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Speaker 6: Us It's West Story Coming Back covers as cost to.
Speaker 7: Us who.
Speaker 8: Welcome to the project Both. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 8: joining once again as mister of Spencer Parsons.
Speaker 4: Hello.
Speaker 8: Also back in the booth is mister Joe odbur Hello,
Speaker 8: how's it going? We are kicking off a month discussing
Speaker 8: Westerns with a look at Luccio Fulci's Massacre Time, also
Speaker 8: known as Le Culte cantarano, Les morte ifeu tiempo de
Speaker 8: massacre as in the Colt Singh's Death Massacre Time, also
Speaker 8: known as The Brute and the Beast. The film stars
Speaker 8: Franco Neiro hot Off of Django as Tom Corbett. He's
Speaker 8: a prospector who gets summoned to come home. The mystery
Speaker 8: is who summoned him. Was it his drunk brother Jeff
Speaker 8: played by George Hilton, Was it his surgate mother Mercedes,
Speaker 8: Was it the patriarch of the Carrodine family, or how
Speaker 8: about the man whose name is on every building in
Speaker 8: town in Laramie, mister Scott. Laramie is besieged by mister
Speaker 8: Scott and his men, including Scott's son Junior, played by
Speaker 8: Nino Questel Nuelvo, a dandy in a white suit who
Speaker 8: loves to use a whip, and oh boy, is he fun.
Speaker 8: We will be spoiling Mastacre Times, mystery, and everything else
Speaker 8: about the film as we discuss it. So if you
Speaker 8: don't want anything ruin, turn off the podcast and come
Speaker 8: back after you've seen it. You will not be sorry.
Speaker 8: So Joe, when it was the first time you saw Massacre?
Speaker 3: Time?
Speaker 8: And what did you think?
Speaker 5: I saw for the first time in the last couple
Speaker 5: of weeks just for this show. The only Filchi Western
Speaker 5: I've seen before is for The Apocalypse, and that's when
Speaker 5: I really like that's Scott Thomas Millian as well is
Speaker 5: a really particularly good baddie in that one, and a
Speaker 5: fabio testy I think in that as well, isn't he
Speaker 5: So Yeah, first time watch for me. I'm a big
Speaker 5: filch fan, and the more films of his watch the
Speaker 5: more I enjoy, the more you get to appreciate his
Speaker 5: shortcoms as well as what is excellent at and I
Speaker 5: think both are really in evidence here, So great one
Speaker 5: to watch, very interesting and Spencer, how about yourself?
Speaker 4: This is my first time watching and first full Chi western.
Speaker 4: I'm a big fan of the horror but had not
Speaker 4: seen any of the Westerns before and I really love
Speaker 4: this movie. I'm really excited to talk about it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this was the first time watch for me as well.
Speaker 8: It was one of those where I don't even know
Speaker 8: how it came on my radar. I might have been
Speaker 8: doing a search as far as the best spaghetti westerns.
Speaker 8: Just wanted to get back and do some more Western talk.
Speaker 8: And I was not disappointed by this movie whatsoever. I
Speaker 8: can't say that I've seen a ton of Fulcy films.
Speaker 8: I'm pretty sure I have seen Zombie, and I don't
Speaker 8: know what others of his I've seen. Just for some reason,
Speaker 8: I just always associate him with being very trashy, even
Speaker 8: though I don't know if he is. Necessarily.
Speaker 5: I think that's not entirely unfair.
Speaker 4: This is part of what we love about mister Fultchi.
Speaker 4: The trashiness is that it's a feature, not a bug.
Speaker 8: I don't find this film to be very trashy at all.
Speaker 7: I love it.
Speaker 8: This one's not very trashy, no no, And I love
Speaker 8: the violence. Apparently it was controversial at the time because Lens,
Speaker 8: But man, I'm here for it from the very beginning
Speaker 8: where you have this kind of most dangerous game type
Speaker 8: of thing where they release a peasant and have him
Speaker 8: torn apart by dogs. Okay, yeah, I'm here for it.
Speaker 8: So immediately we're getting some class struggle here and I'm yeah,
Speaker 8: I love it. And we also get introduced to Nino
Speaker 8: Castel Nuolvo as Junior, and I love his performance and
Speaker 8: this kind of creepy grin he's got the way he
Speaker 8: cocks his head throughout most of it. He kind of
Speaker 8: has his eyes hooded, and he just has this creep
Speaker 8: factor to him. A thousand times you.
Speaker 5: Can tell why he started first seen with this guy
Speaker 5: rather than any of the other protagonists of this film.
Speaker 8: He really overshadows the person who I guess is supposed
Speaker 8: to also be the villain, which is his father, but
Speaker 8: he is so much more in charge of everything than
Speaker 8: his own dad.
Speaker 4: Well, so one of the things about this as a
Speaker 4: shift to horror is that he's at minimum extremely monstrous,
Speaker 4: if not totally a monster. I'm not the biggest fan
Speaker 4: of Westerns, to be honest. It takes a little bit
Speaker 4: of work or hearing that it's a foulcy to get
Speaker 4: me to watch a Western, but I will say that
Speaker 4: my tastes run toward the Westerns that start to include horror,
Speaker 4: because one of the things that bothers me about a
Speaker 4: lot of Westerns is the sort of narrative of righteous violence,
Speaker 4: which I just don't believe in period. I think it's
Speaker 4: a pernicious kind of mythology, and that is very has
Speaker 4: been very culturally harmful in the United States. So it's
Speaker 4: really might seem strange for me to say, oh, I'm
Speaker 4: on board with this movie where it's not so much
Speaker 4: about good and evil, it's more about bad and the badder. Obviously,
Speaker 4: there are conditions that have brought Franco Niro and George
Speaker 4: Hilton to commit the violence that they do, but they
Speaker 4: are They're really sadistic, especially George Hilton, and very quick
Speaker 4: to just knock people off in a way that is
Speaker 4: that is not righteous violence. It is the violence of
Speaker 4: the world that they inhabit. And the villain of this
Speaker 4: piece being so extreme and yet also quite conventionally good looking.
Speaker 4: I was not surprised to find out that his previous
Speaker 4: roles are nice guys. But he makes this incredible set
Speaker 4: of choices about his physicality, being introduced almost with his
Speaker 4: eyes closed, like he's passing out or something, as he's
Speaker 4: inflicting this violence on another person. And so it becomes
Speaker 4: right out of the gate, we are introduced to a
Speaker 4: monster and are heroes or at least protagonists. They're here
Speaker 4: to get the monster by the end, and even though
Speaker 4: the plot hasn't totally kicked in visually, this is totally
Speaker 4: clear the moment that Franco Niro as Tom arrives, he's
Speaker 4: here to get the monster and this is where the
Speaker 4: whole death drive of the movie is going.
Speaker 5: You don't really need a plot in this movie once
Speaker 5: my introduction comes in. The plot is this guy has
Speaker 5: to die. One of the problems I have with the film,
Speaker 5: and I did love the film, is the plot sometimes
Speaker 5: is hard to follow. Those bits I still don't understand,
Speaker 5: and it needn't be a complicated plot, but that's part
Speaker 5: of ful chain. As you'll know Spencer, he does not
Speaker 5: mind having a little hiccups in the plot here and
Speaker 5: then that is not what he's concentrating on.
Speaker 4: I think its approach to plot is actually quite similar
Speaker 4: to his approach to space, which is, like you know,
Speaker 4: in a lot of these sequences, the attention to space
Speaker 4: is just beautiful and totally clear and precise, and especially
Speaker 4: in this one because this is a more expensive movie
Speaker 4: than a lot of the Horrors that I really love,
Speaker 4: and it's interest to see him working with a larger
Speaker 4: budget because he's really able to get things exactly right.
Speaker 4: But one of the things about Fulgi is like the
Speaker 4: moment that he does not care about continuity of space anymore.
Speaker 4: You get an absurdity of spaces just jammed together, and
Speaker 4: that often will create a momentary confusion. It's a confusion
Speaker 4: actually that I really like, you know, like somebody is
Speaker 4: looking in a direction and then we cut to another
Speaker 4: shot as if they're seeing that, and then it becomes
Speaker 4: clear that they couldn't possibly be seeing what we're seeing
Speaker 4: in the shot in reverse. But the way that Fulchi
Speaker 4: orchestrates this, it's at once problematic on a basic cinematic
Speaker 4: narration level, and then also at the same time it's
Speaker 4: creating a kind of zone for disjuncture and surprise. And
Speaker 4: I don't even know. It's simply his style. I don't
Speaker 4: want to spend a lot of time talking about is
Speaker 4: this intentional or is this a method that he was
Speaker 4: really devoted to. I don't know about that, and I
Speaker 4: don't care. I really care about the effect. So there
Speaker 4: are parts of this that you can tell are beautifully intentional,
Speaker 4: if you want to go that kind of o tourist
Speaker 4: orchestration route. And then there are other parts where as
Speaker 4: you say, his faults come in, but those faults are
Speaker 4: really interesting and are genuinely part of the excitement of
Speaker 4: a full two movie.
Speaker 8: It's interesting you're talking about looking in the discontinuity of it,
Speaker 8: because so much of this film is about looking. The
Speaker 8: first time we see Nero's character being introduced, and I
Speaker 8: love how they follow the blood and the water going
Speaker 8: down all that while we've got that amazing theme song going.
Speaker 8: And then we follow the water down to the river
Speaker 8: where Nero's character is panning for gold. Tom Corport. As
Speaker 8: he's there looking at this piece of gold, the moves
Speaker 8: in and you see this guy standing behind him and
Speaker 8: looking out between two boulders, and you're just like, okay,
Speaker 8: is he about to get robbed? Is he about to
Speaker 8: get murdered? We don't know what this is. And then
Speaker 8: finally this guy shows up and Franco throws some blows.
Speaker 8: But then oh, it's this guy who used to work
Speaker 8: at the house where I lived when I was growing up,
Speaker 8: gives him this note like, hey, Carrodene wants to see you,
Speaker 8: and that becomes like a whole it's a mystery plot.
Speaker 8: I mentioned that at the beginning near it was a
Speaker 8: private eye through a lot of this. It's the whole
Speaker 8: thing of coming back home, seeing the house that he
Speaker 8: grew up in this manner of state thing just overrun
Speaker 8: Higgs coming out of the front door and there's guy
Speaker 8: chasing them out, and it just it's all decrepit. He
Speaker 8: gets accosted while he's on that front property, and it's just,
Speaker 8: don't you know the rules? This is mister Scott's I
Speaker 8: don't even know who mister Scott is. So you have
Speaker 8: to go through and you are finding out with Nero
Speaker 8: what's happening. And this big reveal later on in the movie,
Speaker 8: which is very much like a mystery plot. So I
Speaker 8: love this whole idea of the looking the other thing.
Speaker 8: Real quick I want to say, is I love when
Speaker 8: this guy that's delivering the message, when neros i'll go
Speaker 8: with you or come with me kind of thing, gus
Speaker 8: no way, and he runs away. It looks like Napoleon Dynamite,
Speaker 8: looks like the way that John Heater runs in that role.
