Category: Filmography

La legge dei gangsters (1969)

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Dir: Siro Marcellini
Star: Maurice Poli, Franco Citti, Klaus Kinski, Hélène Chanel
a.k.a. Gangsters’ Law

There’s more than a hit of Reservoir Dogs here – or, perhaps that should be Serbatoio Cani? We begin with a shoot-out in the streets of the Italian city of Genoa, where bank robbers are being pursued by the cops as they attempt to getaway with their 50 million lira haul. Reinforcements on the side of the thieves turn up, allowing them to make their getaway. But only at cost, one of them having been badly wounded in the exchange. As they head away, we flash back to seeing what took the gang to that point, and also forward to see how things unfold. Which may, or may not, involve one of them being an informer for the cops.

We start with Bruno Esposito (Citti), a kid from the country who has come up to live and work in the city. When he gets involved in a brawl at a disco, the resulting fall-out gets him fired from his job in a body-shop, and begins his drift into the world of crime. A car theft turns into a house burglary, which brings this angry young man into the sphere of crime boss Rino (Poli), who sees something of himself in Bruno. Also recruited is a young hanger-on to the upper classes, because Rino finds out he had set that up in order to swipe some jewels from his girlfriend, Contessa Elena Villani, and pay off a gambling debt. He spends his time at hippie discos, saying things like, “We don’t dig girls who are uptight and with bourgeois morality.”

Kinski’s character, Regnier, and his ever-present hat (more on which later), are introduced just after the half-hour point, casually buying his girlfriend an expensive ring, He turn out to be the financier for the operation, and drives a hard bargain when negotiating with Rino. Regnier demands 50% of the take, even though, as Rino points out, it’s the gang who will be taking most of the risks. We also get to see his romantic technique with his moll, which is best described as imitating a leopard eating off someone’s face. I guess when you are being bought some really expensive jewellery, you have to put up with that kind of animalistic pawing. In the role of his girlfriend, Donatella Turri does quite a good job of pretending to enjoy it though.

The robbery plan is to take the white van belonging to the bank messenger out of commission, and then send a stand-in – hopefully one which is convincing enough to pass muster – in his place to collect the cash. This works, but the sudden arrival of the police on the scene precipitates the shoot-out with which we opened. They only escape by the skin of their teeth, taking their casualty with them. When everyone meets up after the event, the financier shoots the injured man dead, to the disgust of Rino – presumably for fear of an unwanted loose end. However, this causes Rino to rip up the original deal, telling Regnier he’s lucky to be getting to walk away with the life. Needless to say the industrialist feels otherwise.

He celebrates the success of the endeavor, by hooking up with his girlfriend for another session of intense face-nibbling. At least Regnier does her the courtesy of taking off his hat first. Though he then shoots her, before reclaiming the ring. I guess her face can’t have tasted all that good. The rest of the gang have split up, and are hiding out, while they wait for the heat to die down. With the police having blocked the roads out of town, they’re forced to stay in Genoa – which makes it considerably easier for Regnier to find them. One is killed by the side of the road; another in a hall of mirrors. Rino is quickly figuring out what’s up, but it’s Bruno who gets to go toe-to-toe against Regnier, in an extended battle down by the water.

The most remarkable feature of which, is probably the way that Regnier’s hat remains attached to his head through 90% of the brawl. That’s fair enough when he is stalking his prey. But even when they are rolling around on the ground or flailing boat-hooks at each other, the hat stays on. It’s not until they begin splashing about in the shallows, that it finally parts company (and I was sad to see it go), shortly before Bruno gains the upper hand and drowns his one-time accomplice. Not that it helps him much, as the police arrive, in hot pursuit, and take him into custody. Rino tries to make it out of the country by boat, but the authorities get tipped off and are waiting. He goes all James Cagney and refuses to let them take him alive.

It’s all rather fragmented, and there seems to be a lot of things which happens without explanation. Why does Regnier get so bent out of shape about the robbery causing a shoot-out? How do the police know where to be? Shouldn’t somebody at the bank notice that the messenger, whom they clearly know well, isn’t the messenger? Why didn’t the gang hold onto the van they diverted, and prevent the alarm from being raised? All of these are poorly explained, and the bouncing around between the multiple characters isn’t managed particularly well either.

