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| Images courtesy of Arrow Films |
Back in 2021, continuing their unveiling of curated boxed
sets of Italian crime films beginning with the poliziotteschi box Years of
Lead, Arrow Video released a boxed set of four spaghetti western films
ranging from 1966 to 1970 themed around Vengeance Trails. Circa 2023, the good folks at Arrow have
cooked up another secondary installment in the series of Italian western film
collections, this time focused on the theme of Blood Money.
As with their previous volume, Blood Money
presents all four films in 2K restorations from the original 35mm camera
negatives in both Italian or English dubbed options, a collectible booklet,
limited edition poster and a wealth of extras and commentaries per each
film. Encompassing four films centered
on gunslinging heists carried out by morally dubious antiheroes directed by
Romolo Guerriri, Giovanni Fargo, Giuliano Carnimeo and Cesare Canevari, the box
is similarly structured to Vengeance Trails in terms of thematic
progression, time and how the films themselves started to get looser with the
rules as they went on.
Given just how many spaghetti westerns the Italian film
industry churned out between the 1960s and 1970s, it’s a good bet we will see
further volumes from Arrow Video of these curated boxed sets. While the company still occasionally does
standalone releases for particular westerns in English or Italian, more often
than not we’re probably (hopefully) going to receive more boxed sets that serve
as an educational benchmark for anyone interested in the wild, wild west action
thriller.
More importantly, these films
represent something of a subgenre within the spaghetti western itself, zeroing
in on themes and characters where the moral centers are somewhat vague. In any case, let us take a look at this
extensive collectible set of Blood Money where the hands of the good and
bad guys will get dirtied or bloodied up over the almighty dollar.
$10,000 Blood Money (1967)
After Sergio Corbucci and actor Franco Nero collaborated to
cement one of the most important breakthrough contemporary spaghetti westerns
of all time with Django, a series of unauthorized sequels unconnected to
the original film came out in its wake.
Among them was Ten Thousand Dollars for a Massacre or Guns of
Violence or as it is commonly known $10,000 Blood Money, best
remembered for prominently featuring Gianni Garko in the role of the titular
Django just one year before cementing his own iconic spaghetti western alternative
antihero Sartana in If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death. While some may argue Garko’s screen presence
was put to better use in the Sartana film series, it’s nevertheless interesting
seeing him briefly donning the rough and ragged boots, holster and hat of the Django
character, official or not.
Opening with Django (Gianni Garko) on a beach watching the
waves hit the shore, we find out he’s hot on the tail of bandit Manuel Vasquez
(Claudio Camaso) who we witness ruthlessly massacring an entire village of
families including women and children. After
kidnapping a young girl named Dolores (Adriana Ambesi), a bounty is put on his
head by the girl’s rich rancher father Mendoza (Frank Little) who enlists
Django to perform the hunt. However,
because the bounty number is too low Django comfortably switches sides and for
awhile joins forces with the scheming bandit Manuel hoping to split a gold heist. For awhile we’re not sure who to root for
until a tragic and violent betrayal sets Django on a bitter path of vengeance,
all the while those still left fight like hyenas for scraps of the remnants of
gold even if it could cost them their lives.
While Garko doesn’t quite have the same swagger as Franco
Nero’s take on Django had, one of the reasons the film works as well as
it does is it has a notably strong sociopathic villain who, as we learn over
time, isn’t all that different from the film’s supposed protagonist. Starting out on something of a somber note
forecasting doom stemming from Nora Orlandi’s (Kill Bill Vol. 2) score and
The Tough Ones cinematographer Federico Zanni’s Techniscope photography
of windy ghost towns and a lonely gold mine suggests we’re in a God forsaken
land or for others a “more wretched hive of scum and villainy”. Perhaps the biggest shock to viewers concerning
this film’s Django is how readily he joins forces with Manuel despite
knowing the extent of his murderousness and deceiving.
