Author: Jim McLennan

Dir: Giuliano Montaldo
Star: George Rigaud, Klaus Kinski, Janet Leigh, Robert Hoffmann
a.k.a. Ad Ogni Costo

This straightforward yet very effective heist film kicks off with retired teacher James Anders (Edward G. Robinson) going to his old pal, Mark Milford (Adolfo Celi from Thunderball), a boss in the New York criminal underworld, with a plan for a diamond robbery during the Rio carnival. Milford introduces him to four men, who will each have a part to play in the proceedings. They are Gregg (Rigaud) the safecracker; Erich (Kinski) the muscle; Agostino the electronics wiz; and Jean Paul (Hoffmann), the playboy whose job is to seduce Mary Ann (Leigh), keeper of the key to the vault which will briefly contain ten million dollars worth of gems.

Naturally, things do not go quite as planned – where would be the fun in that? Mary Ann proves rather resistant to Jean Paul’s charms, and the target also installs an unexpected new counter-measure. It’s an audio-based alarm (the “Grand Slam” of the title), which will go off if it detects any sound louder than 14 decibels. Such as would be caused by drilling into the safe. Adding to the impetus is the ticking clock of the festival: for only the second time in 50 years, it coincides with the diamond delivery, creating the necessary window of opportunity. So if the gang of thieves can’t figure everything out in time, they’re going to have a very long way before there will be another chance.

Not helping matters is the friction between the team members. In particular Erich hates Jean Paul with a passion, at one point berating him, “You dirty pimp! You’re only good for charming old maids. You’re not even able to do a man’s job!” While that’s the most obvious case, you get the sense that no-one here is hanging out with the others for amusement, and it’s instead a relationship born entirely out of employment expediency. This becomes particularly relevant towards the end, when it becomes clear that the lack of trust among everyone involved here, is far from paranoia – and is, in fact, an entirely sensible defense mechanism for all concerned

It’s reported that Sergio Leone was originally going to direct this. It would certainly have been fascinating to see what the master of the Spaghetti Western would have done in the heist genre. While that never came to pass, regular collaborators editor Nino Baragli and compose Ennio Morricone were still involved with the project, and there are certainly moments where it still almost feels like a Leone work. However, it is considerably more jet-setting, with heavy use of location work, not just in Rio de Janeiro, but also New York, Rome and London, as Anders assembles his team. Cinematographer Antonio Macasoli wrings every cent of local color possible from there; it almost seems like Rio’s Sugarloaf Mountain is a supporting character in the film, such is its omnipresence.

Yet despite the presence of Morricone, one of the things that stands out is the use of silence. While most obvious during the heart of robbery, when the slightest noise would spell disaster, there are any number of other sequences, where Montaldo is content to let things unfold, without either the need for dialogue or background music. It stands in sharp contrast to modern films in the genre. The most recent one I saw was Ocean’s 8, and let’s just say, a little silence there would have been very welcome. Most of the characters here are prepared to let their actions do the talking instead. Erich is likely the most voluble of them, though occasionally topples over into incoherence. At one point, he says – and I checked this against the subs – “If you are really the supermen everybody says, crazy your brains! Tread blood!” Uh, what? At least it’s Kinski’s own voice here, which is nice.

Leigh is the best-known other name, and there were scenes where I could have sworn I was watching her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis. But it seems more like a supporting role, and she doesn’t have much to do for the great bulk of the two-hour running time. I was more impressed by Rigaud, who comes over like an Argentinian version of Edward Fox; always calm, incredibly polite (when Anders meets Gregg, he’s working as a butler!), yet you can tell there’s steel beneath the silk. He becomes the de facto leader of the group, performing the very necessary task of damping down the enmity between Jean Paul and Erich. Those tensions threaten to tear the group apart before they can complete their task; it’s fortunate the pair’s work largely keeps them apart.

Erich’s borderline psychosis is somewhat ironic. For when Anders is assembling his team, he goes through Milford’s wonderful cabinet of ne’er-do-wells for hire, in a broad range of categories: “Aristocrats, Atomic Scientists, Card Cheaters, Charities, Clergy…” Anders is unable to decide between Military and Syndicate Killers, but eventually plumping for the former, presumably expecting them to be more disciplined. If so, the loose cannon in Mr. Weiss whom he hires is unlikely to be quite what the criminal mastermind had in mind. Yet there’s no doubt Erich knows his stuff, and has his part to play in the heist – even if he’s down in the sewers for much of it, these sequences contribute their share of tension.

