. If the shaky cam use wasn't so blatant, I might not have noticed those moments, but it was hard to ignore when Evil Clutch was trying so hard to look and feel like Evil Dead. 

Evil Clutch tried using the random possession idea that was shown more as a trap in Evil Deah. Ash couldn't trust his girlfriend or his sister as they turned into monstrous Deadites but he wasn't 100% sure they were gone because they would revert to their 'regular' selves and try to convince him they were the victims and they were okay now. In Evil Clutch, Tony was possessed, tried to rape Cindy, and then he himself was almost tree root raped (another rip from Evil Dead) and Arva tried to use her clawgina on him. Algernoon saves him (and then dies quickly after) and Tony is no longer possessed. None of it makes sense. Cindy just accepts him again. I am glad that got wrapped up so quickly.

The gore in Evil Clutch was over the top but just as directionless as the rest of the film. I would argue that the gore in Evil Dead doesn't always make the most sense either, but it (in my opinion) has a certain low budget charm to it. There is a moment in Evil Clutch when a severed head on a hook has the top of the head explode off as it was packed full of bottle rockets and them blood just pumps out (of a severed head... think about that) in garden hose streams. It felt like the makers of Evil Clutch understood that Evil Dead was gonzo with it's effects but not how to dole them out effectively. Even when a chainsaw is used, it is brief and lacking impact. 

I will give Evil Clutch small points for three gore effects that Evil Dead did not have:

• Tony getting his hands smashed off by Fango dropping a rock on them. The set up was easy to see coming, but it still looked wrong in the right way. 
• Cindy getting a fishhook in her cheek. Fango used a fishing pole to snag her at distance. It doesn't make sense but it looked like it hurt. 
• Fango shoving Tony's head into the spokes of an old wooden wheel and then turning the wheel to decapitate Tony. 

 

Evil Clutch is not a good film but you can see they loved Evil Dead, or at least liked it enough to think they could make money by knocking it off. They identified elements that make the original film what it was but didn't have a compelling story or characters to make it stand on its own. 

On a scale of 1-10, how close did it adhere to the film it wanted to knock off?

I will give it a 8 as it did ape the camera work and shot choices of Evil Dead. It really caught me off guard at how much this film adhered to what Evil Dead looked like. Also, the score for the film isn't really like Evil Dead but is way better than it has any right being. Not amazing, but pretty damn good for an Italian Evil Dead rip off. 

On the Ator Scale, was it better or worse than Ator? 

Cinematography wise, it was better than Ator. Entertainment wise, it's not even a film I would show to my friends on a lark. 

Would you recommend this film to anyone else?  

No, unless you can appreciate the time they took to mimic the style of Evil Dead. 

Bonus: 

The whole film is available to watch for free on YouTube if you want to watch it. I would not recommend it. But the terrible forbidden fruit is just a click away.

Bonus Bonus:

The narrator of the Evil Clutch trailer reminded me of this goldie oldie slice of internet. 

If you guys have any other suggestions for knockoffs that Steve and I should watch, let me know in the comments below or on our Facebook page. 

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Year Of The Knockoff! Robo Vampire (1988)

After we just kicked off our Year of the Knockoff with our look at the wonderfully under budgeted and under talented Ator: The Fighting Eagle (you can hear our talk about it here), I decided it would be fun to dive into the wake of another successful film and see what was floating back there. 

Having just watching a midnight showing of Robocop, I decided to take a chance on a film that was suggested to me by Kevin (AKA the guy who was responsible for giving me the wonderful Year of the Western list), 1988's Robo Vampire.

First let's establish what people like about Robocop:

• It has a very dark sense of humor with its over the top news stories, commercials for products (the 6000 SUX can get 8.2 miles to the gallon), and its sexploitative older man saying 'I'd buy that for a dollar!' It is poking its thumb right in the eye of 80's decadent excess and capitalism. 
• The practical effects work of the Robocop suit itself and the brutally effective shots of violence (no pun intended).
• The ED-209 falling down a set of steps and then making animal noises. 
• Kurtwood Smith as Clarence Boddicker.  
• Peter Weller's performance. He is able to make your believe that he is part machine in the way he moves and interacts with others. 

For the most part.

Here's what we get in Robo Vampire:

• A plan from a drug kingpin to smuggle drugs in the coffins of vampires (specifically Jiangshi, Chinese hopping vampires. Check out El Goro's way thorough and thoughtful explanation of the Jiangshi. Highly recommended!)
• This same person gets mad that his smuggling business keeps getting interrupted by law enforcement, so he decides to train a special vampire to just kill the drug cops.
• Once the special vampire is trained (and is wearing a gorilla mask for no real good reason), the kingpin finds out that a ghost is trying to ruin his plan.
• This ghost was previously a girl in love with the vampire before he turned and they made a suicide pact in order to be together forever in the afterlife. The kingpin allows them to get married only if they agree to work for him. They agree and are wed.
• One of the drug cops gets killed and his team decides that they can turn him into android warrior in order to keep fighting drug lords. There is very little debate about whether they can or should do this.
• Somewhere along the way a robot cop will fight hopping vampires.  

Robocops? Hopping vampires? Gunfights? This film has to have some kind of a budget in order to make all of this work, right? Behold. 

I will give the filmmaker accidental credit for the music sounding like something out of Street Fighter and I appreciate the effect it took to make each robotic step sound like a thud (even while on the sand). 

This film is actually the combination of two films (Godfrey Ho, the director, seems to have a track record of doing this) with a lot of the drug smuggling and crime portions separate from the vampires, ghost, and robot cop portions. As much as it doesn't make any narrative sense, I kind of appreciate the bold no cares given approach of just terribly dubbing over whatever dialogue you want in a scene in order to make it connect to the next one. It doesn't make for the most satisfying film watching experience, but I don't think Robo Vampire cares if it makes sense. Just get to more of the sweet sweet badly edited fight sequences.   