Vengeance is Mine (1967)
Incidentally that same year actors Gianni Garko and Claudio Camaso
who played the two main characters of $10,000 Blood Money literally
walked off of that film’s set onto the next one for Giovanni Fago’s directorial
debut film Vengeance is Mine, a movie from the same two producers as
their previous film Mino Loy and Luciano Martino. Not to be confused with Shōhei Imamura’s 1979
Japanese crime drama of the same name, Vengeance is Mine would retain
one of the screenwriters from $10,000 Blood Money Ernesto Gastaldi as
well as bringing in the screenwriting talents of eventual giallo directing
maestro Sergio Martino. One the
one hand, it’s another Gianni Garko vs Claudio Camaso western action vehicle,
on the other hand it makes the two leads half-brothers in a film full of
childhood flashbacks that help to establish how their mutual pasts eventually
catch up to their present.
Johnny Forest (Gianni Garko) is a bounty hunter who kills
and delivers the bodies of four criminals to the local sheriff. Upon depositing the bodies, he catches a
glimpse of the latest wanted poster which turns out to be his half-brother
Clint (Claudio Camaso) who unforgettably murdered their father and pinned the
crime on Johnny who took the fall with ten years in prison. With a bounty on his head now well worth six
grand, Johnny is perfectly alright with tracking down and apprehending his
conniving half-brother who is enlisted in the Confederacy riding alongside
renegade outlaws. The question becomes
will Johnny stick to his guns in lawfully bringing his half-brother in or will
he simply just take him and his brigade out while he has the chance? Moreover, Clint is on the run from another
former partner and he agrees to surrender to his brother Johnny as long as it
keeps him from being shot to death.
A bit more heady and time-jumping about than the previous
film in the set with Garko and Camaso again on opposite ends though this time by
contested blood relations, Vengeance is Mine aka For One Hundred
Thousand Dollars for a Killing or in some cases Per Killing is
another solid spaghetti western entry in the Blood Money boxed set and
further proof of the then-rising star power of Gianni Garko and Claudio
Camaso. Both great at playing troubled
mercenaries with dark violent pasts, exuding a measure of menace while also
both being hyenas on hard unforgiving desert lands. Almost playing like part deux of $10,000
Blood Money, the film reunites the film with both cinematographer Federico
Zanni who does some wild stuff with filters in the flashback scenes and
composer Nora Orlandi serving over the suitably bleak and somber score. All in all, a good follow up and a solid
debut from a first-time director further exploiting the screen talents of Garko
and Camaso who play excellently off each other.
Find a Place to Die (1968)
Giuliano Carnimeo, the eventual director of not one, not two
but four of the Sartana films including the one that briefly replaced
Gianni Garko with giallo favorite George Hilton, was no stranger to the
spaghetti western having made several shining examples of the subgenre. A remake of the 1954 English language western
Garden of Evil which starred Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward and Richard
Widmark, it was another integral entry in the onslaught of spaghetti western output. But what was startling in his filmography and
in the arrangement of films in Arrow Video’s Blood Money box is how
quickly his 1968 film Find a Place to Die shifted gears and pushed a gunslinging
female cowgirl to the forefront, turning genre expectations on their head while
still making her vulnerable and effeminate.
It also ushers in supporting characters with mercurial, morally dubious
pasts who now have some measure of hope of redeeming themselves.
After bandits besiege a prospective miner named Paul Martin
(Piero Lulli) and his wife Lisa (Pascale Petit) who fend off the invaders at
gunpoint, Paul hurls explosives at the bandits which kill them but causes a
cave in that traps Paul underneath hard and heavy rock from the mine. Alone with only herself to rely on, she seeks
out five men including a disgraced Confederate soldier named Joe Collins
(Jeffrey Hunter) to help her rescue her husband from certain death offering
portions of their goldmine in return for their help. But not long after accepting the mission and
bumping into a mysterious reverend (Aldolfo Lastretti from Spasmo) and
after some of the hornier men try making moves on the woman as she’s bathing nude
in the river, soon this ragtag band of misfits find themselves turning on each
other. Moreover, the bandit Chato who
initially led the raid against the Martins hasn’t completely gone away just
yet.