Speaker 8: And he just runs behind a little hill and just
Speaker 8: he disappears, and I know he's just still sitting there,
Speaker 8: but it's okay, he's out of sight now, out of
Speaker 8: mind of this picture. And I just that made me
Speaker 8: laugh so hard, and rewind it three times to watch it.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I was reminded of, and
Speaker 4: this is a real sublime to the ridiculous kind of association,
Speaker 4: was Hal Need Him's The Villain, which is an extremely
Speaker 4: strange attempt to join together looney Tunes with the Western
Speaker 4: in live action. And I like how Nita movies, but
Speaker 4: he's an extremely lazy director, and in order to bring
Speaker 4: together looney Tunes with Westerns, you need more rigor to
Speaker 4: pull it off. So it's a very strange movie. But
Speaker 4: the reason why I made that association is so much
Speaker 4: of the violence here. It's really interesting. It's at once
Speaker 4: very extreme and cruel and also cartoonish. Frequently we have
Speaker 4: people thrown through the air in ridiculous ways. We have
Speaker 4: shots that will, you know, cause people to fly across
Speaker 4: the screen, and we have moments like this of running away.
Speaker 4: Like you mentioned, it's kind of like Napoleon dynamite or something.
Speaker 4: The cruelty plus the cartoonish quality create a really intense
Speaker 4: absurdity to the violence that can be funny in one
Speaker 4: moment and then really nasty in another. And the big
Speaker 4: set piece of the movie, which frankly should be an
Speaker 4: absolute classic. I'm going to start teaching this sequence in
Speaker 4: my classes. To me, it's up there with with like
Speaker 4: the Psycho shower scene or the Odessa step sequence as
Speaker 4: like just intense pure cinema. The big sequence in the
Speaker 4: middle where we get into the bullwhip violence that is
Speaker 4: just so beautifully staged shot to shot and reaction to reaction,
Speaker 4: and the way that all the crowd is gathered around
Speaker 4: and everything, you know, this afternoon for a bunch of
Speaker 4: rich people who end up watching somebody get almost whipped
Speaker 4: to death, and it includes both Looney Tunes moments and
Speaker 4: the most sadistic violence in the entire movie. And the
Speaker 4: way that it comes together, the way that it's choreographed, framed,
Speaker 4: and edited, is so masterful. Really like probably my favorite
Speaker 4: sequence in any full two movie that I've seen before,
Speaker 4: and I do. I love the whole films so much.
Speaker 4: House by the Cemetery, like, let me watch it again,
Speaker 4: but this is really at this whole other level where
Speaker 4: I start to go, oh right, yeah, Fullchi for whatever
Speaker 4: the weird faults, whatever the strange preoccupations that he has
Speaker 4: that can make the movies odd and messed up and
Speaker 4: plotless at the same time. There's a total mastery of
Speaker 4: cinema that comes out in the films where who cares
Speaker 4: about if it all adds up? When this is something
Speaker 4: that's delivered to us And I'll throw it out that
Speaker 4: I am obsessed with Psycho and one of the things
Speaker 4: that it obsesses me about. That's a movie that does
Speaker 4: not add up, and we treat it as if it does.
Speaker 4: And Hitchcock is one of the all time gread o tours,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera. But there's so much that's absurd
Speaker 4: and weird and strange disjunctures in that movie. But we've
Speaker 4: normalized Hitchcock into being the big o' tour and ful
Speaker 4: gie I think is actually with a sequence like this
Speaker 4: right up there, what.
Speaker 5: Struck me is this is the earliest folk shay film
Speaker 5: I've seen, and I think it's probably the earliest most people,
Speaker 5: the vast majority of people have seen Before this. It's
Speaker 5: all comedies and musicals, like weird jukebox musicals. This is
Speaker 5: his first I don't want to say adult film as
Speaker 5: a bit pushing it a bit, but it's really the
Speaker 5: first film that it's called violence in it and he
Speaker 5: hits the ground running with that. He's had comedy before,
Speaker 5: but this is the first one that has his later preoccupations.
Speaker 5: And you mentioned the comedy that the kind of liney
Speaker 5: tunes comedy that there's a barroom fight in the middle,
Speaker 5: which really reminded me of Terence Hill but Spencer movies almost.
Speaker 5: But it's quite jarring, just that juxtaposition with the comedy
Speaker 5: and just the nastiness of some of the film.
Speaker 8: And I think a lot of the good things about
Speaker 8: this movie that are coming through are from the screenplay,
Speaker 8: from Fernando de Leo's screenplay. And it's funny how many
Speaker 8: times we've talked about to Leo and this show. We
Speaker 8: did the Italian Connection forever ago. We just did Blood
Speaker 8: and Diamonds, I think last year of the year before
Speaker 8: and then of course gave name to a particular show
Speaker 8: that I love called Caliber nine from Outer Space.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, Yeah, it was the first film we reviewed on
Speaker 5: the podcast Caliber nin and Planned nine from out of Space.
Speaker 5: It's a director I love and a screenwriter I love
Speaker 5: as well, because he started doing a few dollars more
Speaker 5: and fist fill of dollars as well. He co wrote
Speaker 5: ended up doing quite a few Spahetti westerns, Nabajo Joe
Speaker 5: as well, I think he did. But yeah, he really
Speaker 5: made his name in the Politzi attention in the seventies,
Speaker 5: both as a writer and as a director, some amazing
Speaker 5: films right up to the eighties. Actually, I don't if
Speaker 5: you've seen Killer Contra Killers with Henry Silver, which is
Speaker 5: crazy but really worth watching. That was the lead for
Speaker 5: Ages coming out. But he also did the screenplay for
Speaker 5: Live Like a Thing Like com On Weget Diodato. That's
Speaker 5: a great one too in the seventies as well, which
Speaker 5: another cracker, but very good, very clever screenwriter as well.
Speaker 5: And you're right, the class stuff in this does separate
Speaker 5: it from a maybe a traditional Hollywood western.
Speaker 8: We've seen cattle barons, we've seen the rich and the
Speaker 8: way that they run the whole town type of thing.
Speaker 8: I guess maybe the all the Johnson's of Blazing Saddles
Speaker 8: might have something to do with Like the Scotts, there's
Speaker 8: Johnson on every business, but here it's just one person
Speaker 8: rather than all of the people having the same last name.
Speaker 8: But yeah, we've seen this type of thing before, but
Speaker 8: not this way necessarily, And I really appreciate just how
Speaker 8: run down everything is. The whole idea of him coming
Speaker 8: home and finding his brother just is now a complete drunk.
Speaker 8: And I have to say, I don't know if I
Speaker 8: have seen George Hilton in movies before. This might be
Speaker 8: my first time really seeing him, or he might have
Speaker 8: just played smaller bits and things that I don't remember.
Speaker 8: But my god, I think I am now a George
Speaker 8: Hilton fan. He is ung in this movie.
Speaker 4: Wow, No Dean Martin and Rio bravo, except that he
Speaker 4: shoots even better when he's drunk.
Speaker 8: Oh boy, Yeah, that's for sure.
Speaker 5: He's the star of one of my favorite spaghetti western
Speaker 5: which is one of the Sartana films. He came into
Speaker 5: the role late, just for one film. I think it's
Speaker 5: Santana is here, Trade your gun for a coffin. They've
Speaker 5: all got great names, but that really takes comedy quite far.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of gunplay. It's very like for a
Speaker 5: few dollars More, with a lot of the tricks and
Speaker 5: the gunplay, etc. Very fun western that one.
Speaker 4: So this fits into the sadistic world of the film,
Speaker 4: but the versus a lot of other westerns where you'll
Speaker 4: have a rich bad guy or you'll have later in
Speaker 4: the case of mckayby and Missus Miller a corporation. This
Speaker 4: is really interesting in the way that it stages this
Speaker 4: major violence set piece at this afternoon party for the
Speaker 4: rich at Scott's mansion, because it really ends up playing
Speaker 4: all of these rich people as completely depraved. The way
Speaker 4: that women with parasols gather around to watch this whipping
Speaker 4: and no one seems to have any concern about what
Speaker 4: they're watching. This is setting aside wealthy people as a
Speaker 4: depraved class and makes a lot of sense of Yes,
Speaker 4: Scott's name is all over everything in town, but it's
Speaker 4: all run down and it's all kind of shitty. And
Speaker 4: I don't know about you, but I see certain kinds
Speaker 4: of associations with current events in the way that this
Speaker 4: works out, And yeah, that scene in particular. While I
Speaker 4: don't know that it's like a full Marxist class analysis,
Speaker 4: I do think that there is something really psychologically and
Speaker 4: mythically interesting about going to the place of the wealthy
Speaker 4: and they are totally depreved. We've seen it in some
Speaker 4: other films, but it's actually a surprising move in this movie.
Speaker 5: It's supposed to be setting out of New Mexico, but
Speaker 5: it definitely feels more like the old anti Bellum South. Well,
Speaker 5: you've mentioned the obvious legacy at scott with Django and
Speaker 5: Chained as well, which we'll talk about later I think,
Speaker 5: But yeah, it felt quite European to me. This is
Speaker 5: a time and a lot of Italians and it's bid
Speaker 5: for an Italian as well as an American and international audience.
Speaker 5: Lots of Italians were moving from the South as well
Speaker 5: because of things like the mafia. This was a big thing.
Speaker 5: There was no money down there. The mafia run everything
Speaker 5: that they had to go to north to Milan, Rome, Turin,
Speaker 5: and if people went back to defend their towns were
Speaker 5: dead and local thugs were just running the show. It
Speaker 5: felt very Italian to me that aspect of it.
Speaker 8: I can pick up a one you're throwing down there, Spencer,
Speaker 8: as far as putting your name on everything this, whether
Speaker 8: it's a shithole city or not. Yeah, like what you're
Speaker 8: saying about the mafia stuff because of the especially the
Speaker 8: family that is trying to leave town and this is
Speaker 8: great and everything, but we just cannot make any money. Basically,
Speaker 8: I don't think they say it this way, but basically
Speaker 8: you're taxing us to death because you know that this
Speaker 8: whole town runs on some sort of extortion scheme, right,
Speaker 8: And it's yeah, yeah, because you don't really see like
Speaker 8: I mentioned, oh yeah, we've seen cattle barons. There's no cattle.
Speaker 8: I don't know why he is able to have that.
Speaker 8: Plus the whole trip to his compound, it's like going
Speaker 8: through like Stages of Hell kind of thing where it's like, Okay, well,
Speaker 8: there's these bad guys, you're going to have to take
Speaker 8: care of. These other bad guys we're gonna have to
Speaker 8: have you take care of. And then the whole thing
Speaker 8: of the brother of Jeff, the George Hilton character. You know,
Speaker 8: he does not want to join his brother whatsoever. He
Speaker 8: does not want to take part in this whole thing,
Speaker 8: Like he's already done with the Scotts. He doesn't want
Speaker 8: anything to do with this whole mess. But Tom is investigating,
Speaker 8: trying to find answers and all this. Ironically enough, a
Speaker 8: lot of these answers have to do with the past,
Speaker 8: with the family and what happened with that. But he's
Speaker 8: almost like this guardian angel of Tom trying to go
Speaker 8: to the Scott place, and he's there helping pick off
Speaker 8: all of these guys. And then once Nero gets close enough,
Speaker 8: Tom gets close enough, he's okay, I'll see you later.
