Author: Jim McLennan

Dir: Shūji Terayama
Star: Isabelle Illiers, Klaus Kinski, Arielle Dombasle, Kenichi Nakamura

This ill-conceived sequel follows in the wake of 1975’s film version of The Story of O. Originally published in 1954, the novel was effectively a precursor to 50 Shades of Grey, depicting a consensually sado-masochistic relationship between the titular lady and Sir Stephen, the man who became her master. This movie is based on the sequel, Retour à Roissy (Return to Roissy), which came out in 1967. Despite that title, it’s set in Shanghai, with Sir Stephen (Kinski) taking O (Illiers) to become an employee in a Chinese brothel.

There, she has sex with various men, and becomes the subject of obsession of a young Chinese man (Nakamura), who glimpses her through the window of the brothel, and strives to accumulate enough money for a session with O. Meanwhile. Sir Stephen is having sex with his other mistress, Nathalie (Dombasle), after chaining O up and making her watch. There’s also a subplot about revolution being plotted by the downtrodden workers of Shanghai, with Sir Stephen being shaken down for contributions, and beaten up when he refuses to comply. Nathalie leaves Stephen, and when her younger suitor eventually saves up enough to get his wish, the lord sees O smile during the subsequent coupling; that cannot be tolerated, and he shoots dead his rival for her affections.

The seventies was a boom time for art-porn, and though this is a little late to the party, fits snugly and moistly into the same niche carved out by the likes of Walerian Borowczyk. Director Terayama was a multi-faceted artist, whose output included poetry, plays. photography and both short and feature films, before his death three years after this, from that preferred malady of tortured creative types, cirrhosis of the liver. I can’t say I’ve seen any of his other work, so can’t say how this compares, but it does have some beautifully composed scenes, demonstrating Terayama’s photographic eye.

It also has more than I’d like of Klaus Kinski’s hairy arse, and I suspect the pitch which brought Klaus was on board was something like this:
  “So you’ll get to visit Hong Kong and have sex with attractive women.”
  “You mean, pretend to have sex with attractive women?”
  “No, actually have sex with them.”
  “What time does the flight leave?”

For if what we’re seeing here is not actual coitus, it’s a far more convincing imitation of it that is ever managed on Cinemax. Certainly the oral sex administered by O has real penis in her mouth, which lends credence to the theory Klaus wasn’t faking it either. This is particularly true of the first encounter, which sees Sir Stephen fucking – there’s no more descriptive word available for the steam-hammer pounding being delivered – one of the brothel’s whores. [Random note: while supposedly set in pre-war China, all the Chinese characters are played by Japanese actors and actresses]. All of the genuine carnality comes more that two decades before The Brown Bunny catapulted Chloë Sevigny to fame.

The problem is that, much like its more recent cousin, this film (“50 Shades of Klaus”, perhaps?) doesn’t have much to offer in terms of content, beyond its shock value. The original film, The Story of O, actually did a decent job of putting over the appeal of being on the M-end of a sado-masochistic relationship. While it still might not be something you would necessarily want to do yourself, you could at least see what participants might get out of it. Here? Absolutely nothing. There’s no sense of Sir Stephen and O having the slightest degree of mutual passion for each other. In fact, he doesn’t seem to care about her at all: the kind of stunts he demands of her in this, are more like things you’d do to get rid of a desperately-clingy girlfriend, rather than mutually beneficial attempts to cement your relationship.

This is particularly disappointing, since The Story of O‘s writer, Dominique Aury, co-wrote the script. But even outside of the sexual content, the rest of it is largely unconvincing, particularly the attempts at political commentary. At best, they dilute the focus, which should be on the Steven/O relationship with a fiery intensity. At worst – and this is much closer to where they lie – they have as much intellectual credibility as the opinions of an earnest high-school debate society geek. Even Kinski can’t do much to save proceedings, particularly in the dubbed version. It doesn’t help that his face is clad for much of the film in such an excess of white pancake make-up, I wondered if he was going to start walking into the wind or pretending to be inside an invisible box.

As noted earlier, Terayama knows his way around the camera, and the film does have some occasionally striking imagery and moments. O as a young girl, constrained by her father within a prison made entirely of chalk line on the ground (perhaps inspiring Lars Von Trier’s Dogville? That’s perhaps a stretch, but LVT has also showed himself not averse to including graphic sex in his movies either) One of the prostitutes is the only person who can hear music being played nearby, and after her suicide, the corpse rises out of the river by the brothel, on top of a grand piano. It’s the kind of grandiose moment which, logically, makes absolutely no sense, yet has to be applauded because of its insanity. There’s some creative use of filters, and overall, you can’t condemn the movie from a technical point of view.

From just about every other angle, however… Plenty of room for criticism, not least in that the sex scenes are virtually the only ones in which Klaus shows any enthusiasm for his role. It appears that Kinski wasn’t the only one in it purely for the paycheck either: Terayama supposedly took on the job, to finance some of his other artistic activities. It’s no surprise, therefore, that it comes off as far less memorable than, say, those works of Borowczyk such as La Bête. Successfully combining porn and art takes a significant degree of commitment, and it seems severely lacking from most of those involved here.

Dir: David Lean
Star: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Klaus Kinski

Adjusted for inflation, this is the most successful film at the North American box-office, in which Klaus ever appeared. The $111 million it took over half a century ago, would be close to ten times as much nowadays. Though it wasn’t even the biggest hit of the year: that was the other great totalitarian love-story of 1965 – the one with more nuns, The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews also kicked Omar Sharif’s butt at the Academy Awards, largely relegating Zhivago to technical awards, despite nominations including Best Picture and Best Director.