I think I may have said this on the podcast but I want to state that I think I enjoy these out of left field trash heap films more now than I used to because I find it hard to be suprised by any mainstream film. This is partly my fault because as I am interested in what's coming out and so I read up on it and in the process likely spoil some of the initial discovery that should come with the first time you watch a film. I also blame the marketing as it does a great job of showing a few key things that should be held back to surprise the audience but want to make sure the audience knows what they should be excited about. A film like Robo Vampire has no footprint (outside of Kevin and a handful of people on the internet that have found it before I did) and so I can honestly be satisfied that I have no real idea where it was going. Granted, I don't think the film knew where it was going either, but it had just enough sparklers and bad edits to get to the finish line.

Steve and I asked this question about Ator: The Fighting Eagle, did it learn anything from the film it was trying to copy? I will give Robo Vampire a very small yes.

Here's what it kind of sorta got right from Robocop:

• Crime was so bad that law enforcement was desperate for anything to turn the tide.
• A fallen officer becomes the subject of an operation to turn him into a android.
• Robo Warrior has a brief flashback to his life before involving an argument he had with his wife. (Side note: this occurs as he happens to see the ghost and the super vampire start to consummate their marriage. He leaves them in peace. They then decide to attack him for.... reasons?)
• There is a lot of over the top violence that looks halfway decent at times (budget considered).
• A very abrupt ending. 

I am now going to use three metrics that I am going try to apply to this film and to any of the other films we cover during The Year Of The Knockoff:

On a scale of 1-10, how close did it adhere to the film it wanted to knock off?

I will give it a 3 as it did have a guy in a suit attempting his best to mimic the the slow robotic movements of Peter Weller. The crazy dubbed in sound effects kept me smiling the entire time. 

On the Ator Scale, was it better or worse than Ator? 

Production wise, this was way worse than Ator. However, it is rare for a film to make me laugh by myself while was watching it, and Robo Vampire did do that. At least 3 times I found myself busting up. Had I not been as entertained, this film would have been a complete waste of time.

Would you recommend this film to anyone else?  

There are only a handful of people I know that would go out of their way to watch a film like Robo Vampire. I can't recommend it for most people, but the few of you out there that are tickled by the idea of a guy that looks like a silver oven mitt that is supposed to be a robot fighting hopping vampires that disappear only with the help of a quick edit, then this is truly a feast to enjoy. 

Robo Vampire is a bad movie that badly tries to cash in on Robocop. None of it really works but that's probably why I like it. I like living in a world where someone looks at an incomplete drug trafficking film and says to themself, 'You know what this film needs? Shitty Robocop and vampires.'

Bonus: 

The whole film is available to watch for free on YouTube! 

You may still ask for your money back.

If you guys have any other suggestions for knockoffs that Steve and I should watch, let me know in the comments below or on our Facebook page. 

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Year Of The Western! #30 The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

And here we are, the last film on the list for my journey into the western. I would say it has been long, but it really hasn't been. I have torn through this list of 30 at a pretty breakneck pace and it was a lot of fun. I am glad that I will now get the opportunity to watch other things that aren't westerns but I don't begrudge any of the time I have spent expanding my knowledge in an area that I was only superficially familiar with. This has been a fun experiment and I might try it again with another genre soon. 

Let's mount up for one last ride and see where Clint Eastwood takes us. 

Film #30 The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) 

Here is the imdb.com cast listing (and a surprising amount of trivia about Clint Eastwood's sex life). Here is the wikipedia page about the production.

This film starts off with Josey (Clint Eastwood) tilling his soil with his son. His wife calls the son to get cleaned up, and shortly after Josey sees smoke in the distance and runs home to see his house ablaze and that his wife is being taken forcibly out of it by a bunch of men in with red leather leggings. He tries to fight back but is knocked unconscious. He wakes up to find the ashes of his house and his family. He buries his wife and child and just sits at their graves, broken.

Soon a large group of Confederate soldiers appear and tell him that the men that destroyed his home and killed his family are Union raiders, called Red Legs, and that they are going to go look for them. Josey joins them and fights for the Confederacy. He fights along side these men until the Civil War is over and the has South lost. The North is saying they are giving them full clemency if they just swear their allegiance to the Union. Most of the men leave to do so, Josey stays back, his war is not over.

One of the men to surrender, Fletcher (John Vernon) was given the word of the Union leadership and a leader of the Red Legs, Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney), that his men would be unharmed. As his men take the pledge, the Union army open fires on them and kills them all except for Fletcher and Josey, who is watching in the distance and sees Terrill and other member of the gang that killed his family. Josey rushes the camp and lays waste to most everyone and then goes on the run. He is a wanted man for the shooting of Union soldiers and for not surrendering. 

Josey is trying to get to the Indian nations so that he can lay low and figure out his next move and Fletcher is being forced to assist Terrill to hunt down Josey. As Josey stays free of the army and the law, the legend of The Outlaw Josey Wales grows. People in equal parts are trying to hunt him down for the bounty or are assisting him because they hate the government for what the war has done to them as well.

As Josey travels, he starts picking up people along the way. He is joined by an older Native American who is fed up with the government trying to make him civilized while they keep taking his land, a younger Native American woman who was ostracised by her tribe and was working under duress at a trading post, a family of Kansas folk who think they have a better life ahead of them based upon the promises of a wayward son, and a roughed up dog that just happens to show up along the way. Slowly Josey is starting to care about those that are following him and it almost seems like he is finding a life after the one he lost, but violence is always looming on the horizon as Terrill and his men and bounty hunters are trying to take out Josey.