It’s all a great deal of fun, although there’s a case to be argued that the ending goes for one twist too many. It feels like a bit of a stunt, and as such, perhaps devalues the understated quality of what has gone before. The rest of the film has been a solid combination of winning performances with a well-considered script, impressively committed to film by Montaldo and Baragli. It really doesn’t need a “surprise” in its tail, let alone about three of them, back-to-back. For this is a film which has spent about 110 minutes being at its most effective when at its most understated, and whose watchword has been “less is more.” An ending which is more M. Night Shyamalan than Sergio Leone seems ill-fitting, to put it mildly.

Dir: Giuliano Carnimeo
Star: Gianni Garko, Frank Wolff, Klaus Kinski, Cameron Mitchell
a.k.a. I am Sartana, Your Angel of Death and Sono Sartana, il vostro becchino

After the success the previous year of If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death , there was enough interest to merit a franchise. Although there was a new director, Carnimeo replacing Gianfranco Parolini, Garko returned to reprise the title role. Kinski, who had a small part in the first movie, also came back, albeit playing a different character. He has a little more to do, this time round, and the film benefits as well from having a less-jumbled and better thought-out script.

The North Western Bank prides itself on being impregnable: “Our bounty killers are the best,” states one particularly threatening advertisement. This challenge is apparently accepted, with a raid on one branch liberating $300,000 from its vaults. The clothing worn by its leader causes blame to be laid at the feet of Sartana (Garko), who is surprised by this, since he had nothing to do with the robbery. He needs to find out who was really responsible – and fast, because as a result, a reward has been placed on his head, dead or alive. And attracting the attention of people owning names such as Butch Dynamite, Slim Shotgun and Tracey Three Aces, is never a good thing…

With the help of Buddy Ben (Wolff) – who may be playing both sides of this battle – and despite the ringleaders trying to cover their tracks, Sartana follows the perpetrators to Poker Falls, an early 20th-century version of Las Vegas. But before he even arrives there, he has to fend off those with an interest in bringing him in, including a local sheriff, as well as those with more mercenary aims. Leading the pack of the latter is the charmingly-named Hot Dead (Kinski), who is probably the worst gambler ever and needs the reward money to pay off his debts.

It’s a very well-written script. Garko only agreed to play the character if the story avoided the vengeance-seeking cliches, and this movie does a particularly good job of finding different territory to explore. Sartana comes off as remarkably smart: whenever he does something, it feels as if he already knows how people are going to react, and is ready to respond. He’s always one move ahead of everyone else, and that’s before he even takes his unique four-barrelled pistol out of its holster. When he does, the always calm and collected Sartana then proves that size doesn’t matter. Oh, and did I mention his fondness for close-up magic? No, seriously: the opening credits feature his card skills, and similar talents also come into play at various spots throughout.

“I don’t hurt anybody when I shoot. They die, right away…”
— Hot Dead

Not that he exactly needs them when going up against Hot Dead, with Mr. Dead being the world’s unluckiest man when it comes to gambling – to the extent that you wonder why he bothers at all. All three of the main scenes involving Kinski demonstrate this in one way or another: we first see him losing five grand, and using the wanted poster of Sartana as collateral for further bets. [For some reason, Hot Dead’s theme on the soundtrack starts off sounding curiously like a banjo version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, before drifting off in its own direction over the final few notes]

The second has him, riding in a stagecoach on the trail of Sartana and, again, getting taken to the cleaners in a poker game. There is something of an excuse here though, as his opponent is getting help from his lady accomplice, who can see Dead’s cards and advise appropriately. Still, he recovers his losses when five bandits – “worth $1,500 each” – make an ill-advised attempt to rob the coach, resulting in their corpses being stacked on the top like luggage. The poker game then resumes, Dead admonishing his opponent, somewhat mournfully: “Don’t cheat. I’ll lose anyway.”