It wasn’t universally adored on release, and generally seems to be regarded as a bit less successful than the Lean/Sharif epic which preceded it, Lawrence of Arabia. Though it shares with that film an apparent belief that quality can be measured in minutes of running time. This was not uncommon in the sixties, peaking with Cleopatra, which premiered at a seat-numbing 248 minutes in length. This is relatively terse, at a mere 193 minutes in the original version (slightly longer in the 1992 re-release), although it doesn’t help that Zhivago opens with an overture – before even the MGM lion has shown up – and also extends itself with an intermission and an entr’acte.

The story takes place against the background of the Russian revolution. There’s a framing device, in which Bolshevik security officer Yevgraf Zhivago (Alec Guinness) questions a young woman whom he believes to be the daughter of his half-brother, the physician and poet, Yuri Zhivago (Sharif). She doesn’t remember much of her life or her father, so he fills in the lengthy back story. And in post-WW2 Russia, when a KGB officer wants to tell you a lengthy back story, you sit there and listen to the lengthy back story. Likely while trying to look incredibly interested, if you’ve any sense.

It’s basically a love-triangle, sprawling across three decades and thousands of miles of Eurasia. Yuri is orphaned as a child, and goes to live in Moscow with his mother’s friends. He studies hard, becomes a doctor and marries their daughter, Tonya (Chaplin). Meanwhile, Lara (Christie) is having an affair with a well-connected upper-class man, but being courted by young political firebrand Pavel Antipov (Tom Courtenay). When Lara’s mother learns of her daughter’s affair, she attempts suicide: Yuri is one of the attending doctors, which is how he meets Lara. She shoots her lover at a Christmas party, and marries Pavel, but works with Yuri as a nurse during World War I and the ensuing Bolshevik revolution. It’s during this time he falls for her.

After the war, Yuri is on thin ice, due to his decadent, bourgeois poetry, and Yevgraf arranges for his half-brother, Tanya and their child to find sanctuary in the Ural Mountains. However – what are the odds? – Lara shows up in a town nearby, and the two begin a passionate affair. This romance is interrupted only by Pavel now being a notorious Bolshevik commander, calling himself Strelnikov. Oh, plus Yuri’s involuntary recruitment into a local group of partisans for a couple of years. By the time he escapes, Tanya has fled to Paris, leaving Yuri and Lara to live happily eve… Nah, who am I kidding. This is gloomy Russian romance at its gloomiest. Long story short, they are split up, and years later (spoiler alert), Yuri drops dead of a heart attack on a Moscow street after seeing Tanya from a passing tram and trying to chase her.

There’s no denying the epic scope here, with some phenomenal photography,  courtesy of cinematographer Freddie Young (who replaced Nicolas Roeg a few days into the shoot). But I couldn’t quite bring myself to empathize with Yuri, who frankly, behaves like a bit of a dick to the loyal and dutiful Tanya. Look: you want to be with someone else, that’s fine. Go be with them. Don’t bounce back and forth, trying to have your blonde cake while eating the brunette version, too. It never works out for anyone. Maybe I’d cut him some slack, if we were convinced Zhivago was the genius poet frequently claimed: yet his actual poetry here is notable by its absence.

Let’s narrow the focus onto Kinski’s brief appearance. It’s a glorious performance, as anarchist Kostoyed Amoursky [not named in the film], who is one of the Zhivago’s fellow travelers, as they head east on a train, in a literal cattle car. He’s part of a forced labor platoon, convicted due to his counter-revolutionary views. While he may be captured, Amoursky is utterly unbowed, spewing venom and invective at everyone else, and proclaiming himself “the only free man on this train. The rest of you are cattle!” His preferred term of abuse appears to be “lickspittle,” a word which I feel deserves to be more frequently used in modern society – perhaps along with My Fair Lady‘s “guttersnipe.”

It’s only a few minutes of screen time in a very, very long movie, but is one of Kinski’s most scene-stealing roles. I was particularly surprised to see, despite being a relatively early entry – well before his partnership with Werner Herzog –  this is what you might call the archetypal Klaus role. By which I mean, an unhinged loose cannon, contemptuous of the world and absolutely convinced of his own moral and/or intellectual superiority. At a point where Kinski was mostly known for his performances in the German Edgar Wallace films, which were generally much more understated, it’s a fun precursor to the more… vocal, shall we say, roles which were to come.

Dir: László Benedek
Star: Hilde Krahl, Bernhard Wicki, Ursula Herking, Klaus Kinski

By coincidence this was watched not long after Decision Before Dawn, with which it shares some similarities in setting – both take place in Germany, during the last days of World War II. But they approach the topic from radically different angles, as they inevitably must, as a result of their very distinct origins. DBD was a story told from the Allied viewpoint, even if it had a German (working as a spy) at its main character. Kinder is from the perspective of those being invaded, and though neither film soft-pedals the devastation inflicted on the country, this is certainly the more downbeat entry.

A varied group of six women are thrown together by a common concern. Their teenage sons (and, in one case, brother) have absconded from their school in Stettin (now part of Poland, and called Szczecin), running off to join the battle against the encroaching Soviet forces. The women decide to head to the front and retrieve their children, taking them to safety by whatever means is necessary. It’s a journey fraught with danger, and when they reach the battle-zone, discover that getting their sons back is not going to be as easy as you might expect. They encounter resistance from both the commanding officers, who need every pair of hands they can find, and also the young recruits.