 After the mind bender ending of High Plains Drifter, I was wondering if I was going to get another genre challenging western from Clint Eastwood. This film is pretty straight forward in its story telling and it is does feel more in line with a traditional western. The characterization of Josey is a little different as in he is driven by revenge but he still will stand up and fight for decent people when he sees them being abused. He will kill when he needs to, and without hesitation, but that doesn't mean that he wants to. He will survive until Terrill pays for what he did. I don't know if Josey is a true anti-hero, as he does do right by people and it isn't always for his own gain. I think that moments of his previous humanity rise to the surface from time to time. This is what keeps him from just being another grim bastard dealing out justice. Giving him a little complicated personality makes this a better story.

This film is really about family. The one he lost and the one he found. When you finally get to the homestead that was promised to the Kansas family and you see such an odd band of people all working together, you do feel like they are all home; even Josey, but he is uneasy about it. "When I get to likin' someone, they ain't around long," he tells the older Native American. "I notice when you get to dislikin' someone they ain't around for long neither," he replies back. Josey feels like violence will follow him wherever he goes, so he doesn't want to endanger anyone else, but he does like these people. 

This is a great scene where he has come to talk to Ten Bears, a Indian leader that was planning on attacking the Kansas family homestead in retaliation due to an earlier situation where Josey took care of some Comancheros. Josey's talk about his words of death and life to Ten Bears show that he is a man that can bring death but is tired of doing so and just wants to make peace.  

Clint Eastwood is great in this role, but that is not really a surprise. He gets some great badass line deliveries, some sarcastic one liners, and he gets to punctuate a lot of his statements with a spit of chewing tobacco (more on that later). And like I said before, he gets to show some vulnerability here that you didn't see in the other westerns I have watched for this list. This is the most human character I have seen him play and it was great. 

John Vernon as Fletcher was also great. He didn't have the largest role but I really enjoyed his resigned approach that he had while tracking Josey. He knew that Josey would be smarter and more cunning than Terrill's men, and he would try to tell them them but to no avail. Josey was a friend and he didn't want to do this, but he also had no choice. I could have watched a whole film from Fletcher's perspective and I would have been entertained. 

The Outlaw Josey Wales is a good film that provides depth and character to a story that could have easily just been about blood for blood. With the twists and turns of adding people to follow him in his journey, it gives the film a sense of  hope that I have not seen in other films. 

In the end, Josey is given a head start, as he is owed that much. Maybe he will finally outrun his past and get the peaceful future that he wants. Maybe there are army troops waiting over the ridge to take him down. We are left with no clear answers. I reckon that is the way Josey sees it too. You just got keep riding forward. Dyin' ain't much of a livin.'

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific): 

• Weird gang member names? The leader of the Confederate soldiers at the beginning of the film was named 'Bloody Bill' Anderson. That's a badass name. Especially if his real name isn't Bill. 
•  Did a house catch on fire? Oh, my yes. At the very start. It looks like they set a real home on fire.
• Any terrified horses? This is the mother lode of horse scares. There was one or two that fell of a ferry into a river, multiple ones tumbling down a rock hillside, and a couple were dragged down after being shot. Not a friendly horse film at all.
• How many Ernest Borgnines? I am going to give this to John Vernon. He was later cast as Dean Vernon Wormer in Animal House. 
• How many things/animals did Clint Eastwood spit on? He spit on a scorpion, the dog twice, probably a horse, some snake oil salesman's white coat, two dead bodies, and one spittoon. There were other things he spit on too, but I lost track. He was just as accurate with his spit as he was his guns.
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, but the score by Jerry Fielding (he also did the score for The Wild Bunch) is quite good. 

Rating:

I am going to give this film 4.5 out of 5 tin stars. Good performance by Eastwood, interesting story of man continuing on with his fight after the war is over, good ensemble cast of characters, and an ending that didn't go the way you would expect. Highly recommended. 

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Year Of The Western! #29 Keoma (1976)

I know I have talked a lot about the original Django and how it compares to other films on this list and I have had the pleasant experience of seeing Franco Nero in more light hearted comedic westerns, but I haven't had a chance to see Nero in another serious film. I am glad that the last spaghetti western on this list is a serious Franco Nero one.

Film #29 Keoma (1976)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

This film starts off with Keoma (Franco Nero), a half-indian/caucasian ex-Union soldier, returning to his home town to see that the things are not the way he left them. A rich businessman named Caldwell, bought the nearby mine and has slowly taken over the town. The mine started polluting the local water supply and this caused a plague to breakout among most of the townspeople. Seeing some of Caldwell's men taking a wagon of infected people to the mine, including a very pregnant woman named Liza, Keoma frees her and takes her into town in order to get medical treatment. 

Keoma soons finds out that his three half brothers are working with Caldwell in running the town. Through a series of flashbacks it is revealed that due to Keoma's half-breed status, his brothers hated him and made his life hell. His father, William (William Berger, last seen as Banjo in Sabata), loves all of his sons equally but the other three think that he loves Keoma more, which is why they punish him.

Keoma could just leave the town to its misery and just drift across the land, as his brothers point out that he comes and goes as he pleases, but he decides that he is going to help the town, punish Caldwell, and hopefully in the process, find his reason for existence. 

Oh, and there is an old lady, referred to as The Witch in the casting notes, who may or may not have supernatural powers. And the sound track tells the story of the film as it goes on.

Reading up on the film after watching it, it is appears that this was one of the last major spaghetti western productions out of Italy. Its a shame because I feel like they were getting stranger and more interesting as they went along. I am glad that if this was to be one of the last ones that it went with a more serious and surreal tone as opposed to the more outrageous buddy comedy kinds that were more prevalent in the later half of the sub-genre's life cycle. 

Keoma feels like it took at a look at what came before it, and not just with other italian westerns because it clearly has some of The Wild Bunch in its DNA, and tried to bring some of the best qualities forward. I am not saying it is entirely successful, but it is evident it had a large bag of tricks and techniques to pull from. There are Leone style flashbacks with some good long tracking shots, Peckinpaugh style slow motion violence, and Corbucci's quick action cuts. Its a good blend of what makes those other films work really well.