Speaker 8: I don't want anything else to do with the rest
Speaker 8: of this. Here you go, you're at the gates of hell. Basically,
Speaker 8: go inside and I'll see you later hopefully.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he says, make sure you tell him that
Speaker 5: it wasn't me that show all these men.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'll do this for you, but you have to
Speaker 8: take the blame, which I've never heard in a spaghetti
Speaker 8: western ever. Nobody can cares about who murders who, but
Speaker 8: this time it's very important. I'm not the one. I
Speaker 8: didn't pull this trigger.
Speaker 4: I love it, and I love the way that again
Speaker 4: they just go in and they're gonna kill all these dudes,
Speaker 4: no question, not tricking, not leaving them wounded. I'm just
Speaker 4: gonna kill them all. And then that's clearly the journey
Speaker 4: that we're on to the end of the film, as
Speaker 4: our heroes are gonna go into the bad place and
Speaker 4: they're gonna kill everybody.
Speaker 8: And even this thing with the family leaving, the way
Speaker 8: that he makes them stay is you don't have any
Speaker 8: dead that are buried here, So what does the Sun do.
Speaker 8: What does Junior do? He kills somebody, just cold blooded,
Speaker 8: right there in the middle of the street. Now you
Speaker 8: have a reason to stay. And meanwhile, you've got for
Speaker 8: me one of the most interesting characters, which is the
Speaker 8: Chinese guy who seems to have all the jobs in town.
Speaker 8: He is every job yet he's the blacksmith, he's the undertaker,
Speaker 8: he plays piano in the bar. Yes, always looking for money.
Speaker 5: And remember seeing this character before, and it may be
Speaker 5: in a spaghetti western that this is a stock character.
Speaker 5: It's the same guy every time one does all the
Speaker 5: work in time. Very a very cynical, very spaghetti Western
Speaker 5: aspect to this. Definitely.
Speaker 8: What's interesting too that he's a marked as an outsider
Speaker 8: because he's Asian. Probably Chinese, probably came in with the railroad,
Speaker 8: if you're going to give this character a backstory in
Speaker 8: my version, So I watched this. It was so strange.
Speaker 8: I watched this in an Italian dub. I have never
Speaker 8: seen a spaghetti western just dubbed in Italian. I know
Speaker 8: that there are English dubs of this out there, but yeah,
Speaker 8: him quoting Confucius and stuff just in Italian just felt
Speaker 8: very strange to me. While he's doing that and always
Speaker 8: hand out looking for money even if it comes. Hey,
Speaker 8: I helped protect you guys in that big barroom fight
Speaker 8: because I was using my pipe as a blow dart exactly.
Speaker 4: I mean, he wants money and he's saving up for
Speaker 4: his old age.
Speaker 8: I love that gag too, where he's he ducks back
Speaker 8: behind a corner and comes out and he's wearing that
Speaker 8: raggedy tuxedo because now he's the undertaker.
Speaker 4: Not a sensitively drawn character, but really fun and the
Speaker 4: movie kind of loves him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it'd be nice to see him have a kind
Speaker 5: of payoff at the end of the film.
Speaker 8: But yeah, it wasn't happen the new mayor of the town.
Speaker 5: I watched the English dub at the I think the
Speaker 5: original English dub, and it's it's not great, to be honest.
Speaker 5: And in fact, I think when AIP bought it for
Speaker 5: American release they re dubbed it, which I haven't seen.
Speaker 5: I'd love to see if that one's any better. So
Speaker 5: there's in fact, there's three different three different dubs of this,
Speaker 5: but like all the TWI movies of this and later generations,
Speaker 5: all the dialogue is put in afterwards. Just I think
Speaker 5: it just makes it cheaper just to film it, you know,
Speaker 5: without with a dialogue put that in afterwards. Very odd
Speaker 5: to hear dubbed by some of the because equation. Into
Speaker 5: his career he always dumped himself in English, even though
Speaker 5: he's English always that great, but it's usually always Frank
Speaker 5: Nero's voice, you hear now.
Speaker 8: I was wondering if it was Nero going to be
Speaker 8: dubbing himself, So that's interesting that he didn't do that
Speaker 8: for this movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I kin'd of remember which when he started off doing that,
Speaker 5: and may have been Street Law, the Lenso Castellari film.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the sound in this movie is really quite good,
Speaker 4: really atmospheric, and the music is aggressive, and I love
Speaker 4: how aggressive it is because it's like again, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of back to the very simple mythic qualities of
Speaker 4: our rather ramshackle plot. The music is there to like
Speaker 4: continually put you into the right kind of space for
Speaker 4: understanding the motivations and the next move of the characters.
Speaker 4: Even and especially at some of the points where things
Speaker 4: are not fully coming together, the music will I'll punch
Speaker 4: in and punch through and I really appreciate that. I mean,
Speaker 4: if this is the thing, there are a lot of
Speaker 4: conventions about use of music in cinema, and especially since
Speaker 4: teaching a film school and I'm in a film school environment,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of a kind of unsubtle emphasis on
Speaker 4: subtlety with regard to music. How much you really should
Speaker 4: have and how much is like leading the audience and
Speaker 4: all this kind of stuff, And that is obviously an
Speaker 4: issue with certain kinds of stories, you know, But this
Speaker 4: is the kind of story where it is really right
Speaker 4: for the storytelling, and it's really satisfying for the music
Speaker 4: to come in and like dominate so much, and it
Speaker 4: makes me want to see movies that do that. Now.
Speaker 4: We have a lot of movies with wall to wall music,
Speaker 4: and especially I'm very tired of horror music for just
Speaker 4: being like very scaredy the whole time. I feel like
Speaker 4: Count Floyd is the is like running the music session
Speaker 4: for so many horror films. So we do have a
Speaker 4: tradition of this right now, of being pretty pushy. But
Speaker 4: this is pushy in a really exciting and epic and
Speaker 4: operatic way that that I really appreciated and that I
Speaker 4: hope to see. I want there to be this kind
Speaker 4: of I want there to be this Italian Western influence
Speaker 4: on contemporary cinema.
Speaker 8: Well, there kind of is, isn't there? Via Quentin Tarantino
Speaker 8: there is us takes the songs whenever he possibly can.
Speaker 8: I'm surprised he didn't use I'll come back Home some
Speaker 8: Day for Django Unchained or something.
Speaker 4: That's absolutely true with Tarantino. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: he's still like he's more I'll put it this way,
Speaker 4: he's more of an este than full ty, and so
Speaker 4: the choices of how to use the music have quite
Speaker 4: often more of a meta quality, you know, especially all
Speaker 4: the music cues taken from other movies in in like
Speaker 4: the kill Bill films, there's a commentary that's from outside
Speaker 4: of the movie at the same time, which, of course
Speaker 4: this is what that's in his dialogue, that's in his
Speaker 4: whole medie. But so Tarantino will take this sort of technique,
Speaker 4: but the way that it goes is not like this
Speaker 4: kind of pure and direct connection with story and character
Speaker 4: that I think for Yeah.
Speaker 5: There's no irony in this, really, there's no distance. Yeah,
Speaker 5: this is just I'm trying to immediately connect with the
Speaker 5: audience and make it easier for them to understand maybe
Speaker 5: they've been talking to your meat in the cinema, but
Speaker 5: boom music comes in. This is a bit you have
Speaker 5: to pay attention to.
Speaker 4: I'm a fan of irony. I just want to throw
Speaker 4: down that this non ironic approach is also something. I
Speaker 4: want to hear more of it.
Speaker 5: It's not a composite, I know, really, Lalogry, you know
Speaker 5: there's no Marconi. Obviously you meet a lot of speaekto
Speaker 5: Essnce just so distinctive as well.
Speaker 8: I heard a lot of shit about the soundtrack. There's
Speaker 8: nothing wrong with this. And there are moments in the
Speaker 8: opening song, which apparently Fulche wrote the lyrics for, which
Speaker 8: is great. He was a songwriter as well as all
Speaker 8: the other things that he did. Song has some big
Speaker 8: heights to it. It really pushes hard. It doesn't have
Speaker 8: the operatic chorus that somebody like a Marcone would use.
Speaker 8: But I love the theme and I love how the
Speaker 8: theme just keeps coming back in different ways throughout the
Speaker 8: rest of this movie. And there are times where, speaking
Speaker 8: of the atmospherics, there's no music. Music is just more
Speaker 8: there for theme and therefore just atmosphere of the different
Speaker 8: chords being played. And I also appreciate just how important
Speaker 8: music is to this film, and we see so much
Speaker 8: diegetic music in this. We've got the little kid playing
Speaker 8: the harmonica in the street, and it always makes me
Speaker 8: laugh when you hear an instrument and then you cut
Speaker 8: to the person that's playing it, like when Chao Yun
Speaker 8: fato the door in the Killer and he's got the
Speaker 8: harmonica in his mouth. But you've got that, You've got
Speaker 8: I mentioned the Chinese guy who is playing piano in
Speaker 8: the bar, and then you have that incredible organ scene.
Speaker 4: Wow, that is wild.
Speaker 8: So that is Junior playing the organ, and again he's
Speaker 8: got his head cocked, that kind of weird way that
Speaker 8: he cocks his head and looks sideways, doesn't sit almost
Speaker 8: oh yeah. And the way that he interacts with his dad,
Speaker 8: and the way that he's okay, yeah, let's finish this
Speaker 8: up together and almost forces his dad to play a
Speaker 8: duet with him.
Speaker 5: It's very odd.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's so incestuous, and we definitely need to talk
Speaker 8: about that.
Speaker 4: One of the things that this aggressive quality and music
Speaker 4: does as well is that when it goes out, I
Speaker 4: hear every bird. It's not a very thick sound design.
Speaker 4: It's usually only a track or two of atmospherics, but
Speaker 4: my attention is drawn to just by juxtaposition to the
Speaker 4: sounds of the world. And then I don't know if
Speaker 4: you guys notice this. It's not that the punching noises
Speaker 4: are so different in this movie from another spaghetti westerns,
Speaker 4: but the punches have this like very high pitch that
Speaker 4: then matches to my ear quite a bit with the
Speaker 4: bullwhip sound. There's a continuity to the fists and the
Speaker 4: bullwhip that I find interesting because when they're punching each other,
Speaker 4: these are very high pitched, high frequency sounds that don't
Speaker 4: quite land as real and heavy, and that maybe also
Speaker 4: contribute to the slightly cartoonish quality of a lot of
Speaker 4: the violence. But then when the bullwhip has a similar
Speaker 4: kind of high pitch to it, there's a sort of
Speaker 4: unity within this violence that I find really interesting.
Speaker 5: In the sound design, yeah, I wondered if it was
Speaker 5: just the same sund effect.
Speaker 8: Well, these gun sound effects are definitely from more of
Speaker 8: the Italian catalog. I had heard that Leone didn't really
Speaker 8: care for hearing the same sound effects as all the
Speaker 8: American westerns, so he had new ones created, and I
Speaker 8: don't know, this is close to some of his stuff,
Speaker 8: and these gunshots sound so similar to some of the
Speaker 8: ones I've heard in other spaghetti westerns.