Kinski’s role in this is small, but fairly significant, in terms of establishing the downbeat, almost fatalistic atmosphere. On their route, the women take shelter in an abandoned inn for the night, only to be startled by the arrival of a platoon of soldiers, under the command of their Lieutenant (Kinski). He’s struggling to keep them in check, as he explains to the women:

“They’re stragglers, you see? They were collected from front command centers, and off the street. They gave them to me and said, “Take them to the front for a while.” Of course they don’t want to. They’ve had enough. They lay on the side of the road for a while and I don’t know what they thought about. Maybe about home, or something like you. But it’s of no use to them. They all have to go back. And perish.”

Because of this, to keep the group together, he has to enforce absolute discipline. The next morning, one of his soldiers refuses to go on, and to the horror of the women, is taken outside by the Lieutenant and shot as a deserter. Coincidentally, the victim is played by another future German star, early in his career: making his movie debut was Maximilian Schell, who would go on to win a Best Actor Oscar in the sixties, for his performance Judgment at Nuremburg. This was the only film in which they would work together.

This incident largely sets the bleak tone of the movie. [Skip this and the next paragraph is you want to avoid spoilers] At the front, one of the women, the widowed Helene Asmussen (Krahl), forms a relationship with Hauptmann Dornberg (Wicki), commander of the battalion where her son has been sent. [Wicki was also in Paris, Texas, where he played Doctor Ulmer, the man who rescues Harry Dean Stanton after he wanders out of the desert. Four years later, he’d direct the not dissimilar Die Brücke, also about teenage boys who volunteer in the last days of the conflict] She eventually succeeds in persuading him to disobey orders and save his men from inevitable death, by abandoning the battalion’s hopeless position to retreat instead, and letting the surviving boys go.

But just as they’re about to depart, the Russian stage an attack, and all men in uniform are recalled into action. The film ends with the mothers watching as their sons, once again, head off to face the enemy. “God in heaven, they’re really going back,” says the female pastor who has been part of the group. “Leave God out of it,” replies another mother. “It’s man’s doing. It’s always man’s doing…” The End. There is an alternative finale, which had me expecting a less downbeat version in which the families are re-united and escape from the front. Nope. It’s basically the same, only with slightly different final dialogue: instead of offering commentary about God and man, it’s a simple, “They’ve forgotten us. They will always forget us.” The End.

The screenplay was based on a book, Hauen Sie ab mit Heldentum, written by German author Herbert Reinecke and originally published as a serial in the magazine Quick. Reinecke worked in the propaganda department of the Waffen SS during the war. But save for a brief period in the wilderness immediately after its conclusion, “being a strong supporter of the Nazi regime,” according to his IMDb bio, doesn’t seem to have impacted his career too badly. He wrote several Edgar Wallace adaptations under the name of Alex Berg, including another Klaus Kinski vehicle, Creature with the Blue Hand, and found great success as a TV writer, with the series Derrick, which ran for 24 years. This is reported to be the performance which got Werner Herzog interested in Klaus as an actor. In My Best Fiend, Herzog recounts how Kinski’s character fell asleep at a table, and the actor had to portray the awakening. According to The Encyclopedia of Werner Herzog, “How he did it, forever determined the choice of the main actor in the career of Herzog.”

This is a solidly assembled if rather monotonous piece of work, with an anti-war message which, if anything, is probably over-emphasized. As in Decision, there’s a definite sense that Germany is – or at least, Germans are – depicted as the victim/s, rather than the aggressor/s. But given the time-frame, less than a decade after the end of a war that left the defeated nation completely devastated, it’s still impressive that the local film industry was able to face the nation’s recent history in such a relatively forthright manner. The performances, particularly from the women, are key in establishing the emotional heart of the film, and their love provides a worthwhile counterbalance to the destruction. Still, while I acknowledge it’s merits, this not a cinematic experience I likely have very much interest in going through again.

Dir: Anatole Litvak
Star: Richard Basehart, Oskar Werner, Hans Christian Blech, Klaus Kinski (uncredited)

On the one hand, got to be impressed that the second movie in which Klaus appeared, was nominated as Best Picture at the Academy Awards. On the other, it must be admitted that his single-scene, uncredited contribution was likely not responsible for the recognition. I also have to wonder if 1951 was a poor year for cinema. Not that this is a “bad” movie. It just doesn’t seem very Oscar-worthy – and, indeed lost out on the award, to An American in Paris. [Although, to answer my own question: the same gala also honored A Streetcar Named Desire and The African Queen, so the year didn’t suck]

It takes place in the later stage of World War II, with the Allied forces closing in on Germany, but still facing a battle from the Nazi armies. Intelligence officer Colonel Devlin obtains permission from his superiors to recruit agents out of German prisoners of war, and send them them back into their country to obtain crucial intelligence about the location of Axis units. The two chosen are codenamed “Happy” (Werner) and “Tiger” (Blech), and are parachuted behind enemy lines, along with American communications specialist, Lieutenant Rennick (Basehart).

Happy becomes the main focus of the film at this point, which is perhaps part of the problem. For at the start, it looked like Rennick, newly assigned to the intelligence group, was going to be the hero. But after touching down, Rennick and Tiger peel off, and we are suddenly following Happy as he makes his way through the bombed-out landscape of 1944 Germany. On his journey, he meets people of all types and levels: civilians and soldiers, ardent Nazis and Allied sympathizers, colonels and whores. Having obtained the needed information, Happy heads for Mannheim to link up with Tiger and Rennick, and head back to friendly territory. Except, getting home may be the most dangerous part of the mission.