I appreciate that Keoma wants to do some good but he isn't sure why. He doesn't really want to face off against his brothers but he will if that means helping the townspeople and Liza. I believe Keoma is trying to atone for his actions during the war because he wasn't sure why he was fighting in it to begin with. Below is a wonderful scene between Keoma and his father discussing war, love, and life. Check out that camera movement. 

I also liked the idea that a number of the townspeople were suffering from a plague as it brought a little different element to the story. It could be seen as a metaphor for how the town let the rich man take over and take their lives from them slowly, like the disease is doing to them as well. They don't know how to deal with it so they would rather suffer in silence than try to fight back. It also brought a bit of body horror to the film and that made the whole situation seem more desperate.

The look of the town itself felt like it was out of a nightmare. None of the buildings were in good repair and most were in the slow collapsing decay that you see in a ghost town. This is a place that had better days and will never see them again. It looks as diseased and worn down as its people. 

Franco Nero was really good as Keoma. He carried a haunted look through almost every scene. You got that he really felt like he belonged nowhere but he was going to try and fight the good fight. When the pregnant lady asked him why he saved her, he tells here 'Everyone has the right to be born.' You have a right to get to here, but you shouldn't expect anything else to be handed to you. He was just trying to give her child the same opportunity he was looking for: to figure out his purpose. 

There is a point later in the film when someone very important to him is taken away and in slow motion you see Nero break free from his captors and run with pure shock and rage towards the person who did the taking. It is an epic moment for the worst reasons and Nero commits so fully to it that you feel his rage as well. 

I forgot to mention another character in the film, George, played by Woody Strode. I want to speak about him for a moment because this isn't the first film on the list he has been in. He was in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as John Wayne's sidekick and he was also one of the three gunmen at the train station that were waiting for Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West. Here he has his biggest role in the films I have seen and I glad I got to see more of him. George was an associate/worker for Keoma's father and you can see in the flashbacks he always had a smile on his face as he played his banjo, taught Keoma how to shoot a bow and arrow, and just took care of homestead. There is a legitimate warmth to him in those brief scenes. When the film begins, he is a broken down alcoholic with no bow and just three strings left on his banjo. He has been made a free man due to the war but people still treat him the same. His freedom didn't change people's attitudes and now he just drinks to deal with it. When finally given a purpose, to help Keoma fight back, George starts to perk up, even enjoying the shootout at the end saying he feels alive again. Strode never plays stupid or into any kind of stereotype. He is very sympathetic and when he meets his end, he doesn't stop fighting those that kept trying to hold him down. It is a great performance.

I can't say I completely understand the purpose of The Witch. She felt like she belonged more in a Shakespeare play than this film, not with her dialogue but due to her semi-omnipresent ability to be around Keoma and directly question his motivations. It was an interesting touch but I feel that it needed a little more substance or definition in order to have a better impact on the story.

The final showdown with the three brothers and Keoma is haunting as it is set against the sounds of Liza giving birth. There are moments where it is just her screams of pain while you see the brothers trying to stalk Keoma through dry rot in the shape of a barn. As lives are taken, a new life is closer to coming into this world. It shows the pain and cost involved in just surviving, just living.

I also have to say that I equally love and hate the music in Keoma. The instrumental parts are very cool and have some synth notes that are very mid to late 70's that I really dig. The vocal portions are challenging. Mainly there is a female voice that comes in at various points in the film and sings about what is actually going on in the story (this also feels oddly Shakespeare like, or more specifically a Greek chorus), and she is fine but the lyrics don't always fit the pace of the music. Also, she sings in a high warbly pitch that works sometimes but other times is grating. Then, every so often, there is a low gravely voice man that sings as well. He is just terrible. When they sing in tandem, it is... odd. I appreciate taking the chance, and I love the idea of an ongoing song within the film (Jeremiah Johnson kind of does the same thing to a much better effect), especially a western as they already have a different texture to them than other genres, but man I wish they would have chosen different vocalists or something.

Keoma is a interesting movie with some great characters, wonderful camera work, and some awesome shootouts and fights. That it struggles with the nature of one's place in the world and the cost of freedom takes what could have been a simple tale of taking back a town and makes it something more.

If this was the last of the Spaghetti Westerns, then it was a very good one to go out on. 

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? All the brothers had the last name Shannon, but that's not that weird.
• Beautiful landscapes? A few lowland hills that I have seen in other Italian films that are pretty but this film was purposefully ugly. 
• Any terrified horses? Yeah, it looks like two get shot back to back. 
• How many Ernest Borgnines? Woody Strode would get the nod here. He is great.
• Any buildings catch on fire? No, but a stiff wind would have knocked most of them over. Seriously, that town looked wrong.
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? Yes, kind of. Like I said before, there is a running song through the film about the story. Here is a little bit of it below. You will see what I mean about the actual signing.

Rating:

I am going to give this film four out of five tin stars. Franco Nero is awesome as a man that has no place in the world but is still trying to fight for it. The desperation of the town and the sickness of its people give this film a slight horror edge that I was not expecting but appreciated. The music might be the reason why this doesn't rate higher for me and that's a shame. In spite of that, Keoma is still a really good film and it's worth the time to watch. 

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Year Of The Western! #28 Breakheart Pass (1975)

So here we are, three films to go in the mad rush that has been the Year 3 Months Of The Western! and I had to call a slight audible. Of the remaining three films on the list that was given to me, two are from 1976 and one is from 2000. While I am interested in the one from 2000, I wanted to stick within the relative time frame the list has gone with so far. I started in 1954 (well, technically I should have started in 1953, but I can't read a calendar) and am finishing with a range of 23 years of films. I have appreciated the evolution in presentation and the subject matter. So I wanted to keep that train rolling (very appropriately so) and picked a film that I thought would hold some interest.