But it’s the final sequence which is the most fun, the only one where Garko and Kinski share time, and it’s so entertaining you wish it had been the focus of the entire movie. It helps that the dubbing for Dead is really good: he’s given a very soft-spoken, somewhat Southern drawl, which completely fits his elegant dress sense and, along with some of his mannerism, perhaps hints vaguely at an ancestor of metrosexuality. This encounter comes in Poker Falls, after Sartana has been pursued through the back alleys of the town. It’s nice, for once, to see these, since most Westerns of the time take place almost exclusively along their location’s main street.

Our hero is eventually driven back into a casino, and is about to be gunned down, when salvation arrives from an unlikely source. Hot Dead, who has at least switched from poker to a primitive slot-machine, guns down the attacker – albeit only because he wants the reward for himself. However, it turns out he owes Sartana five thousand dollars, and “I don’t want people saying I killed you to welsh on a debt.” They play a double-or-nothing hand (above), which Dead naturally loses, despite shooting bullet holes to turn Sartana’s ace into a three. “You only won because I was persecuted by misfortune,” he complains. But in a cool twist, the bounty hunter turns over the wanted poster to settle the debt – effectively abandoning his pursuit of Sartana and the $10,000 reward. Dead instead walks out, saying as he goes, “We’ll play another hand, some day.”

The film should have ended at that moment. Instead, it meanders to a rather ridiculous ending involving Sartana in a gun-battle at a church. This, bizarrely, was previously established as being the location of what seems to be an Old West version of fight club. This appears to take place in near-total darkness, though the outcome shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The Sartana series would carry on, producing several, increasingly outlandish and Kinski-free entries. Sadly, the “Hot Dead” series I really wanted to see, never materialized.

Dir: Antonio Margheriti
Star: Lewis Collins, Lee Van Cleef, Klaus Kinski, Ernest Borgnine

Despite the name, this is only tangentially connected, and entirely unofficially, to The Wild Geese, the all-star mercenary pic starring Roger Moore which had proved quite a hit six years previously. Both films are about groups of mercenaries hired to carry out a hazardous mission in hostile wilderness territory, and have international casts. Indeed, this could perhaps be considered as a “mockbuster” designed to steal the thunder of the original’s official sequel, Wild Geese II, which was released the following year. The topic of mercenaries was still rather current, however, with ‘Mad’ Mike Hoare – the man whose outfit’s name was taken for The Wild Geese – having been hired to stage an unsuccessful coup attempt in the Seychelles a couple of years previously.

This relocates things from Africa to the Far East, in particular the Golden Triangle, then home to much of the world’s opium and heroin supplies. The mercenary group run by Robert Wesley (Collins) is hired by the Western authorities, andDEA operative Fletcher (Borgnine), to go into the jungle and destroy the drug production line of Khan, a local warlord. This is a task near to Wesley’s heart, as he lost his son to heroin addiction. Key to the team is copter pilot China (Van Cleef), who has been released from jail where he sat on smuggling charges, to take part in the operation. The first step is to hijack the warlord’s helicopter, and then use this to help destroy his facilities. While the latter step is accomplished, the copter is blown up in the process, leaving the group to make their way through and out of the jungle on foot, back to civilization.

[Spoilers follow] Inevitably, it turns out that some of the people on the outside are working with and for Khan. The shadiest of all is wealthy American businessman Brenner (Hartmut Neugebauer) and his partner, Charlton, who is himself a former soldier for hire. When Wesley opts to continue the mission and moves towards destroying another plant, thereby threatening the pipeline which Brenner uses to get his drugs out, Charlton is sent into the jungle to make sure that the mercenaries do not succeed. With the entire operation being thoroughly off the books, Wesley is on his own to try and ensure that he and his men are not the ones being cleaned up. And he’s not happy about being betrayed either, especially given the whole ‘dead son’ thing. [End spoilers]

It’s all briskly paced, just about adequately entertaining and staggeringly macho. I think there is only one female speaking role worth mentioning: Mimsy Farmer plays a journalist held hostage by Khan, and turned into a heroin addict. She is rescued by Wesley’s team, and has to go through withdrawal on the way out, probably not the best rehab conditions. Otherwise, it feels like the sort of thing a 12-year-old boy would have loved at the time, with enormous amounts of ammunition being sprayed around by everyone, largely to minimal effect, as well as copious numbers of giant fireballs and a helicopter with a flamethrower mounted to it. The highlight is likely the bit where Wesley drives his car along the side of a tunnel wall, for what seems like miles, in order to escape pursuit. It’s so completely ludicrous as to be utterly brilliant.