A major selling point here is it being shot on location in Germany – or, as the trailer puts it, “Filmed at the burning crossroads of the world… where it ACTUALLY HAPPENED!” [capital letters as in original] This was made five years after the war ended, but there seemed still to be no shortage of bomb-sites for the film-makers to use; the one which is supposedly a theater is particularly effective. It does seem a bit soon to have Hollywood parking up, on what remains of your streets. I vaguely remember a B-movie guy (Albert Pyun?), making movies in somewhere like Sarajevo right after the civil war there, and that seems the level of exploitation hustle I’d expect to pull off this kind of thing.

It feels like a “war procedural”, for want of a better term, with a script endlessly fascinated with minutiae like the contents of Happy’s mission kit, right down to the precise maps included in it. Sometimes this matters – a detail concerning Nazi documentation turns out to be quite important later on. However, a lot of it isn’t at all necessary, and comes over as padding, especially in a film that runs close to two hours, and this in an era before there were 10 minutes of credits at the end of any epic film. This isn’t to say there are no sequences of merit or excitement. Just that there aren’t enough of them, and it instead feels too much like an apologia for the inhabitants of Germany who, with one exception, seem more like victims. I was left wondering why were we invading.

To Kinski’s brief contribution. You’d better have your popcorn ready and close to hand, because his entire screen time in this one lasts 12 seconds, and is over before the 11th minute of the film has ended. It comes when the Americans are interviewing potential candidates for their undercover mission. “I have never been interested in politics,” says Klaus, sounding disturbingly like a young Peter Lorre. However, he is rudely dismissed, without being able to get any further than his elevator pitch, never to be seen again. If you want to save yourself approximately one hour and fifty-seven minutes, here you go. You’re welcome!

The film claims to be based on a true story, with the names changed. It’s hard to be certain, but it’s quite possible this is the case, at least loosely. The film is based on a 1949 novel, Call It Treason, by George Howe. He was in the military during World War 2, Howe serving with the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA), and the U.S. Seventh Army in both Algeria and France, so could well have come in contact with similar agents. [The book is dedicated, “To Happy, 1925-1945”] The author was responsible for documentation and cover stories, which may go some way to explain the movie version’s resulting (over-)devotion to detail, reflecting similar content in the book; I believe scriptwriter Peter Viertel served in the same unit.

It does possess a level of  authenticity which you could only get at the time, and has now been lost forever. For example, Oskar Werner isn’t just playing a Nazi soldier. Like Kinski, he actually served in the Wehrmacht during World War 2, deserting in December 1944.  It’s easy to forget, almost every German on-screen here had direct, personal experience of the events being depicted, which is chilling to think about. Still, while I am inclined to read the book, this is probably the kind of story that works better overall, on paper than screen.

Dir: Luigi Bazzoni
Star: Franco Nero, Tina Aumont, Klaus Kinski, Guido Lollobrigida
a.k.a. Man, Pride & Vengeance

There’s a lot here which is intriguing, not least this being, to all intents and purposes, a spaghetti Western version of Carmen. Yeah, the opera by Bizet, one of the most famous of all time. Though, to be accurate, it and this film are both actually based on the much less well-known novella of the same name, written by Prosper Mérimée in 1845. Neither, however, could be described as being particularly accurate adaptations, beyond the basic story of a soldier who falls for a gypsy woman, in a fiery and ultimately doomed romance, due largely to her thoroughly untrustworthy nature.

I say “to all intents and purposes a spaghetti Western,” because it’s not actually set in America at all, but in 19th-century Spain. However, it shares many of the stylistic traits of the genre, to the point that in Germany, it was retitled – and relocated with geographical references to America! – in order to cash in on Nero’s best-known character, becoming Mit Django kam der Tod (With Django Comes Death). It’s not too much of a stretch, though there isn’t much in the way of gunplay here.

It opens with Don Jose (Nero), an officer in the Spanish army who is currently stationed in Seville. At a local factory, he encounters Carmen (Aumont), a ravishing Gypsy girl, who has just been given a job there. This doesn’t last long, after she takes offense at the comments of another worker, and Don Jose is given the job of escorting Carmen to the local police station. She deceives him and escapes, which leads to him being demoted down the ranks, but when they meet again, a passionate if destructive relationship begins.

Things take a turn for the particular worse after he finds Carmen in the arms of a superior officer. Her other lover tries to pull rank, to which Don Jose responds badly, and a brawl breaks out, ending in the death of the other man. This forces our hero to go on the run with Carmen, and together they plan a heist, that will allow them both to make a permanent getaway to a new life in the New World. She has a job as a servant in a rich household and uses that position to become the “inside woman” for a stagecoach robbery, which Don Jose will carry out.

Klaus Kinski plays Miguel Garcia, Carmen’s husband. Yeah, if that role comes as a surprise to you, think how poor Don Jose feels when he finds out about it. Though you’d think he might not be too shocked, given that loyalty and monogamy are clearly not Carmen’s strongest suits, even if in her defense, Miguel has just completed a stretch in prison. The two men take a near-instant dislike to each other, for reasons including but not limited to the obvious. Miguel also resents the interloper’s role as the man in charge, and his moral qualms, sneeringly referring to Don Jose as “Preacher”.