I chose Breakheart Pass for 4 reasons: 1.) It has Charles Bronson in it. 2.) It is a film set in the time of the old west that I have not seen. 3.) It was made before the last two films on the list. 4.) It has Charles Bronson in it.

So let's see if the one film I picked out of the 30 belongs in the list.

Film #28 Breakheart Pass (1975)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

This film starts with a train stopping in the small 'town' of Myrtle. It looks like it has 5 tents, one bar, and one telegraph office. It is a private military train with one car for the Governor of Nevada (Richard Crenna), and they are on an urgent and secretive mission. While waiting for the train to get filled with water, soldiers and the other passengers get off and head into the town. A United States Marshall (Ben Johnson) is trying to gain passage on the train as he knows that it is headed to Fort Humboldt and they have a prisoner that he wants to escort back south. The head of the military, Major Claremont (Ed Lauter) doesn't want to take on additional passengers and the Governor has not told him what is actually going on at the fort. Enter John Deakin (Charles Bronson) a man with a past in medicine and a price on his head for committing a crime against the US government, who just happens to be caught cheating at cards by the marshall. Seeing as Deakin is now a federal prisoner, the Major will allow him and the Marshall on the train.

Once on the train, the Governor and a doctor on board (David Huddleston... I just have to mention him because he was the other Lebowski in The Big Lebowski) tell the Major and other important members on the train, and Deakin who happens to have his hands and feet tied while sitting on the floor, what their mission is: Fort Humboldt is devastated by Diphtheria and they are bringing a large number of medical supplies and fresh troops to staff the fort while the outbreak is being treated. The doctor excuses himself to go check the supplies. 

Soon after the doctor is found dead in his room. Deakin examines the body and shows everyone that the doctor was murdered. Things are not what they seem on the train and in Fort Humboldt. People start dying, secrets come out, and the danger grows with each mile traveled. 

To really to get into too much more would be to give away what fun there is to be had in this film. This is not a character study, it is a quickly paced thriller that speeds along as fast as the train the characters are all on. Sometimes you just need a jaunty ninety minute plot in which there are fist fights, people get thrown down into mountain passes, and many train cars getting destroyed.  

This film does do something similar to 3:10 to Yuma (aside that both have trains central to the plot) in the sense that it is a ticking clock with a confrontation that is coming one way or another. It also keeps the main characters in close vicinity of each other so that way it can build tension. 

It is decided that it is fine to have Deaken wander the train freely for most of the story as there is no place for him to go. The snow covered area they are traveling through has nothing but train tracks and frozen death. If he tried to escape, he would die. It gives Bronson a chance to start piecing together what is going on and it works to keep the moving going even if it does stretch believability a bit. 

Giving Bronson's Deakin a background in medicine and science was a smart move as it also let you believe that his deductive reasoning was grounded. When he starts explaining how he knows certain things based upon the evidence presented, it does make sense. Also, it helps that he has a secret of his own that you don't find out until about two thirds of the way through the film. It doesn't take away from what you have seen previously and does add credibility to his beliefs about what is going on.

Bronson was 53 at the time of this film and he was hitting that grizzled Bronson look we all know from his later films that would make him iconic. I mention his age because he has a train car roof top fight that according the to trivia, he did all of his own stunt work for. Check it out below. Just the portions of where he and the other actor are hanging off the side of the train as it crosses a bridge are terrifying. 

There is also a stunt earlier in which a number of train cars are let loose from the rest of the train and they start heading backwards and picking up speed. In slow motion you see them jump the tracks and break apart against the hillside below. Like I said about Duck, You Sucker, you don't see stunts like that anymore. No matter how I may end up feeling about a particular film, I will always take my hat off to good practical effects and stunt work. 

Breakheart Pass feels like it would be a film that I would see on a lazy weekend afternoon on a local affiliate channel, or on TNT's Movies For Guys Who Like Movies. If nothing else was on, you would leave this film on, flipping back to after the commercial breaks. It has no lasting impact but it is enjoyable while you are watching it. 

I don't know what else to say about this film other than this: the plot unfolds at a good clip throughout so you keep wondering what is going on until close to the end, the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains is beautiful, Bronson Bronsons it up, and the score by Jerry Goldsmith is really quite good. It could have maybe stood to have a little more time to let the characters breathe but that would have slowed down the pace. 

There is nothing wrong with Breakheart Pass, but there is nothing that would eagerly bring me back either. 

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? Someone in the cast is named Jebbo. Sounds like a Star Wars name to me. 
• Beautiful landscapes? Yes, the snow covered mountains in northern Idaho where this was filmed is really pretty. Some of the helicopter shots of the train were really nice.
• Any terrified horses? Horses only showed up in the last 15 minutes or so, so not that many to be scared by things. David Huddleston playing dead in a few scenes made me laugh as his body would jiggle as the train rocked. 
• How many Ernest Borgnines? I will give this award to Ed Lauter. I didn't realize how many things he was in that I knew him from. He was in Gleaming the Cube!
• Any buildings catch on fire? No, but how about a train car full of ammunition exploding? 
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, like I said above, the Jerry Goldsmith score is great. Probably my favorite thing from the film. I will be revisiting the music again. 

Rating:

I am going to give this film 3.25 out of 5 tin stars. Good story hook about a train full of secrets and people who are not what they seem. Bronson getting to be a badass is always a plus. It says something that I am already forgetting parts of this film even though I watched it just a couple of hours ago. Recommended to watch while napping on a lazy Sunday. 