Speaker 4: That stuff might have all gone into a sound library
Speaker 4: for Yeah, you get the new sound effects from Leoni,
Speaker 4: and then everybody uses them after that. It's even in
Speaker 4: the United States. It's actually weird and remarkable when a
Speaker 4: director likes Scorsese will make entirely new sound effects for
Speaker 4: Raging Bull and then destroy them afterwards so that nobody
Speaker 4: else could use them.
Speaker 8: I was stuck with the sound editor recently and I
Speaker 8: was just like, if you could remove one sound from
Speaker 8: all sound effect libraries, what would it be? And he's
Speaker 8: just like, I'm tired of the Wilhelm. I'm done with it. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 8: what do you guys think of the Mexican guy who
Speaker 8: seems to be following around Tom and is a protector
Speaker 8: for him? And that was one area where I was
Speaker 8: a little confused at first. I think I might have
Speaker 8: it figured out, but what did you think of that?
Speaker 5: I got the impression that was a bit of plot
Speaker 5: out of this bit, because it looks like he is
Speaker 5: working directly for mister Scott rather than or so he's
Speaker 5: got a slightly different agenda than JR. Does Junior and
Speaker 5: his thugs as well, but it's never really made clear,
Speaker 5: and there's a very odd scene near the end where
Speaker 5: he is the one that's crucified, right that we have
Speaker 5: no idea why really we have to just infair that.
Speaker 4: My inference was ultimately yeah, because it big, okay, big
Speaker 4: plot reveal here that Tom is actually one of Scott's sons,
Speaker 4: that that is a late breaking room, and so that
Speaker 4: to me made sense of this character working directly for
Speaker 4: Scott but also being a little bit watchful and protective
Speaker 4: and then getting crucified because we're not going to necessarily
Speaker 4: protect this kid anymore.
Speaker 5: I think that's it. But he doesn't really do all
Speaker 5: lot much except stand in the background look threatening and
Speaker 5: everyone moves heights, which I think kind of like that's
Speaker 5: I was a I deal with that chdacts on these phones.
Speaker 8: Well, it's nice that we have another person of color
Speaker 8: in this movie. This feels like more of a Western
Speaker 8: town because not only do we have now the Asian character,
Speaker 8: this kind of Latino gentleman, but there's even a black
Speaker 8: guy in the background a few times where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 8: this is nice and they don't necessarily make a big
Speaker 8: deal of oh that Mexican guy, he's not to be
Speaker 8: trusted or anything. But also, like you said, he gets
Speaker 8: crucified at the end, and I know fulkch she's a
Speaker 8: fan of crucifixion scenes as well. I always found that
Speaker 8: a little too Roman and myself.
Speaker 4: Other background characters, there's that friend, maybe servant or catamite, Yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe lover of Juniors who's in the background. And definitely
Speaker 4: there are certain things about Junior, like from the word
Speaker 4: go there may be a little queer coded for a villain,
Speaker 4: not uncommon at this particular period. But then you've got
Speaker 4: this watchful, young blonde guy who helps him out at
Speaker 4: a few places, who's always there for a reaction shot
Speaker 4: of really enjoying the sadism, really wanting to see Junior
Speaker 4: meet out to violence on others. So the attention across
Speaker 4: the board to background characters who have no lines but
Speaker 4: give so much texture and meaning to the world is
Speaker 4: not that Foolgie's anything like the only one doing this,
Speaker 4: but really exciting to see. And right now, in the
Speaker 4: way that American films are getting made, there's just I
Speaker 4: know from experience that there's so much focus on a
Speaker 4: budget that if a character doesn't speak, You're only getting
Speaker 4: an extra, and you don't have background characters who enrich
Speaker 4: the world that much unless you're a really big deal
Speaker 4: O tour director. Everybody else has to just have a
Speaker 4: main cast that seems to grow smaller and smaller, and
Speaker 4: then you have extras who fill out the background and
Speaker 4: might be dressed in interesting ways. But this was another
Speaker 4: one of those reminders of a past time in cinema
Speaker 4: where we can really fill out a world with people
Speaker 4: who don't have to have arcs, They don't have to
Speaker 4: have even lines of dialogue, but they are people worthy
Speaker 4: of our attention that make the story richer and reflect
Speaker 4: on other characters and create more sense of characterization, even when,
Speaker 4: for instance, the Latino or Native guy that we were
Speaker 4: talking about earlier, he doesn't have a lot of lines
Speaker 4: yet has this big presence and we don't even get
Speaker 4: explanations within the plot, but that presence makes us pay
Speaker 4: attention to what's going on and fill out explanations for ourselves.
Speaker 5: Which I like one kind to I was just reminded of.
Speaker 5: There is certainly in English dog she's called Mercedes, which
Speaker 5: I'm not sure how do you Americans pronounce? Is it
Speaker 5: Mercedes bends.
Speaker 8: I would I would say Mercedes.
Speaker 5: That's why I thought. Yeah, anyway, they produce her name Mercedes. Again,
Speaker 5: I'm not sure if she is native or American or
Speaker 5: Latino that she is the Is she the old wetness
Speaker 5: of Jeff and Tom or something?
Speaker 8: What it feels like, yeah, or like the servant lady.
Speaker 8: But yeah, it definitely feels like she raised those two
Speaker 8: from childhood. And it's really only once she gets murdered.
Speaker 8: Spoilers that Jeff actually takes things seriously and says okay.
Speaker 5: Which is why I think he does. I think it
Speaker 5: doesn't say this, but I think his whole reason of
Speaker 5: not wanting to get involved, of not wanting to go
Speaker 5: against the Scott, it's just to protect her. I think
Speaker 5: that makes more sense. Yeah, because after that happens, that's it.
Speaker 5: All guns of blazing after that.
Speaker 4: And that is such a gnarly scene too. The way
Speaker 4: that she dies is really fast and nasty and upsetting.
Speaker 4: We go from you got to get out of town.
Speaker 4: So she steps in front of the window and instantly
Speaker 4: gets shot.
Speaker 8: And windows are a big deal in this movie. I
Speaker 8: really love the shot of Nero when he ties up
Speaker 8: his horse and it's all from inside of a window,
Speaker 8: and that's when he first meets the Chinese guy. Is
Speaker 8: when he comes around and goes into the Chinese Guy's place.
Speaker 8: And I'm just like, well, that's a really nice use
Speaker 8: of outside and inside, because normally it's just like, all right,
Speaker 8: this is a set and this is the real world,
Speaker 8: and never the Twain shall meet. But it really feels
Speaker 8: like everything is integrated. Here feels very much more shot
Speaker 8: on location, which helps add to the very some vilitude,
Speaker 8: but it.
Speaker 5: Doesn't feel flat. A taller direction of this, and we
Speaker 5: in our show, we recently did Stagecoach, seeing all this,
Speaker 5: all these windows and the framing and really careful framing
Speaker 5: actually really reminded me of John Ford. This definitely feels
Speaker 5: very Western compared to you know, the Leoni films, or
Speaker 5: even Djangle, which is the one that's i think quite
Speaker 5: a big influence on this. Solough a very close influence.
Speaker 5: So it's always hard to tell because only came out
Speaker 5: what six months before.
Speaker 8: I'm curious too, because you mentioned Stagecoach and John Keerdine
Speaker 8: was famous in there, famously in there, and you've got
Speaker 8: the Carrodine character, the character named Kardine here that whole
Speaker 8: scene is just so strange for me because you know,
Speaker 8: like we said, Kroendine is the one who allegedly wrote
Speaker 8: that note to come, you know, come over here, Tom,
Speaker 8: we need you, even though Tom was told never come
Speaker 8: back to the town again. So he comes in, meets
Speaker 8: with Kerodine for what ten seconds if that, and then
Speaker 8: it's like we have another drive by shooting with these
Speaker 8: guys on horseback, just literally bang bang bang, and murders
Speaker 8: Kardene murders that. You know, there's the titular massacre time, right,
Speaker 8: It's just all of his two daughters and his wife
Speaker 8: are dead in there.
Speaker 4: Every time I.
Speaker 8: Say massacred time, by the way, I always think of
Speaker 8: Peter Parker and Spider Man two just going pizza time,
Speaker 8: but just him saying massacred time. Every time it goes
Speaker 8: through my head.
Speaker 4: The widescreen compositions in this movie are they're the kind
Speaker 4: of moments where you go, oh, it's painter Lee, and
Speaker 4: they definitely are. You get these wide Western painting compositions,
Speaker 4: but also for the motion and the blocking moving through
Speaker 4: space really incredible. And then back to the windows, I
Speaker 4: love folchese use of the zoom lens throughout all of
Speaker 4: his films that I've seen, and this is one of
Speaker 4: the ones where I really love this, you know. And
Speaker 4: there are a couple of places where we framed very
Speaker 4: wide a window and then we're zooming in to frame
Speaker 4: it closer in the window. That is really exciting and
Speaker 4: also beautiful efficient storytelling. And the movie also has zooms
Speaker 4: match to aggressive music cues at various points. You can
Speaker 4: get some of the best smash zooms in the or
Speaker 4: crash zooms in the business here. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I absolutely love the composition of those two little girls
Speaker 8: and they're basically on top of each other, and then
Speaker 8: you've got the knife fork and spoon over on the
Speaker 8: left hand side of the frame and they're on the
Speaker 8: right hand or right hand side, and then you're talking
Speaker 8: about like the zoom. I love how we've got the
Speaker 8: wife in that scene and the camera pans over and
Speaker 8: we see the Mexican guy in the window and then
Speaker 8: we push we zoom in on him, and I was
Speaker 8: just like, oh, that's nice, that's really nice. And he's
Speaker 8: just kind of this specter of death. I mean, it
Speaker 8: kind of reminds me of like the movies where it's
Speaker 8: just like, okay, we're not going to kill you, but
Speaker 8: we're gonna kill everybody that you know until you finally
Speaker 8: get the message and leave town.
Speaker 5: Definitely, that's why this whole aspect for Verna Mafia like
Speaker 5: rather than you know, it's got as you said, it's
Speaker 5: like the cattle, but it is like the settlers versus
Speaker 5: the ranchers and Shane or something like that. But that's
Speaker 5: not what's happening here. I think this is coming from
Speaker 5: a different place, even though it's using that same trope.
Speaker 8: Can I just say again how much I love Castlenuovo
Speaker 8: in this film and just what a wonderful job he's doing.
Speaker 8: I had the chance to interview him years and years ago.
Speaker 8: Super nice guy. I talked with him about Umbrellas of Cherbourg,
Speaker 8: and it's funny just how charming he is in that movie.
Speaker 8: And then you see him here and you're just like,
Speaker 8: he's a handsome set of a bitch, but he is
Speaker 8: the most creepy guy I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 8: And I love the white suit that he wears through
Speaker 8: this whole thing, and that he wears that white suit
Speaker 8: and it's almost like you're saying, Spencer, the whole thing
Speaker 8: of the big rich people party that's going non everybody
Speaker 8: there is dressed in white. It's almost like they caught
Speaker 8: up with him, like he's the one who's always going
Speaker 8: to be dressed like it's you know, racing day, you know,
Speaker 8: at you know, some big event like my fair Lady
Speaker 8: type of thing. But you know, he's always dressed to
Speaker 8: the nines, and everybody else finally catches up with him
Speaker 8: and they start wearing their finery, you know, around him
Speaker 8: kind of thing. Also, I love the what's that meme?