The robbery goes off, and off the rails as well – while the loot is successfully obtained, subsequent misadventures leave the perpetrators stranded in the remote mountains. There’s precious little honor among these thieves, and things inevitably degenerate as the perpetrators’ paranoia escalates, believing (not without reason) that their collaborators are intent on cutting them out of their share of the ill-gotten proceeds. The potential of Carmen’s affections just throw gas on the flames, and things progress downhill, towards a tragic ending which you’d have to be legally blind not to see coming.

I think it’s probably the largely amoral nature in which this comes closest to being a “true” spaghetti Western. Perhaps less so Don Jose than Carmen, who is a century and more ahead of her time, in terms of female emancipation. While you may not agree with her moral code, she does at least have one, and sticks to it, with an almost ruthless zeal. It makes her more interesting than the hero, who seems to swing back and forth between being driven by his passion for Carmen, and high moral ideals, at such a rate that whiplash seems inevitable. He also gets betrayed so often by her, it feels almost like the entire story is a sick joke at his expense.

Particularly in the first half, the pacing is significantly more stately than you might expect, with much more drama than action. But it never looks less than impressive, though that might just be the result of me knowing that future triple-Oscar winner Vittoria Storaro worked on this as a camera operator. Nero holds the attention of the audience as easily as you’d expect, and Aumont, the daughter of Maria Montez, is also effective enough in a role which feels as if it was written with Sophia Loren in mind. [Or even Gina Lollobrigida; her cousin, Guido, is actually in the cast]

Apparently, Kinski had injured his back shortly before shooting this one, or so I read, auditioning for a part in one of the “Stranger” series of spaghetti Western movies. He doesn’t appear to be holding back here, with some energetic action, including an extended fight between him and Nero after their tensions boil over into direct action. While it’s a relatively small part, it is a pivotal one, and doesn’t appear to be one of his typical “pay for play” quickie contract works, where Klaus’s enthusiasm is sometimes apparent by its absence.

How much you get out of this may depend on your expectations going in. I was expecting a straight-up Western, certainly not something inspired by Carmen, and it took a little while for my brain to adjust to the reality. But if you’re looking for something more dramatic and moodily intense than thrilling, this is worth a look. In Nero and Kinski you have two extremely solid actors, and given the prolific nature of both men’s output, it’s a bit of a surprise that this was the only time their paths would cross on screen.

Dir: Alfonso Balcázar
Star: George Martin, Marina Malfatti, Klaus Kinski, Daniel Martín
a.k.a. There’s a Noose Waiting for You… Trinity!

Trinity Harrison (Martin) returns to his family farm after spending years away from home. He had been tacking vengeance of the man who killed his brother and raped his sister-in-law, then spent time in prison before breaking out. His wife, Norma (Malfatti), is more than unconvinced by his sudden re-appearance, and his son, Jimmy, is even less impressed. However, Norma grudgingly agrees to take him back, as long as he swears never to touch his guns again. This is a problem, because there’s a gang in town, led by Slim (Martin) looking to railroad landowners off their land, so they can buy it up cheap and make a tidy profit from the railroad they know will be coming through. Their escalating strategy of tension pushes Trinity to the edge of his vow, but this reluctance to take direct action is seen as cowardice by Jimmy.

There’s another problem, in that his escape has led to a price being placed on Trinity’s head. Out to collect this is Scott (Kinski), a bounty hunter, who succeeds in trailing Trinity as far as the local town, but doesn’t have enough information to identify him definitively. So he hangs around the local saloon and watches with a jaundiced eye as events unfold and tensions escalate, until he gets the artistic rendering of Trinity’s face that he needs to make his move. Will Trinity be able to fend off the predatory takeover bid of Slim, and stop Scott from collecting on the bounty?

It’s apparently a semi-sequel, semi-remake of a film made five years earlier, Clint the Stranger. It also starred Martin, but for the sequel, both the hero and film were renamed in some territories, in order to cash in on the popularity of the previous year’s They Call Me Trinity, which is not related in any way. This was sometimes credited as being directed by Martin too, but appears instead to have been the work of Balcázar, who seems generally regarded as in the lower-tier of spaghetti Western auteurs. It wasn’t the first film in which Martin had appeared alongside Kinski; they had both also starred in Mister Zehn Prozent – Miezen und Moneten, made four years earlier. At least this time Martin keeps his shirt on past the opening credits.

Outside of one element, this is largely rote stuff: the gunslinger who isn’t allowed to retire in peace is among the most regular tropes in the genre, and there isn’t much in the script or performances to differentiate this version from the dozens of others. The difference here, you won’t be surprised to hear, is Kinski. This may have been just another one of his roles for hire, but Scott is far and away the most interesting character in the film. He elevates every single scene in which the bounty-hunter appears, even if he is doing no more than standing in the background, observing. You sense Scott’s mind is like a computer, taking all the information in, and figuring out what’s going to happen, and what his options are, three moves ahead.

It’s a sharp contrast to Trinity, who feels like he has strayed in from a much more traditional Western, demonstrating a normal set of morals and goals, e.g. just wants his family, doesn’t use violence except in extremis). The difference is demonstrated early on, when Scott explains his preference for bringing back his targets dead. “They’re quieter that way,” and he resents having to feed them. I imagine he only keeps them alive if the difference in bounty for doing so, is more than the cost of the food. This is pragmatism in its most pure, undiluted form, and can only be admired as such. Kinski is also sporting a mane of long, blond hair which is thoroughly unlike the traditional, close-cropped styles preferred by everyone else. Nobody ever calls him out on it, which is certainly the sensible option.