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Year Of The Western! #27 The Stranger and the Gunfighter (aka Blood Money) (1974)

A western set in America that is filmed in Spain and Hong Kong? An attempt to split gunfighting action with martial arts action? An established genre star with a fast rising action star? An attempt to squeeze in a lot of goofy exploitation and shots of women's butts? Did I enjoy this film?

Film #27 The Stranger and the Gunfighter (aka Blood Money) (1974)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

This film starts off with Dakota (Lee Van Cleef) riding under a train into Monterey. He has his eyes on a bank vault and what may be inside of it. As he open the vault door, he finds a black and white photo of a woman, close to being fully nude. Another door, another photo. Soon he has four photos, a fortune cookie, and one final door to open. He lights a stick of dynamite and hides from the soon to be explosion. Suddenly, the owner of the vault and the photos, Mr. Wang, rushes in to stop the explosion but dies in it instead. Dakota is immediately arrested. 

In China, a warlord that has fronted Wang a large deal of money to invest in America, hears of his death and lack of fortune. The warlord summons Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh), Wang's nephew. He tells Ho that he has one year to go to America and find Wang's fortune or else the warlord will kill Ho and his family.

Dakota is sentenced to be hanged and Wang wants to speak to him about the robbery on the off chance he knows what happened to the fortune (no one believes Dakota when he tells them all he found was just the nude photos and cookie). While talking to Dakota and going over the photos, they open the fortune cookie and the message inside states 'At bottom of every woman is fortune.' Ho believes that his uncle left clues on the asses of the four women in the photos. Ho saves Dakota from the noose (he needs a guide in America) and soon they are off to go look at four women's asses to find clues to Uncle Wang's fortune.

Misunderstandings happen. Cultures clash. Hilarity ensues. Oh, and eventually a bible thumping, verse spewing, man in black with a realllllly wide hat and his Indian strong man side kick start chasing Dakota and Ho, as they know about the money too. 

That's your film. A very over the top (not in a great way) East vs West clash of styles and a lot of looking at ladies' asses. I am pretty sure if I had told people that I had a really weird dream and described the plot of this film, people would tell me I have really stupid dreams. 

I didn't hate this film. There are bits I enjoyed, some of the comedy does work. A lot of it doesn't though and it is a shame as I think a martial arts master and an aging gunfighter is a great set up for a movie. It is interesting to know that as the American West was going through its growing pains, China and Japan were going through some interesting transitions of their own. Traditions were changing do to technological and societal advancements. What is considered honor in one land may not be the same in another. Maybe that western film exists. I understand that this film did not have its eyes set on such lofty explorations of men, culture, and history. It had its eyes set lower, like around the butt area.

I appreciate that Ho's character had no sexual interest in the women when they were tracked down. He was simply completing his task. I didn't need everyone in the world turning into a cartoon wolf and howling at the moon (pun intended?) whenever a pretty lady had to reveal the next clue in the puzzle. Dakota seemed to enjoy it a bit too much at times, but that at least felt in line with his rowdy by the skin of his teeth character. 

At first I was excited at the idea of incorporating kung fu into a western. That is a cool mash up idea. The kung fu in this is very light and ridiculous. What I mean by that is that there are clearly times when they reversed the film to make it look like Lo Lieh was jumping to very high ledges instead of him actually dropping down. I want to see the reality of fluid hand to hand combat and the film never really got there. I think you can get away with a person being an amazing shot with a gun (ala Van Cleef in Sabata) as you don't actually see them making the shot due to trick photography. I don't think you get away with hand to hand fighting where you show your character flying through the air in an almost Mortal Kombat style arc. 

Maybe I am being too harsh on this portion of the film, but I think it is a fair point to make. Just because you are making a martial arts/western comedy, the action part of it should at least hold its own. Even the brawling Wrestlemania-like ending to They Call Me Trinity showed some fun moves. The Stranger and the Gunfighter had an opportunity to really leaves its mark as a genre hybrid and it faltered in its execution. 

Some positives:

1.)  Lo Lieh had a genuine kindness around him and an easy smile. You believe that his character is 100% confident in his ability to beat anyone but fighting was never his first choice. I liked that he was never played stupid or stuck into any stereotype. 

2.) Lee Van Cleef is always great. Here he isn't a bad bad guy (though he did rob a bank and blow up a guy by accident) and is more along for the ride. Its a role he could probably play in his sleep but he brings enough charisma to it. 

3.) The adventure/journey aspect of the film. It is a trope that the heroes need to find multiple pieces of an item/puzzle in order to complete their task but it is a decent enough structure to get the two main characters together and to keep them working together. It also set up different scenarios that that they needed to figure out how to get to each of the four women and their... information. 

This is where I would normally post a video that is of a particular scene I like, but aside from the trailer, there appears to be no individual scenes I can find. However, the entire film is up for 'free' (wink) on a few different streaming platforms. So I can't show you a single scene, but you can go find the whole film to watch if you feel inclined. There are worse ways to spend 105 minutes. 

The Stranger and the Gunfighter is a film that tries to serve a number of masters and doesn't quite end up serving any. There are parts to enjoy but I don't think this is one I will be coming back to. If I need an outrageous Lee Van Cleef western with crazy jumping and unbelievable shooting, I have Sabata.

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? A guy with a whip was named Calico. You don't want to pet him though.
• Beautiful landscapes? The temple by the water in Hong Kong was pretty. It was not something I was expecting in a western.
• Any terrified horses? Probably but I do have to mention there is a scene by a creek where Dakota and Ho are talking while their horses drink in the background. One of the horses decides to lay down and roll around in the water and have a grand ole time. He stole the scene. 
• How many Ernest Borgnines? It was mainly an Italian and Chinese cast. I can't speak to any one person's further works.
• Does Lee Van Cleef have his shirt off for the last 20 minutes of the film? Yes. I will never look that good at any age. 
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, and here is the best video I can find of the score. Someone just pulled the music directly from the film so there are stray bits of dialogue and sound effects over top of it. 