At the time this was released, Collins was a considerable star in Britain due to his role in long-running TV series, The Professionals, which had recently ended. A former soldier in the Territorial Army himself, he had also unsuccessfully auditioned as James Bond in 1982. He certainly brings the rugged charm necessary, though Van Cleef – then approaching his sixtieth birthday – feels rather too old to be traipsing through the rain-forest. There’s a point in the middle, after they lose their helicopter, where this could have turned into Predator, and I probably wouldn’t have minded if it had. For to be frank, there’s only so many jungle gun-battles you can watch, with people flinging themselves out of guard towers, before the return on these inevitably begins to diminish.

While never quite sinking to the level of dull, Kinski is undeniably under-used, especially in the first two-thirds of the film, and matters are not helped by the outrageous faux upper-class English accent which he sports in the dubbed version. I’m presuming it’s not him, though it’s mad enough that I could imagine Klaus putting it on, if he was completely pissed-off with the producer for some reason. Fortunately, just when your interest in overall proceedings is perhaps beginning to flag, here comes Charlton, sailing to what Wesley initially believes to be the rescue. Yeah. About that… Kinski then gets to deliver a more enthusiastic, and therefore entertaining, performance – the ability to act while laying down a curtain of suppressing fire should never be forgotten – before meeting his eventual fate.

The technical aspects are good to above-average, with a significant amount of model work and practical explosives work that, to be honest, are probably more impressive than either the script or any of the non-Kinski performances. You’re never given a reason to care about any of the interchangeable mercenaries beyond Wesley, and even there, Collins’s portrayal is so flat and wooden, you understand perfectly why he was deemed a possible successor to Roger Moore.  Margheriti would re-unite with Collins and Kinski the following year, again under producer Edwin. C. Dietrich (and also featuring a flamethrower enhanced helicopter!), for another jungle caper, Kommando Leopard, relocating proceedings slightly further east to the Philippines. That would make somewhat better use of Kinski’s talents. The director would then finish off his trilogy for Dietrich with The Commander, which had Collins playing a mercenary one more time – but no Kinski, and reportedly an “almost identical” plot to this.

Dir: Lindsay Shonteff 
Star: George Nader, Shirley Eaton, Frankie Avalon, Klaus Kinski

Made the same year as Five Golden Dragons and for the same producer, Harry Alan Towers, one wonders if the two films were shot back-to-back. Given the same main location (Hong Kong) and overlap of personnel – not just Klaus, but also Maria Rohm – it would make sense not to have shipped the stars out to Hong Kong twice. Especially when Kinski’s role here is little more than a throwaway, a couple of scenes which could easily have been knocked off over the course of a weekend. Quite whether Kinski would have been willing to play another role without demanding a new contract is an obvious question. Yet if anyone could have talked him into it, legendary cinematic hustler Towers would be a good bet.

Also like Dragons, this is clearly not intended to be taken seriously, with the aim being to spoof secret agent movies. Indeed, it could even be regarded as a “mockbuster” version of In Like Flint, itself a spoof of the Bond franchise, which was released in the United States about two months earlier. This stars Nader as CIA agent Nick West, who is out on loan to the British under Colonel Sir Anthony Baisbrook (played by Wilfrid Hyde-White, best known as Prof. Higgins’ sidekick in My Fair Lady). His mission is initially to investigate the murder by drowning of the secretary to the Sinonesian chief of security. The British are interested in keeping that government sweet for oil-related reasons, so call in a favor to the CIA, so West and his sidekick Tommy Carter (Avalon) are sent on the job.

It’s not long before the chief of security is also a corpse, and West is ordered to take over as his replacement, in order to keep an eye on the leader of Sinonesia, President Boong (Kinski). Which is where his path crosses with the plot of Sumuru (Eaton, famous for being painted to death in Goldfinger), the villain in the piece who is intent on building a world ruled by women. Look, that may seem now like Democratic Party policy (hohoho!). But this was the sixties, and nothing more evil – or, at least, more amusingly evil, at the level appropriate for a tongue in cheek spy flick like this – than a gynocentric society could possibly be imagined for the era. Pat those amusing little ladies on their pert little behinds, and send them back into the kitchen!