I did like the score by Piero Umiliani, a composer about whom I spoke a bit, in my review of Death’s Dealer. It manages to cover quite a lot of bases, in terms of both styles and emotions, yet does so effectively. Otherwise, though, there’s not much to recommend this. Outside of Kinski’s presence – playing another weird character – it’s not one I’d say was worth bothering with, unless you’re a hardcore completist for Eurocrime flicks

And God Said to Cain (1970)

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Dir: Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony Dawson)
Star: Klaus Kinski, Peter Carsten, Marcella Michelangeli, Antonio Cantafora

Of all the many spaghetti Westerns in which Kinski was involved, this likely deserves to be considered as among the very best. For a Few Dollars More and The Great Silence are perhaps better overall, but that’s including the non-Klaus elements like cinematography and music. For pure, undiluted Kinski, this is probably the best, and it’s notable for going against type. Klaus is the hero. Yes, that is not a typo. He plays a good guy, not a deceitful snake. Sure, he’s still a grim and remorseless killer. But he’s a grim and remorseless killer for a reason, and in the Western genre, that makes all the difference between sporting a black hat and a white one.

He plays Gary Hamilton, who was unjustly sentenced to hard labor for reasons we eventually discover, and has spent the last decade breaking rocks, before receiving entirely unexpected clemency, due to his previous honorable service in the military. Immediately on release, Gary sets about taking revenge on the man responsible for putting him behind bars, Acombar (Karsten), who is now enjoying a very pleasant life, and the fruits of his ill-gotten gains. Not the least of which is Gary’s woman, Maria (Michelangeli), who switched sides to become Acombar’s moll. He’s less than pleased to hear Gary is out, and dispatches his minions (including Gina Lollobrigida’s cousin, Guido) to ensure the disgruntled ex-prisoner doesn’t even reach Acombar’s ranch.

The above all takes place within the first 25 minutes, with the remaining 70 largely devoted to Gary’s assault. The town is under a tornado warning, meaning the streets are deserted as the storm swirls around, except for our hero and Acombar’s man. But Gary has a big advantage, in that he was brought up in the town, and knows it like the back of his hand. This includes the network of tunnels running underneath it, which he uses to outflank and sneak up on the hapless opponents. His war is as much a psychological one as physical, for example, ringing to church bell to lure in the enemy. He does this not once, but twice – only, on the second occasion, one of their number is dangling at the end of the bell-rope. He then sets up another to be crushed by the giant bell.

It’s established early on he’s a crack-shot, and is supremely confident in his own abilities. By coincidence, he arrives in town on the same stage as Acombar’s son, Dick (Cantafora), who is entirely unaware of the source of his family wealth, and quite deliberately gives up the element of surprise. “You tell your father, Gary Hamilton’s back in town,” he says, adding even more ominously, “And I’ll see him at sundown.” Again, this is part of his psychological approach, knowing this will force Acombar into action. Perhaps a wiser tactic would have been to shore up his defense, and hunker down to wait for Gary’s arrival, rather than going out to meet on his terms and turf.

It does definitely take a little bit of getting used to seeing Klaus in a “heroic” role. Though, as noted above, it’s perhaps closer to an anti-hero, given Gary clearly has no aversion to spilling blood, and is entirely and single-mindedly focused on making Acombar pay. This is a man on a mission, not interested in chat, and impossible to dissuade. You might as well try and talk the tornado out of its destructive path. And by the time the end credits roll, that vengeance is utterly complete. His target has lost everything that matters: the respect of his son, his woman, all his men, his ranch and, only then, his life. Yeah, that’s technically a spoiler. But did you really expect it to end in any other way?

There are apparently strong similarities between this and 1968’s A Stranger in Paso Bravo, in which a man, unjustly imprisoned is released to seek revenge on those responsible. Now, that’s hardly a new story, and you could write this off as parallel development. Except for the hero’s name in Stranger being… Gary Hamilton, with the antagonist called Acombar. Hmm. The two films have different scriptwriters, but the coincidences are just too much to overlook. I have not seen Stranger, but those who have universally say that Cain is the superior adaptation. So while I’m in no rush to see what will likely seem like a poor knock-off, it is something which should likely be acknowledged.