An action thriller that sadly was among the last films of
Jeffrey Hunter including the actor managing the distribution rights in the US
before an explosive stunt gone awry paralyzed and muted him followed by a hard
fall which claimed his life, the film represents director Giuliano Carnimeo swinging
another home run in a subgenre he clearly was a master of. Co-directed by producer Hugo Fregonese, the
film is a sexy western thriller with many twists and turns up its sleeve as
what the direction we think the film is going in dramatically changes for us
and the surviving characters.
As with the original, the film has a Mexican cantina singer
(originally played by Rita Moreno now played by Daniela Giordano as Juanita)
who performs for a band of depressed reprobates in an open outdoor bar by a
half-attended ghost town. While most of
the rest of the film is dominated by gunfire, its moments like these musical
passages that give the film a unique personality. In Carnimeo’s canon it represents a bit of a
detour for him with the saga being led by a woman who remains vulnerable but
also quick witted and finally a formidable ally.
Matalo! (Kill Him)(1970)
In among the most spacey and psychedelic freak outs attempted
in a film that coincides with Arrow Video’s Vengeance Trails box with
the last film in that set And God Said to Cain being something of a
horror western, eventual The Gestapo’s Last Orgy director Cesare
Canevari’s Matalo! (Kill Him) is a handful helping of the spaghetti
western tripping out on mescaline or hallucinogens. Far more morally adrift than the other
entries in the Blood Money box that came before it and way more woozy
doozy, drifting in and out of a drugged deep sleep into and out of fantasy and
reality, it’s a spaghetti western on acid that would or would not debatably
forecast the surreal western horrors to be unleashed on the moviegoing public
the same year with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo. If the swinging surreal 60s with kaleidoscopic
colors replete with its experimental rock and roll music decided to pick up a
camera, they might film this.
In a
small town, Bart (Corrado Pani) is about to be hanged when a gang of Mexican
bandits storm the execution killing everyone within an earshot and freeing him
but not before repaying them by killing all the bandits who rescued him and
taking their guns and money. Meeting up
with two of his old cronies Theo (Antoinio Salines) and Phil (Luis Dávila),
they hatch a plan to ambush a stagecoach carrying gold. It’s a success but Bart is wounded and they
take refuge back in the town they massacred, not knowing two approaching
travelers are headed for the town including a stranger simply known as Ray (Lou
Castel) who at first is mercilessly tortured by the bandits but then starts to
reveal himself as the man determined to kill them all.
Aggressively
experimental and stripped down with wild swooping and rotating camera work by
Julio Ortas and a spacey progressive rock score by Mario Migliardi, Matalo!
(Kill Him) is widely considered to be the most wholly original spaghetti
western film ever produced in Italy.
From its emphasis on psychologically profiling the characters as well as
playing fast and loose with the narrative structure and our alliances with the
characters, the film feels at times like a Nicolas Winding Refn film for its
preference on silences and elongated stares producing a heightened reality rather
than a straightforward piece of storytelling.
The film also is worth noting in that the film’s main threat to the trio
of bandits, Ray, is only armed with a boomerang which he does manage to use
effectively against his enemies.
Ultimately
rounding out the Blood Money set, it makes a worthy companion piece to Arrow
Video’s previously released Vengeance Trails box and a continuation of
their impetus to port over to the United Kingdom and United States Italian
westerns that are hard to find or otherwise remain unknown without their
efforts. If you are new to spaghetti westerns
and aren’t sure of where to dive in, these are a good starting point. If you’re more than familiar and eager to see
more, Arrow Video’s second volume of Italian Western classics will not
disappoint you and further points to the boutique label as an educational,
important preservative force in world film history.
--Andrew Kotwicki