Speaker 8: The is it Arthur? That the where you see the
Speaker 8: clench fists that how angry he is, and I love
Speaker 8: you get that same thing here with the dad before
Speaker 8: he starts playing the organ, you see those fists clench,
Speaker 8: and then he comes over and starts playing with his son,
Speaker 8: and it's just like, oh man, this is so good
Speaker 8: and so creepy, the way that the sun just controls
Speaker 8: his father. There's no women in this movie other than
Speaker 8: Mercedes and then like a couple prostitutes. You know, it's
Speaker 8: like so much of this is all just male dominated stuff.
Speaker 8: No mothers for Junior and mister Scott. You know, the
Speaker 8: wife is out of the picture. We don't know like
Speaker 8: where he could have just sprung out of like mud
Speaker 8: or something, and then like no Father for the Corbett Brothers.
Speaker 5: I know Nino Castelnova from one of my favorite jelly
Speaker 5: strip Mute for Your Killer, which is a very sleazy photographer,
Speaker 5: so sleazy. Yeah, but I don't know, kind of charming.
Speaker 5: I like him in that. Yeah, he carries off a
Speaker 5: great film, that one, and Yeah, you're a really good actor.
Speaker 5: Need to see him. And what I haven't seen Yumbells
Speaker 5: of Scherburg. I have to watch that one.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 8: Don't watch it if you're in a good mood because
Speaker 8: it will squash that right away. That movie makes me cry,
Speaker 8: like nobody's business.
Speaker 4: The white costumes are also another element of absurdity in
Speaker 4: the film, because here they are in the desert and
Speaker 4: the white is all immaculate and there's no dust. The
Speaker 4: cuffs of the pants is really not not that you
Speaker 4: wouldn't wear white in the desert, but all the white
Speaker 4: is immaculate on all the characters while they're watching it,
Speaker 4: and that's that also plays nicely against the depravity of everything.
Speaker 6: You can't wear white shoes after labor Day, that's not
Speaker 6: true anymore. Yes it is, didn't your mother ever tell you.
Speaker 4: Now you know, Kesslenovo is inhabiting a character and he's
Speaker 4: using that. This is again something all good actors do,
Speaker 4: but it's notable because we're our eyes are drawn to
Speaker 4: the costume in this way he is. He is using
Speaker 4: the costume in the way that he moves in that
Speaker 4: in his postures. And then Fulgi is there with his
Speaker 4: crew to make sure that costume never has a blemish,
Speaker 4: no matter the situation, no matter the violence.
Speaker 5: I was wondering, I love the upsubteity of this. Where
Speaker 5: all these guests come from, but in the middle of
Speaker 5: New Mexico.
Speaker 4: They don't live in the town. We didn't see them before.
Speaker 5: They must have come a hell of a long way
Speaker 5: for this party they flew in.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and we have to talk about this party scene
Speaker 8: and just how strangest thing is, man, oh man, oh man,
Speaker 8: just the way that franco'neiro comes in and you get
Speaker 8: some guests that just like, oh, look at this guy,
Speaker 8: you know, like back of the hand kind of thing,
Speaker 8: like oh, what a disgusting creature. This is like kind
Speaker 8: of this, you know, like bringing in the uh, you know,
Speaker 8: the side show freak to kind of show off for
Speaker 8: the rich and famous type of thing. And there's Junior
Speaker 8: outside with the Oregon outside playing it, and he's got
Speaker 8: his little buddy and everything, and you've got the one
Speaker 8: black servant going around serving up drinks and all that,
Speaker 8: and then to have this whipping scene and the whipping
Speaker 8: goes on for so long, and that is Junior's weapon
Speaker 8: of choice is a whip, and even tries to give
Speaker 8: Tom another whip. I thought for sure like he was
Speaker 8: going to do a double whip thing, but then he's like, no, no,
Speaker 8: you know, I'm playing fair quote unquote gonna throw this
Speaker 8: whip over to this guy, never going to really get
Speaker 8: a chance to use it. Really never gets the upper
Speaker 8: hand on Junior at all during this fight, and it
Speaker 8: just becomes this. You know, we've talked about this before
Speaker 8: in well, especially in spaghetti westerns, but in a lot
Speaker 8: of action films, you have that moment where the hero
Speaker 8: has been completely defeated and now has to build himself
Speaker 8: back up, you know, be It. You know, one of
Speaker 8: the best movies ever steven Sagall and Hard to Kill,
Speaker 8: where he has to like learn how to fight again,
Speaker 8: or you know, Chowi and Fat when he has to
Speaker 8: learn how to shoot again in full contact those kind
Speaker 8: of things, or you know, I guess even like maybe
Speaker 8: say like a Clint east Wood in a fist full
Speaker 8: of dollars where he gets the shit kicked out of
Speaker 8: him and then he has to learn how to shoot
Speaker 8: again and comes up with the idea of the bulletproof
Speaker 8: vest type of thing. But here it's less of the recovery.
Speaker 8: He seems to recover pretty quickly, and it's more of
Speaker 8: the example to his brother. And then, like I said,
Speaker 8: Mercedes being killed is what really motivates the brother for
Speaker 8: them to become like this ass kicking duo, which is
Speaker 8: the thing you know you mentioned like some of the
Speaker 8: put Politicio Tecci and stuff. I love that moment where
Speaker 8: the guys who really haven't been fighting together suddenly realize
Speaker 8: that they have to join up.
Speaker 5: It's that like, come on, guys, it's a third act.
Speaker 5: We've only got twenty minutes to wear this out.
Speaker 4: Let's join forces.
Speaker 8: It's that moment when Bud White and Ed Exley team
Speaker 8: up in La Confidential, where it's just like, okay, we
Speaker 8: have to kick ass now. We're like, you know, like
Speaker 8: the the two cops in Beverly Hills cop realize that
Speaker 8: they have to join up with Axel Foley if they
Speaker 8: really want to take down the man.
Speaker 5: Always satisfying Franko Niro was big, I think on this
Speaker 5: kind of suffering Jesus type hero as well. I mean
Speaker 5: that started Django as well. Of course his hands are
Speaker 5: so messed up he has to use the tombstone is
Speaker 5: to trigger his gun as well. But also in a
Speaker 5: later film with Franko, one of the very latest real
Speaker 5: spaghetti westerns Koma, which is a great film if you
Speaker 5: haven't seen that, and it's got pretty much the same
Speaker 5: plot as this, and in fact there's even an alcoholic
Speaker 5: is that Woody Strode in that? I don't think it's
Speaker 5: Woody Strode. That he's got a former retainer as well
Speaker 5: who helps him out and kicks the bottle, but that
Speaker 5: when all his brothers have joined the local bad boss
Speaker 5: as well. But again I think Kyoma gets crucified in
Speaker 5: that one.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, I think you're right, yeah, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 5: Certainly something that frank and Nero really kind of made
Speaker 5: part of his kind of star persona that's suffering and
Speaker 5: then bringing himself back.
Speaker 8: Well, you mentioned how Jenga is like six months before
Speaker 8: this and it's amazing to see the influence of Djengo
Speaker 8: even on this film, Like the outfit that he wears
Speaker 8: with the black and the black just is so Djengo,
Speaker 8: and it's like, okay, you know, And apparently he got this.
Speaker 5: It was someone that was I think George Martin, not
Speaker 5: the Beatles producer, another one who was supposed to have
Speaker 5: the role, but they saw a production still of Jangle
Speaker 5: went let's get that guy. He looks good. But obviously
Speaker 5: some bits it must have been filmed after the film
Speaker 5: came out, because it does seem quite a heavy influence.
Speaker 5: And there was another one, Adios Texas, I think, which
Speaker 5: Franco Neera made again very soon after Jangle, which I
Speaker 5: had a lot of to same kind of plot points
Speaker 5: in it.
Speaker 4: I think I read that this film was retitled as
Speaker 4: a Django sequel in some markets, which is not unusual
Speaker 4: for exploitation or for Italy kind of play fast and
Speaker 4: loose with stuff. But I do really love the way
Speaker 4: that his face remains marked for the rest of the movie.
Speaker 4: I mean, they're not but for the timeline, they're not
Speaker 4: realistic scars. But on the other hand, just seeing him
Speaker 4: go around at the end, he's got these stripes left
Speaker 4: on his face from the whip. It's really great for
Speaker 4: this final vengeance sequence.
Speaker 8: There's some continuity insofar as the guy that Jeff puts
Speaker 8: his cigar out on his face. I love that, absolutely
Speaker 8: love that. But then it's interesting and maybe I'm just
Speaker 8: screwing up the timeline, but like Tom and Jeff are
Speaker 8: in town and Tom's trying to find out, like where
Speaker 8: Scott lives, and he's talking with the prostitutes and the
Speaker 8: bartender in there, and they make a big deal. They
Speaker 8: show one of the prostitutes pretty often and gives her
Speaker 8: some close ups and everything. But she's also at the party.
Speaker 8: Like they leave from town, and I thought they went
Speaker 8: directly to the party, like obviously they have to fight
Speaker 8: their way through all the bad guys as to say,
Speaker 8: go along. But she's also at the party, and I'm
Speaker 8: just like, Okay, I don't care about the continuity, but
Speaker 8: I found it interesting that these aren't really some high
Speaker 8: society people. They're the local prostitute. And who knows how
Speaker 8: many of the other women from the saloon are there
Speaker 8: at this party, or maybe they're just kind of the
Speaker 8: party favors, you know, like oh yeah, gentlemen, you know,
Speaker 8: like you can come in and have your way with
Speaker 8: any of these nicely dressed women.
Speaker 4: I like to begin the presentation.
Speaker 5: But first god, yeah, or they didn't have a lot
Speaker 5: of women on sants, so.
Speaker 8: Right, that's very true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but the implication paints a picture.
Speaker 7: The lies, linking me with the disgrace for Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 5: Need to end today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, somehow I didn't catch that, but it makes me
Speaker 4: think about another. Yeah. Again, back to the use of
Speaker 4: the background characters for really suggesting world and character through
Speaker 4: their placement.
Speaker 5: I love that bet. You mentioned that bet when he
Speaker 5: goes and tries to find some vision of it where
Speaker 5: Scott is and he says, well, he wins this saloon,
Speaker 5: doesn't he And this bartender says, what saloon? This guy's
Speaker 5: getting nothing here.
Speaker 8: I don't know. I reference La Confidential way too much,
Speaker 8: but one of my favorite moments in that movie is
Speaker 8: when either Bud White or actually the guy Pearce or
Speaker 8: Russell crowth to throw a gun from one to the
Speaker 8: other kind of thing. And there's a very similar moment
Speaker 8: in this film too, where they're just going through taking
Speaker 8: care of all of these bad guys. And I love
Speaker 8: this whole thing. Every time he's about to shoot the
Speaker 8: George Hilton character, Jeff goes, hey, gentlemen, and then like,
Speaker 8: we'll take him out, and it's so fun. I just
Speaker 8: love that. And like there's a moment where he says, hey, gentlemen,
Speaker 8: and Mirror's like whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, like, we
Speaker 8: want to talk to these guys. Don't kill these guys yet,
Speaker 8: you know, we'll get there. And that also then mirrors
Speaker 8: the last shot of the film where after the bad
Speaker 8: guys have been dispatched, all of these it's very John
Speaker 8: Wu as their junior falls into this thing, all of
Speaker 8: these pigeons and birds come out. Jeff almost goes to
Speaker 8: shoot one, and then Tom's like no, no, puts the
Speaker 8: gun down, like okay, we're done with violence.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 8: This is the last time that we'll be shooting people.