There’s a YouTube edit of the film out there, which includes only Klaus’s scenes, and there’s something to be said for it. What it loses in narrative coherence, is likely more than made up for in Kinski-esque intensity, and you could probably use the hour saved by this version, considerably more productively. For once the core scenario has been established, it’s necessary to fill the running time with subplots such as the other farmer who refuses to sell his land. He is framed by Slim and his crew for a bank robbery, and sentenced to hang. It’s just not very interesting, serving only in so much that it pushes Trinity toward the inevitable breaking point, which we all know is going to form the movie’s climax.

I am somewhat amused by Norma’s flexible moral standards, which completely forbid her husband to touch a gun, but are perfectly fine with him brawling his way through some surprisingly brutal bouts of fisticuffs. I should also mention the score is by genre legend Ennio Morricone, though there’s not much here that would identify it as such, and the soundtrack doesn’t even appear to have received any kind of standalone release. I’d have been happy to watch a series of films based on the exploits and adventures of Scott, seeing as this is a character which offers a wealth of potential, not least in the copious amount of moral ambiguity possessed. Still, the 30 minutes or so of Kinski goodness we get is decent nutritional value, even if the movie overall could have done with a tastier sauce to go with its helping of spaghetti.

Dir: Will Tremper
Star: Barbara Benton, Klaus Kinski, Hampton Fancher, Roman Murray
a.k.a. The Naughty Cheerleader,
or How Did a Nice Girl Like You Get Into This Business?

Boy, this is a strange animal. With a title which translates as “I Always Enjoyed It,” through the various alternate names, it positively promises to ooze sleaze and nudity. The reality? It’s positively PG-rated [maybe PG-13, at a stretch], and more of a bildungsroman, to use that good and appropriately German word. For it depicts the formative years of Lynn Keefe (Benton), from her first sexual experience, through an unwanted pregnancy, and various exploits in the Catskills, Boston and abroad, to discovering true love, in the arms of her Italian boyfriend, Gino.

Gino is played by the man who, a decade-plus later, would go on to write the first script for Blade Runner, Hampton Fancher. Also present here are Ed Begley Jr., playing a bell-hop at the hotel where Lynn works; Lionel Stander (best known for his role as the chauffeur Max, in Hart to Hart) in the part of an admiral whom she charges a hundred bucks for a romp on a bus; and Hugh Hefner, playing himself – he gets off a plane with Lynn standing next to him, which drives the tabloid press into a frenzy. Beside this, Kinski’s presence as a Spanish pimp seems almost reasonable, although his name – at least in one of the dubs – is less so: Juan José Ignatio Rodriguez de Calderon. There’s a reason the English language version calls him “Sam”.

There’s certainly the potential for copious amounts of gratuitous nudity here, which makes its complete absence all the more surprising. It’s especially unexpected, because Benton got her break into film and TV appearing alongside Hefner as an 18-year-old on Playboy After Dark, the previous year. Here’s a story too good to skip: according to Wikipedia, Hefner asked her on a date. She answered, “I don’t know, I’ve never dated anyone over 24 before,” to which he replied, “That’s all right, neither have I.” But it must have worked, as she was on the cover of Playboy four times, between 1969 and 1985, and well as inside on several occasions. In this, her feature debut, she’s more Julie Andrews… Well, if Julie Andrews were playing a teenager who had just discovered sex, anyway. Which would certainly have made The Sound of Music interesting.

Anyway, the story here unfolds in flashback, Lynn telling the story of her to life to a duke she meets by the side of a hotel swimming-pool. It starts with her approaching age sixteen and with a boring boyfriend, Ronnie, when she falls instead for the archetypal “bad boy”, Nick, who rides a motorcycle. He takes her virginity while on the back of the bike, which as a feat, can only be applauded, albeit certainly counting as severely “distracted driving.” She dumps Ronnie for Nick, which works only until their busy sex-life leads to the inevitable: Lynn gets pregnant. Nick will have nothing do with her, and she runs away from her home in Scranton, PA, vowing not to return until she has found a loving husband.

After brief stints in the hotel and modelling industries, and having suffered a miscarriage – yeah, this isn’t exactly your typical softcore plot! – the next significant takes place in Boston, where she gets a job as an elevator girl. There. she catches the eye (and other organs) of Frank Blake (Murray), a record company executive. She eventually agrees to be the honeypot in a sting operation, her underage charms the perfect lure into blackmail and subsequent loyalties of Bob Greene, the most influential DJ in the city. [From a 2016 perspective, I was getting a severe and pretty creepy Jimmy Savile vibe here. How times have changed…] Rewarded with a stake in the company, she’s eventually bought out by the other partners, who realize she can be “replaced by an $80 a week secretary.”

Now relatively well-off, she decides to try her luck in Miami Beach, which is where Juan José Ign… dammit, let’s call him Sam, comes in. On arriving at her hotel, Lynn is mistaken for one of the entrants in the imminent Miss Universe pageant, which gives Sam the pimp a great idea. Drawn by the beauty queens, there are a lot of well-heeled men rattling around, who’d pay up big cash for the opportunity to dally with a beauty queen. So he sets Lynn up in a suite and rents her out as Miss Luxembourg. Which goes well, until it gets exposed that he is running exactly the same scam with another girl in another room on the same floor – also calling her Miss Luxembourg. Was Miss Lichtenstein not available?