Rating:

I am going to give this film 3 out of 5 tin stars. It was not terrible but not great. The two main leads have decent chemistry and there are a couple of decent laughs in it. For an actual quest for booty involving booties, it could have been way worse. 

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Year Of The Western! #26 High Plains Drifter (1973)

It is fair to say that I shouldn't judge a film by its first half until I see the second half. What may seem lazy and self-indulgent at the start can suddenly snap into crystal clear focus and become wickedly purposeful once all of the cards are on the table.

I wasn't feeling High Plains Drifter at the start. Once it was over, I was consumed by it completely.

I normally will tell people to watch the film before I get to far into the plot as I don't want to ruin the experience of discovery that I had watching the film fresh. If you have any inkling at all about wanting to see this film, do not read any further and go watch High Plains Drifter. It is available on HBO Go as of this writing and it is $2.99 to rent on Amazon, Vudu, and Youtube. It will be 3 dollars well spent. 

So let's talk a long ride into a small town and see what the hell is going on in High Plains Drifter.

Film #26 High Plains Drifter (1973)

This is one of the worst put together trailers I have ever seen, but I do appreciate the 'Aim to see it!' at the end.

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

The film starts off with The Stranger (Clint Eastwood) riding into the town of Lago. It is a small town that appears to be growing rather quickly with freshly built buildings and some currently being built that are lining the dirt and sand covered main road. As the Stranger rides through town, seemingly everyone is suspiciously staring at him. He passes them in silence. Two men with a wagon and horses start to leave, cracking a whip loudly to get the horses going. 

The Stranger gets off his horse and heads into the saloon, ordering a bottle of booze and a beer. Among the men in the bar are three hired gunslingers. For whatever reason, they do not take kindly to the Stranger drinking in the bar. When it appears that the conversation is going to turn violent, the Stranger leaves them in the saloon. He heads across the road to the barber shop for a shave. With a face full of lather, the three hired guns attempt to threaten the Stranger. He immediately shoots all three, not in self defense, as they hadn't pulled their guns yet. 

As he is heading to his horse, a local woman gets in his way on purpose to let him know what she thinks about people like him. The Stranger grabs her, drags her to the stable nearby, and rapes her. (Needless to say, the Stranger is not a good man.) He then goes and gets a room at the hotel nearby and quickly falls asleep. He dreams of three men with bull whips, whipping, striking, and strangling a man while the townspeople of Lago watch on silently. He pleads for help and no one comes forward. They dying man tells them they are all going to hell. 

The town of Lago does not want the Stranger there, but it now have a bigger problem. The three hired guns were there to protect the town from three other gunslingers that the town had hired previously. The town has a few secrets. A marshall had come to town and found out that the nearby private mine was on government property and was going to tell the proper authorities. The original hired guns whipped the marshall to death. The town then framed them for the theft of a gold ingot and got them sent to prison. Perfectly enough, their sentence is ending today. So the mayor, sheriff, and other leaders in the town decide they need to try and hire the Stranger as he is clearly good with a gun.

The Stranger is not really interested in helping them, but they tell him he can have whatever he wants. Anything? Anything at all. This sets in motion the bizarre tilt the rest of the film takes.

The Stranger does take whatever he wants. Boots, a saddle, a handful of cigars, but then he starts making bigger requests. He orders the saloon owner to buy everyone a drink. The bartender asks for payment and the sheriff tells him its on the house as the Stranger gets whatever he wants. The Stranger makes a small person named Mordecai (Billy Curtis) the new sheriff and mayor. The Stranger tells the owner of the gun store that everyone should get a new rifle as they are all a part of the local militia that he just created. He tells some local Mexican laborers to start making a large table for a feast. When they ask about where they will get the lumber, he tells them to tear down the stable that is owned by the same guy who owns the Hotel. He then tells the hotel owner to remove everyone from his establishment so the Stranger can stay there alone. The Stranger then insists on having a meal with the same woman he raped earlier (She has been trying to kill him, first with a hand gun and then with a knife). He is turning the town upside down simply because he can.

After some more chaos and cruelty (people try to kill him in his hotel room, but he is a step ahead and tosses a stick of dynamite into the room as they enter and he leaves), he ends up taking the hotel owner's wife against her will into their bedroom and rapes her too. She tells him about the marshall that the town has killed and put in an unmarked grave outside of town. She believes he is unable to rest in peace. 

The Stranger then orders that the town be painted red. Every building. He has them put up a banner that reads 'Welcome Home Boys' with big red letters, a sign for the three gunslingers when they come to town. As he heads out to see where they are currently, the Stranger paints the word 'Hell' on the sign for Lago. 

The Stranger locates the gunslingers and takes a couple of shots at them, just to let them know they are being targeted and then returns to town, knowing they will be there soon.

Soon after, everything comes to a head. The gunslingers enter the town. They start shooting the townspeople. The townspeople start shooting back. Buildings catch on fire. The blood red town is in flames with violence and death everywhere. It has become Hell. The leader of the gunslingers, Stacey (Geoffrey Lewis), seeing that his partners are dead, hears a voice in the darkness, 'Help me. Help me.' It sounds exactly like the man who he whipped to death. As the Stranger faces off with him, Stacey is yelling, 'Who are you?!' He gets no answer, the Stranger just shoots him. 

The town is in ruin, the gunslingers are dead, and the Stranger rides out of town. He passes Mordecai as he is putting a proper grave marker up for the killed marshall. When he says to the Stranger, 'I never did know your name.', the Stranger replies, 'Yes, you do.' and then rides off. 