She has sent her spies to become the women behind the world’s most powerful men: “They control millions, and you control them.” The dead secretary was originally one of Sumuru’s agents, until “She has done that one unforgivable thing. She has fallen in love,” and had to be disposed of as a result. Now, they’re going straight for Boong, and it’s up to Agent West to foil their dastardly plan. Of course, it helps that just about every woman who crosses his path falls for him, including Helga (Rohm), sent to kill Boong, and even Sumuru herself, leading to the following, remarkably sixties-esque, line from the wannabe evil overlordess: “I need a man, Nick. I need a man to take me, to force himself upon me.”

Really, it’s all so staggeringly chauvinist as to make me want to burn my bra and march on Hollywood, demanding change. Which is odd, since in having a woman as the main villain was decades ahead of its time. If only they had actually treated her as a worthy opponent for West, rather than give her statements like “Look at me. Whatever else I am, I am a woman…” Yet, such an uncomfortable dichotomy was not unique to this movie. The same period also gave us Deadlier Than The Male and the Doctor Goldfoot franchise; while the villains in all those were male, they each used women (robotic women, in the case of Goldfoot) to carry out their evil schemes.

Kinski’s part is almost a nothingburger, though his President is a weird character, to say the least. We hear how “Boong’s turnover in girls is tastelessly high.” Yet the way Klaus portrays him is almost flamboyantly gay, and so clumsy and incompetent, it’s impossible to figure out how he could have become president of anything larger than a sand-box. There is a nice moment where Helga refuses to go through with her ordered assassination of the leader, after having second thoughts, before one of Boong’s guards steps up to kill her employer instead – only for the victim to turn out to be a lookalike. So perhaps the President isn’t quite as dumb as he seems. For the sake of Sinonesia, I certainly hope that’s the case.

As a whole, the movie doesn’t work for a contemporary viewer, being neither amusing nor exciting, and filled with badly dated attitudes to both race and gender. Nader’s lack of charisma doesn’t help; according to Wikipedia, he was “discretely gay”, which may help explain the lack of sizzle in his scenes with Eaton. Mind you, given the best-known movie in his filmography is probably the horrendously-awful Robot Monster, it’s no wonder this is largely forgettable. As his sidekick, Avalon (who was also in the first Dr. Goldfoot film) brings much the same perkily clean-cut charm he had with Annette Funicello in the Beach Party movies. Eaton is surprisingly good as the bad girl, though the biggest shock is seeing the woman who played one of the most iconic blonde bit-parts in cinema history, with dark hair.

The film was based on the works of pulp author Sax Rohmer, the author behind Fu Manchu (also filmed by Towers, with Christopher Lee). Initially, Sumuru was created for a BBC radio serial just after the war, then became a series of novels, published from 1950-56. This movie ends with Susumu’s lair being destroyed, yet she slips away, and re-appeared in another Towers film, two years later: The Girl From Rio, directed by Jess Franco. Rohm also appears in that one, playing a different character; however, there was no room for Klaus, despite being in several Towers/Franco films around the time, such as Deadly Sanctuary and Count Dracula.

Dir: Duccio Tessari
Star: Giuliano Gemma, Klaus Kinski, Margaret Lee, Rita Hayworth
a.k.a. I Bastardi, The Cats

This Italian production is supposedly set in Arizona, with references to Phoenix, Yuma, etc. though the illusion is on rather thin ice, given the large caption in the opening credits, thanking New Mexico for their assistance in making the film! Sadly, these false pretenses are something which still happen even now. Sicario also saw New Mexico stand in for Arizona, and in the third season of Queen of the South, the part of Arizona was played by the considerably more arboreal Texas. Even though thia was reportedly shot mostly in Spain, as an Arizona resident, such deception is not inclined to make me look kindly on the film, though it does have some positive aspects.

It’s the story of two brothers, Jason (Gemma) and Adam (Kinski), career criminals. Jason carries out a jewel heist, and at Adam’s request, uses the loot as bait to lure in the family’s enemies, so they can be disposed of by Jason. This goes swimmingly, only for Adam to get greedy and also demand a share of the jewels, which Jason feels should be payment for his bloody work. Considering the number of dead bodies he had to go through to keep the ill-gotten gains, I can kinda see his argument. After he refuses to share, Adam goes after Jason and eventually gets him to give up the loot after threatening his girlfriend, Karen (Lee).