Speaker 4: And that dubs it looks like it has blood on it,
Speaker 4: and that's our freeze frame for the very last scot.
Speaker 4: I have to think that John Woo saw this movie
Speaker 4: and said, hold my beer.
Speaker 5: I can get more doves and more gun play.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Because I mean it's very similar to the end
Speaker 8: of The Killer where they're at that church at that mission,
Speaker 8: you know, and here you've got somewhat similar as far
Speaker 8: as this abandoned building that they're in, which I think
Speaker 8: is one of the buildings from as they're going out
Speaker 8: to the Scott property. They've got the you know, the
Speaker 8: different stations along the way, and I think this is
Speaker 8: one of those.
Speaker 4: When you mentioned the hey gentlemen and then shooting the guys,
Speaker 4: I loved the one where they're at the top of
Speaker 4: the stairs and they roll down and then sets up
Speaker 4: later for Junior to have to step on them, step
Speaker 4: on their dead henchmen in order to get up the stairs.
Speaker 4: That's really what this movie is about.
Speaker 5: A great you mentioned this before, A great use of
Speaker 5: space and you know where things are, which is great
Speaker 5: because you can tell it's not there's not a lot
Speaker 5: of maybe complicated sense at the end, but he still
Speaker 5: managed to he still managed his shoot in the way
Speaker 5: where you know where they are, where they're coming from,
Speaker 5: what the plan is. It's never confusing in that way.
Speaker 5: Other things are confusing, but that's not confusing.
Speaker 8: Well, there's some really great things like when he rolls
Speaker 8: the wagon down and is shooting from the wagon and
Speaker 8: then does that amazing like dumb the wagon.
Speaker 4: Again, back to the cartoonish it's ridiculous. I love that stuff,
Speaker 4: and again went to the use of space faulty and
Speaker 4: I'm forgetting the name of the DP. They're constantly setting
Speaker 4: things up to make a simple cut from the master
Speaker 4: to a close up be as big an impact, like
Speaker 4: a punch to the audience as possible. Really beautiful cuts
Speaker 4: to a close up that are just at the right
Speaker 4: opposing angle to where the camera was in the master,
Speaker 4: or even just the shot that's set up the scene
Speaker 4: that we get these these really beautiful, intense cuts that
Speaker 4: push us through the movie.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and I think some of that is the DP,
Speaker 8: Like you said, Ricardo Paolo Tini, I believe is how
Speaker 8: you would say it. And then also the editor, thank you.
Speaker 4: I have a terrible fear of mispronouncing, which derives a
Speaker 4: lot of my not mentioning names when I'm on I'm really.
Speaker 8: Apologize, no worries. And then the editor or Nella mccheley
Speaker 8: had done a bunch of stuff as well, including don't
Speaker 8: Torture or Duckling, which is holy shit. That movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that movie.
Speaker 8: I love it so good. And yeah, another just fulche classic,
Speaker 8: that one. I believe is one of the few that
Speaker 8: I've seen of his. No, I definitely need to see
Speaker 8: more of his stuff. I almost need like a little
Speaker 8: bit of a primer to be like, Okay, you're gonna
Speaker 8: want to go here next, and you want to go here.
Speaker 8: I mean, I wouldn't even mind checking out some of
Speaker 8: the comedies. The thing that everybody says is, oh, they
Speaker 8: don't translate, But I watch a lot of comedies from
Speaker 8: foreign languages, and I'm just like, yeah, no, Like, I
Speaker 8: imagine some of this is funnier, like you know, watching
Speaker 8: an Indian comedy or a French comedy or something. I'm like,
Speaker 8: I imagine some of this is funnier in the original language,
Speaker 8: but some of it just is universal.
Speaker 5: I can recommend a Fucci comedy if you want, and
Speaker 5: it's a later one. Actually, nineteen seventy six. My sister
Speaker 5: in law with Edwich Finnich. That's actually I it made
Speaker 5: me laugh.
Speaker 4: I like that one.
Speaker 5: She plays twin rules.
Speaker 8: She plays I'll watch anything with her in it.
Speaker 5: A woman of loose virtues and her judge sister as well.
Speaker 5: Nice sister, okay, because she's in the law.
Speaker 8: I see what you did there, that's nice.
Speaker 4: I want to see the musicals as well, now, because
Speaker 4: I don't see much of a musical connection or influence
Speaker 4: in the you know, in the horror films, but actually
Speaker 4: in the staging of the action here, I'm like, oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: this is a guy who's directed musicals.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, standing of how to use space and
Speaker 5: what's going on where, and yeah, love it exactly.
Speaker 4: And this is I'm not big on musicals either, but
Speaker 4: this Western has convinced me I got to go in
Speaker 4: for the faulty musicals.
Speaker 5: Now. Incidentally, I'm really surprised Filchi didn't make any of
Speaker 5: the peplum films in the early to mid sixties, you know,
Speaker 5: the Sword and Sandals or even like Pirate kind of
Speaker 5: films which were made around the same time. That's an
Speaker 5: opportunity to have crucifixion in your film, and he just
Speaker 5: passed it by.
Speaker 8: He'll work it in other ways, don't worry. Yeah, he's
Speaker 8: got like the the pilot whipping Jesus scene in this one.
Speaker 8: He's got the crucifixion, you know, very very old school
Speaker 8: with these torture techniques.
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 4: Mike of the horror films, I'm gonna I'm gonna highly
Speaker 4: recommend The Beyond as a place to start.
Speaker 8: Oh, we did cover We covered that years ago.
Speaker 4: I love The Beyond.
Speaker 5: I love That Beyond.
Speaker 8: It's so good, and I just love the surrealism.
Speaker 4: Of it, the absurdity and excess of so many of
Speaker 4: the horror sequences where they're like just breathtaking, lee slow,
Speaker 4: they just take forever. But that's part of the pleasure
Speaker 4: of it is, you know, it doesn't make any sense
Speaker 4: in terms of how things would happen or the reaction
Speaker 4: of the characters or anything like that, but nevertheless, it's
Speaker 4: just amazing the way that these things get slowed down
Speaker 4: and keep going on and on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is the first time I watched that. I
Speaker 5: think I wrote review for us saying, Okay, it's not
Speaker 5: the best film in the world, but it's probably top five.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. No, The Beyond is one of those great
Speaker 4: it's a great film, but it's in a certain kind
Speaker 4: of category. Again, the trashiness is one of those things
Speaker 4: where I guess I understand why FULC isn't taken more seriously,
Speaker 4: But then I feel like the people that don't take
Speaker 4: Fullcy seriously, I don't have to take very seriously. The
Speaker 4: trashiness is there, but that is, as I said earlier,
Speaker 4: feature not a bug. But on top of that, if
Speaker 4: you cannot encounter these trashy movies without appreciating the craft
Speaker 4: of the trash I just how much do you really
Speaker 4: love cinema? Becomes a question for me, And increasingly as
Speaker 4: I watch and rewatch fulcy movies, I'm just always more impressed.
Speaker 4: I know, my third watch of Massacre Time is going
Speaker 4: to be one of my favorite things that happens to
Speaker 4: me in the next year or so. As I know,
Speaker 4: I'm going to watch it a couple of more times,
Speaker 4: you know, in the next several months. And that's just
Speaker 4: usually the case, you know, with any of his stuff
Speaker 4: talk about trashy. Zombie is extremely trashy, and that's one
Speaker 4: where you know, you can tell that he doesn't have
Speaker 4: as good a schedule and budget as on a movie
Speaker 4: like Mascar Time, and yet there is just you know,
Speaker 4: real cinematic beauty in setting up you know, the eye
Speaker 4: splinter scene.
Speaker 5: And as a film that took me a little while
Speaker 5: maybe to come round to you. First couple of times
Speaker 5: I saw it, I was thinking, Okay, it's good fun,
Speaker 5: it's a zombie fighting shark, but it's not great. And
Speaker 5: then now I absolutely adore it. I think it's amazing.
Speaker 5: It's just real, it's just pure craft. It's great.
Speaker 4: And then even the zombie fighting this shark, which is
Speaker 4: pretty ramp backle as a sequence, it does really work.
Speaker 4: And it's a funny thing. I've actually taught that scene
Speaker 4: in classes to teach about the creation of space through editing,
Speaker 4: because you never get all three elements. You never get
Speaker 4: the girl and the zombie and the shark all in
Speaker 4: the same shot. You get two at a time. But
Speaker 4: the way that it's put together, well, it's deceptively ramshackle,
Speaker 4: because the first couple of times that I watched it,
Speaker 4: I was convinced that, like, all three of these had
Speaker 4: come together within the same shot, and they don't. What's
Speaker 4: all about scheduling of the shark, scheduling of the zombie,
Speaker 4: all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 8: There's your psycho influence again. Yo, Does the knife ever
Speaker 8: enter into Marian Crane? No, but it sure looks like it.
Speaker 4: There's definitely stuff that's fast and loose, but it's fast
Speaker 4: and loose by someone who has real control and really
Speaker 4: beautiful sense of timing. Another thing that this movie is
Speaker 4: particularly great at is duration, the duration of shots that
Speaker 4: punctuate these scenes. Franco'neiro staggering away in close up for
Speaker 4: a really long tracking shot really puts a fine point
Speaker 4: on everything in the movie we've been watching up until
Speaker 4: that moment, and that's far from the only instance of that.
Speaker 4: Faulty really has a great sense of exactly how long
Speaker 4: a shot should be and everything that it needs to contain.
Speaker 8: It's funny that this movie is about brothers and then
Speaker 8: that you find out the switch later on. You know,
Speaker 8: oh that Tom and Jeff aren't actually brothers, but Tom
Speaker 8: and Jeff are the ones who fight together at the end.
Speaker 8: You know that it becomes basically killing the natural brother,
Speaker 8: the quote unquote natural brother, the one that came from
Speaker 8: your same father, I guess, or maybe same mother.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I get. It's so much in this film is
Speaker 5: not explained.
Speaker 8: We don't get a flashback.
Speaker 5: Is the implication that Scott raped their mother or not?
Speaker 5: And if nothing could be done, why doesn't Tom know
Speaker 5: the name Scott? What point was he sent away before
Speaker 5: Scott took over the place.
Speaker 4: All of this the way that it works. Sorry, I'm
Speaker 4: about to give a little pet theory that I like
Speaker 4: for breaking down types of cinema. This movie is not fantasy.
Speaker 4: It's dream and it doesn't do any of the surrealists
Speaker 4: kind of dreamlike pointers of going, oh, we're inside a dream.