A necessarily quick exit for the pair later, they head for Europe, in particular to Rome where, after the Hefner cameo mentioned above, Sam introduces Lynn to “film producers”. Who mostly don’t appear to be, and if they are, appear only interested in having her get her kit off. But it does bring her across the path of Gino, who appears to love Lynn for herself, rather than very specific bits of herself. Sam’s eyes light up with dollar signs, since Gino is the son of an Italian millionaire, but his relationship with Lynn leads to him being cut off, and he is utterly useless at earning any legitimate income. Which brings us full circle, and back to Lynn at the side of the swimming pool.

The lack of anything even remotely explicit probably works in the film’s best interests, since you will remember it, when a million soft-core flicks of the decade have long been forgotten. It’s apparently based on a book by the real Lynn Keefe, under the “How did a…” title. Though I imagine it’s probably as truly “autobiographical” as the book on which Nastassja’s Passion Flower Hotel was supposedly based. But, from the loss of the heroine’s pregnancy on, it seems to zig when you think it’s going to zag, and is all the better for it. I’ll even forgive the obvious stunt casting, since Sam’s fashion sense is a perfect time capsule of the era. There’s a certain tasty irony present, both in the character he plays and in him being on the receiving end of Lynn’s freak-out when she discovers he has blown all their cash.

Dir: Jeremy Summers
Star: Bob Cummings, Rupert Davies, Maria Rohm, Klaus Kinski

It’s probably important to realize that this is a spoof as much as any kind of serious thriller. The comedic elements come mostly in the shape of Bob Mitchell (Cummings). He’s an American playboy who gets embroiled in things after he’s the recipient of a note referring to the titular gold-smuggling group, from a man who then takes a swan-dive from the penthouse of an apartment complex in Hong Kong. This brings him to the attention of the local police, in particular, District Commissioner Sanders (Davies), who has been tracking the group for a while, unable to figure out all their identities. When stewardess and gang courier Ingrid (Rohm) is kidnapped, Mitchell rides gallantly to the rescue, a route taking him through the night-club, filled with secret passages, which is the Dragons’ base.

I kept expecting Mitchell to reveal his true identity as an Interpol agent or something, but it never happens – he’s exactly the same, gently gormless gentleman he pretends to be, even if his background story mutates with every telling. Which makes the issue of why he’s the recipient of the note even stranger, since there’s no reason for the plummeted victim to have made sending Bob a clue, his last meaningful act rather than, say, sending it directly to the police. But let’s face it, this is less a rigorously-plotted crime thriller than a fizzy little jaunt, intent as much on showcasing Hong Kong and its tourist attractions as anything else. There’s no other way to explain the amazingly sedate pace of a rickshaw chase; seriously, both parties would have been better off hopping out and ambling on at a moderate speed.

Must admit, as a time capsule of mid-sixties Hong Kong, it works pretty well, featuring now-gone landmarks like the Tiger Balm Garden, with its iconic Tiger Pagoda, as well as some still extant, such as the Jumbo Kingdom Floating Restaurant in Aberdeen Harbor. I suspect my dad, who was posted to Hong Kong for his fifties’ National Service in the RAF, would probably have got a kick out of the location work here. It’s likely wise for the film to try and provide as many distractions as possible from the weak storyline, even if this means resorting to cringe-inducing puns. For instance, after Bob is flipped, kung-fu style, by Ingrid’s sister, and she asks “You are a Dragon, aren’t you?”, he replies painfully, “It’s not only dragging, I think it’s broken.”

The parade of guest stars seems to solve a similar purpose. The Dragons are a strangely Caucasian lot, considering where they’re operating, being played by Dan Duryea, Brian Donlevy, George Raft and Christopher Lee, which is an impressive supporting cast. Or would be, if they were given anything meaningful to do. Instead, they get little more than two scenes, shot suspiciously indoors (particularly compared to the rest of the film, which flaunts its Hong Kongness with blatant abandon), so you wonder if they even got a weekend in the colony out of it. I think the appearance of Japanese guest singer Yukari Ito also falls into this category, apparently a shallow and rather obvious early stab at the international box-office.

At least Klaus gets to do a bit more than mot of the guest stars in his role as Gert, particularly in the early going, where he’s the Dragons’ main enforcer, though never gets his sweaty hands on Bob. He certainly made it out to Hong Kong, and is seen whizzing around a number of the landmarks wearing an elegant bow-tie. Because, as we all know, bow-ties are cool… However, he takes more of a back-seat in the second half, with the focus split, roughly equally, between Mitchell on the one hand, and Sanders plus his side-kick, Inspector Chiao (Roy Chiao) on the other. Though the last named is actually a refreshing change, being at least the equal of Sanders in terms of overall competence, and is a Chinese actor in a role where his race is largely irrelevant. You didn’t see that very often in this era.

Kinski’s presence does seem to be an attempt to tie this production into the Edgar Wallace market – also to that end, DC Sanders was a character originally created by Wallace, though never a significant part of the crimi films in which Kinski starred. But no harm in spreading the funding net as far as possible, I guess. Under other circumstances, the romantic tension between Bob and Ingrid could have been creepy more than anything, especially by modern standards – at the time this was made, Cummings was in his late fifties, and Rohm barely in her twenties. But the film wisely decides to play the hero as perhaps even more naive, and he does have a certain goofy charm.

This was produced by Harry Alan Towers, a legendary producer who, earlier in the sixties, had jumped bail and fled America after being charged with running a vice ring. This might help explain why he seemed to get on well with Kinski, using Klaus in seven films produced between 1966-70. Towers was a fascinatingly dodgy character – not the kind of guy from whom you should accept an IOU, who was also alleged to have provided compromising information on people to the Soviets, and married Rohm, who appeared frequently in his movies.