I honestly didn't know how to get from A to B in talking about High Plains Drifter without discussing the story. Is the Stranger the marshall himself? Is he the personification of vengeance? Is he the actual Devil, sent to Lago to punish everyone for their sins? The film doesn't tell you and it is equal parts amazing and frustrating. Let me explain a little. I love that the this film doesn't give you an easy answer, because if it did give an explanation then it would take away some of the chaotic feel that the last 20 minutes or so delivers. What is frustrating is that Clint Eastwood cast his stunt double, Buddy Van Horn, as the marshall with the purposeful intent of clouding the waters of who The Stranger actually is. As Buddy Van Horn looks almost exactly like Eastwood, I did not realize that it was a different actor until after I finished the film and read about the cast and production, so that left me a little confused during the run time of the film. Wouldn't the town recognize the guy they watched get murdered in front of them? I was wondering when someone would just straight up identify the Stranger as the marshall. It is hinted that when Mordecai has a flashback to the night of the whipping, so I figured he knows who the Stranger really is and that is why he was so eager to help him. But if the Stranger isn't the marshall, how did he have a dream about the whipping and how did he know to say 'Help me' to Stacey? 

Also, if he wasn't the ghost of the marshall or the reanimated body of the marshall (ala The Crow), then his appearance in Lago is weirdly suspect. He did not enter the town to start a fight. The three idiot gunfighters picked a fight with him first. I really don't know if he would have caused much trouble by drinking his beer and getting a shave. I suppose you could argue that if he is the Devil or an agent of chaos, then trouble would always brew around him. 

Like I said, I really love the idea of the sins of the past coming back to destroy the very thing you sought to protect, and it is here two fold, with the original crime of the whipping and then framing of the original hired guns to get them sent to prison, but I feel like if it had just hammered out just a smidge more logic in the narrative, it would have been perfect. 

What I said at the top about judging a film on the first half isn't fair speaks to how I was feeling about this film until the Stranger's plan to turn Lago into Hell came into view. The first half of this just felt wrong for wrong's sake. The Stranger not saying anything until seven minutes in the film feels like Eastwood was pushing for the Man with No Name vibe again, and while it works, it didn't feel fresh. Eastwood's dialogue was also low and through his teeth, usually with a cigar clenched between them. It is the distinct Clint Eastwood snarl but since most of what he said were macho one liners, it didn't feel genuine to me. It felt like Eastwood playing Eastwood in a film that he directed and produced. When the Stranger shoots the men first before they draw shows you that he doesn't really care about the law and that makes him morally gray, when he rapes the woman immediately after, it just piles on that he is a bad guy, and it felt gratuitous. Once you figure out that he is there to punish the entire town in whatever way he sees fit, his actions make more sense (I get they were going for the point that the woman watched without action as a man was whipped to death in front of her, so that her being violated without no one really caring makes some narrative sense, but I am sure there was a better way of handling that). The wife of the hotel owner says to the Stranger, '"I knew you were cruel but I didn't know how far you could go." He calmly states, "Well you still don't." And we don't either until the very end of the film. In hindsight, the end does support the beginning, thankfully so, or else this would have just been a cruel film with nowhere to go but down.

Much like the dark weirdness of Django Kill ...If You Live, Shoot!, High Plains Drifter keeps bending your expectation of what is going to happen next until it breaks. This is not a bad thing. The last third of both films is so off the rails from how you expect a western would end that it forces you to stop thinking and just dive into the deep end of the madness until the credits roll and then allow yourself to come up for air and sanity. 

This film also reminds me of Day of Anger in the way that the main character of the story isn't a good person and they are able to use their position to get what they want out of a town and don't care who they destroy along the way. It makes me wonder how Lee Van Cleef would have played The Stranger and I kind of wish I could have seen him play a character so purely chaotic and dark. Lee Van Cleef as the Western Devil? How did this not happen? 

Clint Eastwood directed this film and you can see here that he already had a confidence in his ability to tell a story. There are some wonderfully long tracking shots of him riding through Lago and his handling of the whipping death of the marshall is so matter of fact that it makes the whole thing more gruesome. The close ups on individual townspeople's faces as that is going on tells a number of stories with no words. The night time finale with the buildings on fire and him in the foreground do make the whole town feel and look like it went to Hell. Having this dark twisted story take place along a bright blue lake with cloud dotted skies just makes what's going on feel worse. How can such terrible things go on in a place that looks this damn beautiful? This is God's country, right? Eastwood did a good job of presenting what at first looked like a run of the mill western and then twisting it into a nightmare. 

The score by Dee Barton is hypnotizing. It feels like an Ennio Morricone score went to Hell along with the town of Lago. It is darkly beautiful with its surface level angelic strings and chimes but a haunting harmonica joins it along with a rising drumbeat that gives the whole piece a harder edge. It is a really great score that compliments the film very well.

As you can tell, I am conflicted on some of the story beats and decisions made in High Plains Drifter, but I am not conflicted in saying that this was a really interesting film that I did not see coming. The title tells you nothing about what you are getting into and I am glad for that. Had I even the slightest idea of what this film was about, I don't think I would have been as floored as I was in the last twenty minutes. A town literally painted red waiting for their past sins to return.  

High Plains Drifter is a hell of a thing. 

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? Clint Eastwood is billed as The Stranger. Can't get any more weird and badass than that. 
• Beautiful landscapes? The lake, Mono Lake, is pretty but I wouldn't recommend drinking the water.
• Any terrified horses? One of the returning gunslingers shoots a horse. Hopefully not for real.
• How many Ernest Borgnines? Robert Donner played the preacher in this film. He was Exidor on Mork & Mindy.
• Any buildings catch on fire? A lot on screen and the rest were burned down as soon as production wrapped.
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No, but here is the score from the beginning of the film. So good. 

Rating:

I am going to give the High Plains Drifter 4.5 out of 5 tin stars. The last third of the film really brings it all together but the first part felt like the Clint Eastwood Gravely One Liner Show (with some rape), but when the plan becomes clear, this film elevates to another level. Very recommended!

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