Speaker 4: It is simply arranged in a dreamlike way. We're not
Speaker 4: in a lynch land where the sound design and the
Speaker 4: framings are telling us right out of the gate that
Speaker 4: we're in a kind of dream or dreamy world. It's
Speaker 4: not doing that, but the overall arrangement of how it
Speaker 4: comes together and the logic of how the characters fit
Speaker 4: within the world and fit together. It is ultimately without
Speaker 4: any fuss or without any of the sign posting that
Speaker 4: we normally see for the dream.
Speaker 5: Like and that's common with all pretty much of not
Speaker 5: all food Jeep, but pretty much.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well this is why I love him so much. As like,
Speaker 4: you know, I love plenty of fantasies, but on team dream,
Speaker 4: a dream is much more interesting to me than fantasy.
Speaker 4: And so, for instance, you know, there's a world here,
Speaker 4: but in fantasy there's a kind of sense of rickety
Speaker 4: we like to use this term a lot these days,
Speaker 4: but has always kind of been there rickety kind of
Speaker 4: world building, whereas this is more world inhabiting. Yes, there
Speaker 4: is a world, and the world is populated, and the world,
Speaker 4: you know, has buildings within it. But this is ultimately
Speaker 4: a thing that we are as audience, asked to inhabit,
Speaker 4: rather than to peer down from a map and get
Speaker 4: an arrangement and get exposition about here's the world, here's
Speaker 4: how it's built, here's the lore, here's the mythology. This
Speaker 4: is not a movie with mythology. It is simply a myth.
Speaker 4: It's a freestanding myth.
Speaker 8: I've read an article where it was talking about how
Speaker 8: Junior doesn't even seem like he's It feels like he's
Speaker 8: jealous of Tom. The attention that Tom's getting more like
Speaker 8: a jealous lover than a son or even I know
Speaker 8: for sure what motivates him in theory is the idea
Speaker 8: of inheritance, you know, and maybe Tom's the firstborn son,
Speaker 8: maybe there's primogeniture. I don't know, but yeah, just this
Speaker 8: whole like this is my daddy and no other person
Speaker 8: can have him, kind of going back to that incest
Speaker 8: thing where it's just like, Okay, this is a weird
Speaker 8: relationship that we have and just again he's got the
Speaker 8: power over his dad. You know, it's very telling that
Speaker 8: he's the first character introduced that we don't even see
Speaker 8: mister Scott until when they're first in town and come
Speaker 8: riding in and we've already met Junior. We already know like, okay,
Speaker 8: yeah he's a bad dude, and yeah, we don't know
Speaker 8: what the peasant has done to deserve this to be
Speaker 8: hunted at the beginning.
Speaker 5: I've heard some people speculate that is the father, Jeff's father,
Speaker 5: but who knows.
Speaker 8: Interesting, so it's almost like a flashback kind of thing
Speaker 8: or just like that's the motivation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or but we don't know how, We don't know
Speaker 5: how far in the past the fathers die, we don't
Speaker 5: know when the mothers die.
Speaker 8: All this is a mystery, Yeah, which I'm fine with.
Speaker 8: I don't need everything to be explained to me. And yeah,
Speaker 8: like I mentioned, oh, we don't have a flashback of
Speaker 8: what happened with the whole family thing. I'm okay, that
Speaker 8: is just a broken family.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, let's just walk in and live in it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it's quite unusual I think in a film
Speaker 5: like this, which really is does have quite a lot
Speaker 5: of plot, that there isn't any flashbacksulture would not be
Speaker 5: a stranger to Flashbacks and a lot of other films,
Speaker 5: but in this one it's just all still toad Street
Speaker 5: straight forward.
Speaker 8: Well that's the screenwriting rule, I think, as you tell
Speaker 8: and you don't know.
Speaker 4: One of the crazy disjunctions is at the end, we
Speaker 4: leave Franco Niro hanging by one arm off of this
Speaker 4: bridge as Junior falls to his death, and then and
Speaker 4: Doves falls to his death, and that Doves take off,
Speaker 4: and then we return to the bridge and Tom Franco
Speaker 4: Nero is gone and we wonder, oh, did he fall,
Speaker 4: And then no, he just appears in a kind of
Speaker 4: two shot close two shot with Jeff for the end
Speaker 4: of the movie. And some people might find that kind
Speaker 4: of cheat unforgivable, especially at the end of a movie,
Speaker 4: but to me, it's actually all of a piece. But
Speaker 4: again one of those one of those gaps that Fulty creates,
Speaker 4: and I think this is a very intentional gap that
Speaker 4: he's intentionally messing with us and messing with space here,
Speaker 4: But it is of a piece with all the other
Speaker 4: the other kind of lacunai that we have in plot
Speaker 4: and in space throughout the film.
Speaker 5: The biggest one for me is the shooting of Jason
Speaker 5: Scott the father as well. Do you see genuine that,
Speaker 5: because I'm sure I missed him popping up in the background.
Speaker 5: He is not in the scene, but the implication is
Speaker 5: he has just popped up from behind a rock, shot
Speaker 5: his own father, and then run off. Because even Tom
Speaker 5: is convinced that Jeff is shopping, Jeff goes and starts
Speaker 5: beating up Jeff for shooting him.
Speaker 4: I'm going to beat up on Hitchcock just a little
Speaker 4: bit here, and he can take it. The Hitchcock theory
Speaker 4: that surprise is no good and cinema is all about suspense.
Speaker 4: You can't use surprise everywhere, but in a movie like
Speaker 4: this is a good example of where you can have
Speaker 4: a tension between suspense and surprise, and you can have
Speaker 4: these absurd moments of a character who has not been
Speaker 4: in the background suddenly shooting somebody. And yeah, I note
Speaker 4: that there are a lot of people that go, oh,
Speaker 4: that's dis x machina or whatever, but I don't know,
Speaker 4: there's so many incidents. In the real world is a
Speaker 4: dreamlike kind of thing, and I'm gonna make my claim
Speaker 4: on the basis of dream but also in the real world,
Speaker 4: people are freaking surprised by the car wrecks that they
Speaker 4: get it. People never know that they're about to die
Speaker 4: when a calamity occurs. The Hitchcock line about no, you
Speaker 4: always want to set things up in a way where
Speaker 4: the audience is worried about the character. Sure, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 4: ninety percent of the time, but there's a ten percent
Speaker 4: that is actually, I just got to call bullshit on
Speaker 4: this as a totalizing theory, and that feels to me
Speaker 4: like a lot of rule following screenwriting and visual construction
Speaker 4: unnecessarily prizes this view of foreseeing everything over an experience
Speaker 4: in cinema where we can be jolted, characters who have
Speaker 4: been in the movie the whole time can suddenly appear,
Speaker 4: where somebody can be shot totally out of the blue.
Speaker 5: I'm reminded of oh, what's it called confidential? Yeah, James Cromwell,
Speaker 5: one of the best scenes. Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, And this is done occasionally. It's not that this
Speaker 4: is a totally unknown technique to pop up in different movies.
Speaker 4: But again, the pervasiveness of it here is actually something
Speaker 4: that I don't think is just sloppy writing or anything.
Speaker 4: It is part of the chaotic and statistic world that
Speaker 4: this story takes place on.
Speaker 8: Well if memory serves, doesn't Tom then think that Jeff
Speaker 8: killed the father and he starts beating him up about it,
Speaker 8: and it's just like no, No, just wants to.
Speaker 5: Open up buttons and his gun they're not called buttons, bullets,
Speaker 5: that's what you call them, and shows that he's not
Speaker 5: fired one.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and I love that. I love it, especially as
Speaker 8: it's a kind of a callback to like that fetishization
Speaker 8: of the gun that we had when we first are
Speaker 8: introduced to franko'neiro and he like is lovingly touching his
Speaker 8: old black leather saddle and then like gets out the
Speaker 8: the oil and starts like cleaning up the gun and
Speaker 8: everything and putting the bullets in those nice close ups.
Speaker 8: It's so funny because like the I was trying to
Speaker 8: find a good trailer for this movie, and the trailer
Speaker 8: I can't find one with like the typical voiceover which
Speaker 8: I love to use for the show where it's like
Speaker 8: you meet Tom Corbett kind of thing, but it's instead
Speaker 8: it's the whipping. Like that's how the trailer starts off,
Speaker 8: as like whip stuff across the screen and then the
Speaker 8: whipping scene and then there's a whole bunch of stuff
Speaker 8: with the gun and all this, and then of course
Speaker 8: the music comes in. I don't know if there I
Speaker 8: can't remember if there's any dialogue in that trailer at all.
Speaker 8: So I'm like, Okay, this is gonna be confusing when
Speaker 8: people just hear this because without the visuals. But yeah,
Speaker 8: just it was funny that those were some of the
Speaker 8: big moments that they used in the trailer, was the
Speaker 8: whipping and then the gunloading.
Speaker 5: So I think from the posters you can tell you
Speaker 5: find this film quite hard to market and how to
Speaker 5: sell it. It was an American titlely I peep it
Speaker 5: on it the Brits and the Beast doesn't really make sense,
Speaker 5: but of course it's came out. Did it come out
Speaker 5: of this? I think it came out the same year
Speaker 5: as Good, Bad and the Ugly.
Speaker 8: I think you're right. Yeah, So it was kind of
Speaker 8: playing on that, playing on that is.
Speaker 5: The height you're a Western This really sixty six And
Speaker 5: then it was a cult concerto in Britain. No idea
Speaker 5: what that means. And then I think it was West
Speaker 5: Germany and Denmark. It was the Jangle. It was a
Speaker 5: Jangle film basically, But yeah, they would definitely try to
Speaker 5: market it as nasty spaghetti, Western cruelty whips, that kind
Speaker 5: of thing.
Speaker 4: I'm going to jump back to the killing of Scott
Speaker 4: because I think this is psychologically and mythically a really
Speaker 4: interesting moment, and again the use of the surprise a
Speaker 4: surprise factor for Junior killing his own father. Effectively, we
Speaker 4: have these three brothers within the dream mythology of the thing,
Speaker 4: and two of them, you know a way, the moment
Speaker 4: that the father is killed is the moment that he's
Speaker 4: accepting a new son, and Junior then is being deposed
Speaker 4: in a way, and this motivating the killing of the father,
Speaker 4: and then one brother attacking the other in thinking that
Speaker 4: the Jeff has killed the father. This is a really
Speaker 4: nice little psychological triangle around the killing the father mythology,
Speaker 4: really great kind of moment, and I again back to
Speaker 4: the idea for why do you employ a surprise like this.
Speaker 4: It's precisely because of that it plays into the psychology
Speaker 4: of blaming Jeff in that moment by not setting it
Speaker 4: up more obviously, and that it's a surprise we can
Speaker 4: better believe and tap into the psychology of Tom as
Speaker 4: he attacks his brother.
Speaker 5: One of the most important lightens is from Jeff and
Speaker 5: he says, the Scot's killed my father. That's the signifier
Speaker 5: that Tom is not from the same father. But also
Speaker 5: seeing the Scotts, he's not saying it was Junior Scott,
Speaker 5: insont seeing it was Jason Scott, So that's kind of
Speaker 5: left in the dark there. It's just the Scots, and
Speaker 5: we're going to presume it's Junior and not not the father.