Like most of his productions, this is no great art, yet equally clearly doesn’t have any pretensions in this department, which makes it somewhat immune to criticism. This is more a thin excuse than a story, a front for footage of exotic foreign locations, and names you will probably recognize from far better movies. That said, it kept me more entertained than some, even if Kinski is (as was generally the case in his supporting roles) not used to his best effect. At least he has plenty of company in that department for this production, alongside the similarly under-utilized Lee, Raft, etc.

Dir: Werner Herzog

At the end of this documentary, Herzog talks about the death of Kinski, shortly after they had finished shooting Cobra Verde and says, “He had spent himself. He burned away like a comet. Afterwards he was ashes.” Chris was watching this, and she turned to me and quoted exactly the line from Blade Runner I was thinking about: “The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long – and you have burned so very, very brightly.” [And as an aside, wouldn’t Kinski have been awesome as Roy Batty? Though Rutger Hauer was pretty damn good, of course] It’s an appropriate memorial to Kinski, beginning with footage from Klaus’s performance as Christ, later to surface in its entirety as Jesus Christus Erlöser, and ending with the other side of the man, as he stands quietly with a broad grin on his face, and lets a butterfly flutter on and around him (above).

It’s almost difficult to believe these are the same person, especially for someone like me, who is phlegmatic in nature – I never get particularly high, never get particularly low. The Kinski depicted here seems almost clinically bipolar, capable of great rage but also great affection, even to the same person, with Herzog being present at both ends of the Kinski behavior spectrum. Their relationship was a complex one, and the film is as much a portrait of Werner as Klaus. They first knew each other back in a Munich boarding house, when he was a young teenager, with his family and Kinski tenants in the same building. Herzog describes an incident where the actor locked himself in the bathroom for 48 hours: “In his maniacal fury, he smashed everything to smithereens. The bathtub, the toilet bowl – everything. You could sift it through a tennis racket.”

Yet you also get a clear sense that the myth of Kinski was a carefully constructed facade, even from the earliest days. For example, the idea that Klaus was a “natural” actor is contradicted by another boarding-house story, as Herzog says “You could hear him in his closet, for ten hours non-stop, doing his voice and speaking-exercises.” The same goes with Kinski’s autobiography, which Herzog calls “highly fictitious”, and says Klaus told him, “Werner, nobody will read this book if I don’t write bad stuff about you. If I wrote that we get along well together, nobody would buy it.” This fits in with a fond conceit of mine, that Kinski’s entire reputation, indeed his entire public life, was a massive troll. Perhaps something along the lines of Joaquin Phoenix’s I’m Still Here, right up to and including the sexual abuse allegations leveled by his daughter, Pola, who is in on it all. Or perhaps I’m just in denial a supremely talented actor, can also be such a cunt.

The facet of Kinski and his relationship with women is equally inconsistent. Herzog interviews Eva Mattes and Claudia Cardinale, the co-stars alongside Klaus in Woyzeck and Fitzcarraldo respectively. He warns that Mattes was one of the few women who had anything good to say about Kinski,” but both of the actresses speak in warm terms about him. For example, Mattes says Klaus was “a very professional actor, the most professional I have ever known,” which seems somewhat at odds with other footage, such as the near-endless tirade of Kinski’s, against Walter Saxer, Herzog’s production manager on Aguirre. It might have been enlightening to hear from some of the women who could present the other, darker side of Kinski, though admittedly, at the time this was made, Herzog could have little idea of the accusations to come from Klaus’s own family.

That’s another area which could have done with more exploration. Outside of the boarding-house anecdotes, and a couple of scenes from early Kinski film Kinder, Mutter und ein General, it feels as if Klaus sprung, more or less fully-formed, onto the set of Aguirre. Not a mention, for example, of his work in the sixties when he was a staple of the krimi genre. Also, if you’ve seen Burden of Dreams, then good chunks of this will likely be relatively familiar [You’ll likely also be left thanking dysentery, for saving us from the prospect of a Fitzcarraldo which starred, as originally cast, Jason Robards and Mick Jagger…] If I’ve learned one thing during this project, it’s that there was so much more to Kinski than just his features with Herzog, and the glimpses of this given here e.g. his spoken-word work, the Christ performance, are frustratingly brief.

Still, I guess this does go back to this being about, as mentioned earlier, both Herzog and Kinski; it’s not intended to be a biography of the latter’s entire life, fascinating though that would certainly be. [It would be fascinating to hear from some of the other directors who, like Herzog, worked more than once with Kinski, such as Jess Franco, and hear how they handled the experience]. One thing it does bring out are the similarities between the two, which are undeniable. At one point, someone says to Werner, “You would have also been a good Fitzcarraldo. That’s what you are, in reality,” and you can’t argue with that. There are other elements which feel so excessive the entire thing almost borders on a mockumentary, and again, you have to remind yourself this is not actually the film-making version of This is Spinal Tap.

I can’t say I left with any particularly enhanced understanding of the strange, wild man who is the subject of this documentary. If anything, you’ll probably end up being more confused than ever. For even focusing just on the Herzog/Kinski dynamic, we have a relationship where, on the one hand, the director seriously considered the actor’s death on multiple occasions (according to Herzog, “One day I seriously planned to firebomb him in his house. This was prevented only by the vigilance of his Alsatian shepherd”). Yet, on the other, I defy anyone to look at the footage it includes of them together at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, and see anything except two artists with a deep respect for each other. There has likely never been another relationship like this in the history of cinema, and we are all enriched by it.