To ensure there’s no retaliation, Adam gets his pet doctor to inject Jason’s gun-hand, damaging it, and abandons him in the desert. He’s rescued and brought to the ranch of Barbara (Claudine Auger), who nurses him back to health. Naturally, he learns to shoot with his other hand [If I ever become an evil overlord, I will avoid the “cripple my enemies but leave them alive” approach, since it always seems to come back to bite the bad guy in the end] After getting better, Jason heads back to take revenge on his brother – who, adding insult to literally injury, is shacked up with Karen. This leads to a final confrontation – this time really in New Mexico (yeah, I’m still bitter…), in which the earth literally and unexpectedly moves.

I could have sworn Kinski had worked with Tessari on a number of films, but it seems this was their only collaboration. Tessari was perhaps better known as a writer, having done some uncredited work on A Fistful of Dollars, but directed close to thirty films, mostly in the sixties and seventies. He had helped launch Gemma’s career in 1965, writing and directing the successful Spaghetti Western, A Pistol for Ringo. In many ways, it’s easy to see The Bastard as another entry in the same genre. Despite its contemporary setting – there is some frantic disco-dancing going on in an early scene – the story of brotherly betrayal and resulting retribution could just as easily have been set in the eighteen sixties as the nineteen sixties. [Sidenote: the frequently-heard theme song is called Love and Money. No apparent connection to the film of the same name Kinski would make in 1982]

Perhaps the most poignant character is screen icon Hayworth (coincidentally, the centennial of her birth was earlier this month), playing the alcoholic mother of the brothers, in a role apparently offered to and declined by Joan Crawford. It’s a case of art imitating life, given her long struggle with the bottle. Her role is key, as Mom’s cheerful chattiness, divulging Adam’s plans to rob an armored car to Jason, on his return from his recuperation, help open the door for Jason to take vengeance. Really, it’s only when Hayworth and/or Kinski are on-screen that this rises much above the humdrum. The difference in on-screen charisma and presence between them and Gemma, as well as the rest of the supporting cast, is painfully obvious. A friend who runs a film distribution company once said that it’s important for a movie to have all the performances at the same level – not necessarily good or bad, just equal. The Bastard certainly fails on that criteria.

It’s at its best in the early going, when Kinski and Hayworth are around the most. After the betrayal of Jason by his brother, both largely vanish from the middle section, and the film suffers significantly as a result. It doesn’t help that not much happens: you’re largely watching someone rehab from injury, which falls short in terms of entertainment value. The strange deus ex machina which occurs as a key element of the final section is straight-up bizarre, and left me wondering who, exactly, thought it was a good idea, and why. [Had they been in California, rather than New Mexico, it would have made more sense; as is, it shows a rather poor grasp of Southwestern geology]

There’s an anecdote about the film in Kinski Uncut (p.199), in which he details having a threesome with Margaret Lee (calling her Margareth) and a hairdresser, interrupted by the arrival of then-girlfriend Susanne Moratti. Oddly, that version omits a fact included in the original version of his biography, All You Need is Love; the apparently harmless point that Lee was the wife of his agent, Gina Malerba.

Margareth is friends with a hairstylist, whom she brings along to Madrid. I want to seduce the hairstylist, who’s such an inveterate lesbian that she smacks my hand whenever I feel up Margareth. I invite them to my suite at the Palace Hotel and dance with the hairstylist while Margareth jerks off on the bed. I’ve already got my finger inside the hairdresser’s little pussy – but then the doorbell rings. When I open the door, ready to yell at the party-pooper, I find Susanne, who hugs me passionately. She could have called or wired! I draw out our greeting in the vestibule as long as possible so that the two women inside can straighten up their clothes. Before introducing Susanne, I whisper to her: “They’re two dykes. They were about to leave.”

Beginning with Circus of Fear, Lee and Kinski worked together in eleven different movies, which has to be some kind of record. While she acknowledges his ferocious temper, she seems to remember him fondly: “What I saw was the extremely sensitive person, to whom early life had dealt cruel blows, that lay behind the difficult behaviour.” However, let the record show she completely denies Klaus’s story, saying “This is totally untrue and I am sorry he abased himself this way, and our friendship.”