Speaker 5: It turns out it is not really the villain, though.
Speaker 8: I'm curious how much he had a hand in this stuff,
Speaker 8: because I'm sure, you know, obviously he knows his son
Speaker 8: is crazy, and all he does is kind of help
Speaker 8: him out and set him up for success.
Speaker 4: You know, Son's probably pretty good for knocking off his
Speaker 4: enemies competitors keep the local control. But it's also interesting
Speaker 4: the way that the father is killed off so quickly,
Speaker 4: which is in its own way a surprise, you know,
Speaker 4: in the structure of this Like I know for sure
Speaker 4: that the final boss is going to be Junior. I
Speaker 4: know that from the very beginning of the movie. There's
Speaker 4: no question. But there's a part of me that's expecting
Speaker 4: that the father is going to enter into the violence
Speaker 4: at some point, like our mafia godfather is going to
Speaker 4: step into the violence at this point in the film,
Speaker 4: and he doesn't, and he's killed off before that that
Speaker 4: can happen, And again, that's a wonderful kind of surprise.
Speaker 5: I was a little disappointed about how fast he's killed off,
Speaker 5: and I think the fact it was a surprise, I
Speaker 5: wanted to be part of the big showdown at the
Speaker 5: end rather than really just triggering the big show down, Yeah,
Speaker 5: because I think there was a little bit more to
Speaker 5: be eked out of that weird relationship between Junior and
Speaker 5: his father.
Speaker 8: While I was doing my research for this one, I
Speaker 8: kept running across people talking about the comparisons between this
Speaker 8: and Django Unchained, And I have to admit that I
Speaker 8: have successfully driven most of Django Unchained out of my head,
Speaker 8: other than the most important scene in the film, which
Speaker 8: was Quentin Tarantino being an Australian. Yeah, so I remember that,
Speaker 8: but yeah, everybody's got to remember that, right, So I
Speaker 8: don't know, Like I could see some parallels between Junior
Speaker 8: and the what's his name Calvin Candy, that Leodardod DiCaprio character,
Speaker 8: but again, what I mostly remember of him was the
Speaker 8: phrenology speech that he gives. So I guess there's a
Speaker 8: lot of visual parallels between the two films, which doesn't
Speaker 8: really surprise me at all.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to remember, is it a scene like the
Speaker 5: hunting of a man in Django, because I have a
Speaker 5: feeling that.
Speaker 4: Is, yeah, no, there's a guy who's torn up by dogs.
Speaker 4: Unpopular opinion in this room. I like Django Unchained, but
Speaker 4: oh I like it too.
Speaker 5: I like a lot it but it's just like you know, well.
Speaker 4: Australian Quentin Tarantino I can do with the movie. There's
Speaker 4: a tremendously upsetting whipping scene in Django Unchained that I
Speaker 4: have to think works differently, and it works differently visually,
Speaker 4: but I have to think is at least influenced by
Speaker 4: the big whipping scene here. There's also a number of
Speaker 4: instances of kind of cartoonish violence when people get shot,
Speaker 4: they don't just get shot, they're pulled by wires, you know,
Speaker 4: or big falls and that kind of thing. That definitely
Speaker 4: it struck me that Tarantino is influenced by this movie
Speaker 4: and Django Unchained, And I think Tarantino's work is tremendously
Speaker 4: influenced by don't torture a duckling as well. The first
Speaker 4: time I saw that, I was like, oh right, yeah,
Speaker 4: this is clearly one that Tarantino has watched closely or
Speaker 4: at minimum remembered very well. So I think Fulci's an
Speaker 4: important source for Tarantino, even though he more often cites Corbucci.
Speaker 5: But I think certainly if he watched The Mask of Time,
Speaker 5: just from reading this book, he would have definitely been
Speaker 5: struck by how much this is like a Southern plantation,
Speaker 5: but they're not racist, it's not a plantation. When he
Speaker 5: wanted to kind of put that back in, which is
Speaker 5: obviously the idea for Django as well, and I think
Speaker 5: I look quite a lot of as the ideas of
Speaker 5: the Western as well. He wants to put the race
Speaker 5: back into it.
Speaker 8: Well, you also always have to be careful which director's
Speaker 8: Tarantino is louding, because it's not those that he's pulling
Speaker 8: the most from, it's the ones that he won't talk about.
Speaker 8: So I know he's mentioned full Chi in the past,
Speaker 8: but yeah, for him to be like oh yeah, Corbucci,
Speaker 8: yeah yeah, yeah, it's like okay, well look past that
Speaker 8: and you're gonna find who he's really taking stuff from Yeah,
Speaker 8: oh I love John Wu. Yeah, what about Ringo Lamb. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I definitely want to see the rest of these full
Speaker 8: chi westerns. I think that I tried watching for the
Speaker 8: Apocalypse years and years ago. This would have been probably
Speaker 8: thirty years ago, and I think that was when it
Speaker 8: was first being released by Anchor Video. I'm gonna say,
Speaker 8: and maybe Botty, Well, this is like old school, This
Speaker 8: is like, yeah, maybe back when it was like a
Speaker 8: big deal that these movies were getting released on any
Speaker 8: format whatsoever, back when it was like more of a well,
Speaker 8: if you can't find it through video search of Miami,
Speaker 8: you're out of luck type of thing. So yeah, I
Speaker 8: definitely want to watch that, especially because that was based
Speaker 8: on what outcast poker Flats if memory serves, so, oh.
Speaker 4: I think it was.
Speaker 5: I think it's based off a couple of short stories
Speaker 5: I think by the same old So definitely want to
Speaker 5: check out that one.
Speaker 8: And then what was his other one, the Silver Saddle, Silver.
Speaker 5: Saddle, which is even later seventy eight Goodness, nobody says
Speaker 5: Juliana Gemma, nobody's making spaghetti westerns and seventy eight right exactly.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So it's strange how he will go back to those, because,
Speaker 8: like you said, he hadn't made a Western before this.
Speaker 8: He had made the Pepham stuff before this. It was
Speaker 8: interesting that he's more like the musical comedy guy and
Speaker 8: then comes into this and then eventually gets into like
Speaker 8: the Jalli and the horror films, and yeah, just occasionally
Speaker 8: we'll dip back into the Western genre. So it's like, okay, well,
Speaker 8: if it's that interesting, let's see what he had to say.
Speaker 5: As I said, forty Apocalypse, I really like and it
Speaker 5: but it's definitely like a seventies spaghetti West, and it's
Speaker 5: got like that kind of hippie almost Charles Manson aspect,
Speaker 5: kill killer hippie aspect of it as well. And yeah,
Speaker 5: you've seen Cuma as well. That would be the other
Speaker 5: one I would definitely recommend in this kind of vein.
Speaker 5: He also FOCHI also did White Fang, the Jack London
Speaker 5: book and a sequel with Frank g Niro seventy two
Speaker 5: seventy three as well. So I don't know if that
Speaker 5: counts as a Western, maybe a Northern, I'm not sure.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I definitely remember seeing some stills from that in
Speaker 8: the Stephen Thrower book, which is a great resource for
Speaker 8: faulty staff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what struck me is just how fully formed Folchi
Speaker 5: is coming into this as an accomplished director and a
Speaker 5: director that loves cruelty, sadism, dysfunctional families. Keys comes into
Speaker 5: this fully formed in his first Nasty film, his first
Speaker 5: real folk Chi film. But also how much this got
Speaker 5: classical Western ideas and this as well as the euro
Speaker 5: Western as well. It's not as stereotypically you know Western,
Speaker 5: and some of the Uni or something like that feels
Speaker 5: quite classical, and it feels almost like john Ford some
Speaker 5: on the direction as well, but with definitely a weird
Speaker 5: food she spin on it. So yeah, fascinating, really glad
Speaker 5: that we watched this.
Speaker 4: A visual feast like all full two movies. But I
Speaker 4: think again, you know, this is one where a longer
Speaker 4: schedule really pays off in terms of the visual storytelling.
Speaker 4: And it isn't just clarity. It's like some of the
Speaker 4: you know, some of the difficulty of getting these shots
Speaker 4: that are really beautiful tell the story well and efficiently
Speaker 4: and sort of create a beautiful foreground, middle ground background
Speaker 4: of you know this dream.
Speaker 8: All right, gentlemen, let's go ahead and take a break
Speaker 8: and play a PV for next week's show. Right after
Speaker 8: these brief messages.
Speaker 2: Matt from Viva again and Emily looking.
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Speaker 7: If they move, kill.
Speaker 6: Them your last.
Speaker 5: I'd like to say a few words for the dear
Speaker 5: dead departed.
Speaker 4: Well yet, oh I don't chance some of your damn
Speaker 4: yellow livered trash. He played his string right out.
Speaker 3: To the end.
Speaker 6: He's there.
Speaker 4: I don't think he worse.
Speaker 7: Let you go?
Speaker 6: Why not?
Speaker 7: Oh my right, I'm where finished.
Speaker 4: We share very few tandiments with our com.
Speaker 8: That's right. We'll be back next week with a look
Speaker 8: at a fairly obscure Western I think it's called The
Speaker 8: Wild Bunch. Anyway, Before I go, I want to thank
Speaker 8: my co host Spencer and Joe So. Spencer what's the latest.
Speaker 7: With you, sir.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's the end of the school year. I got
Speaker 4: lots to do as we march towards graduation. So that's
Speaker 4: that's my life right now.
Speaker 8: And Joe, how about yourself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's still plugging on with the Caliber nine from
Speaker 5: Outer Space podcast with Rob. We do a double bill
Speaker 5: each week, have a guest on and just have a
Speaker 5: great time every single week. We had you on recently.
Speaker 5: That was great to have you. We talked across one
Speaker 5: hundred and tenth Street and Gambling City, the Sergio Martino Tesco.
Speaker 5: Quite an unusual one, but a good one. I liked it.
Speaker 8: That was a lot of fun and I always appreciate
Speaker 8: whenever you guys have me on.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Yeah, no problem. So yeah, check
Speaker 5: us out everywhere where, all the podcast people, all the
Speaker 5: podcast places.
Speaker 8: Well, thank you again guys for being on the show.
Speaker 8: Thanks everybody for listening. If you want to hear more
Speaker 8: of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of
Speaker 8: the other shows that.
Speaker 4: I work on.
Speaker 8: They're all available at Wirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to
Speaker 8: our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
Speaker 8: visit patreon dot com. Size Projection Booth. Every donation we
Speaker 8: get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
Speaker 6: You left to find a pull a thousand miles.
Speaker 7: Your own.
Speaker 6: Medium anywhere you count the cosound a you count the
Speaker 6: Cosunday and we'll steal your up.
Speaker 3: Video eyes read Britian sunter sand no.
Speaker 2: Starsh and.
Speaker 6: You come back home Sunday. You come back homes day.
Speaker 6: He went away for you went to a hellone, but
Speaker 6: someone's always swaying team.
Speaker 7: For you.
Speaker 6: That's all to then.
Speaker 5: Knows, not pleas.
Speaker 6: No ready a Fred you come back comesounding, You come
Speaker 6: back home sounding. You went away fla You went away alone,
Speaker 6: but someone else always sway.
Speaker 4: For you.
Speaker 6: That's all to day