Margheriti turned his hand to just about every genre over his forty-year career as a director. But in the first of his four times working with Kinski, it’s perhaps his horror experience which comes through most. That dates back to 1964’s black and white Castle of Blood, later remade in color with Kinski as Web of the Spider. A dark and stormy setting (even if the day-for-night photography sometimes isn’t too successful), plus an unstoppable killing machine, perhaps makes this an ancestor of Halloween – if Michael Myers were the good guy. There’s certainly no shortage of impressive visual style, up to the rather contrived “hall of mirrors” finale between Hamilton and Acombar. This was likely inspired by Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai, though in my personal lexicon of cinema, it felt more like the final showdown in Enter the Dragon.

I’ve read a couple of pieces suggesting Gary is actually a ghost – he died in prison, and it’s his vengeful spirit, which returns to seek out and destroy Acombar. It’s an interesting thought, but does seem at odds with an early scene in the quarry where he and his fellow inmates are laboring. He kills a rattlesnake, despite being informed, “There’s one way out of this place.” “That’s not the way I want to go,” replies Hamilton, which seems less like a specter, and more like a man intent on clinging on to life, at least until he has achieved his revenge. #LifeGoals, I guess. I’m also a bit confused by the title, referring to the Biblical story in which Cain murdered his brother, Abel in an unjustified fit of rage. Hard to think of anything less like what we have here. Still, that doesn’t stop it from being one of Kinski’s absolute best.

Return of Shanghai Joe (1975)

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Dir: Bitto Albertini
Star: Cheen Lie, Tommy Polgár, Klaus Kinski, Karin Field
a.k.a. Che botte ragazzi!

It took the makers of My Name is Shanghai Joe considerably less time to make a sequel after the original, than it took me to watch it. Turns out I covered the original more than six years ago, which probably explains why I don’t remember much about it. Re-reading my review, seems I enjoyed it, at least on an entertainment level. The same can not be said to the same extent for the sequel, which is trying considerably harder on the comedy level than either the kung-fu or Western ones. And not with a great deal of success, either.

It can fairly be said that this is a “Return”, in only the loosest possible sense. There’s a different director, Albertini (best known for the Black Emanuelle films, starring Laura Gemser) taking over from Mario Caiano. There’s a new star, Cheen replacing the similarly-named – not coincidentally, I’m sure – Chen Lee. Writer Carlo Alberto Alfieri does return: he’d go on to be an executive producer on both Paganini and Vampire in Venice. Klaus is about the only significant actor to be in both movies. But even he plays a completely different character – out of necessity, since ‘Scalper Jack’ did not survive his encounter with Joe in the previous film. At least there’s a good helping of Kinski here, unlike last time, when it was little more than an extended cameo.

Proceedings here open with general charlatan, Bill Cannon (Polgár), trying to detect water with a divining rod for a Mexican village. He actually finds oil instead, which brings the place to the attention of Pat Barnes (Kinski). Barnes is a land shark of the most vicious kind, who had used threats and flat-out violence to acquire a large portfolio of territory and businesses, in and around the city of Glenwood. However, it’s not all plain sailing. When his men try to muscle in on the Mexicans, Shanghai Joe (Cheen) sends them off, in no uncertain terms. Worse still, after Barnes’s pet magistrate dies suddenly, a replacement, Judge Finney, is on the way to town with his pretty daughter, Carol (Field). And there’s no guarantee he’ll be as malleable as his predecessor.

Meanwhile, Bill has returned to his day-job as a snake-oil salesman. On the road, he helps an injured Mexican bandit, Pedro Gomez, who had been allied with Barnes until being betrayed by him. Before dying, Gomez proves a wealth of information about Barnes and his operation. He bequeaths his corpse to Bill, so he can collect the $1,000 bounty. But doing so puts Bill on Barnes’s radar as a possible threat, and has to be disposed of. Fortunately, Joe is in the right place at the right time to stop the fake robbers from dangling Bill. This is not the first time Joe has run interference against Barnes: he had previously stopped an assassination attempt on Judge Finney, and won big on craps at the saloon. So he joins Bill on the businessman’s hit-list.

Finney is beginning to ask some uncomfortable questions about Barnes’s business practices. When his lawyer, Jonathan Smith, proves a potential weak-spot following an interview by the judge, Barnes decides to kill two birds (somewhat literally) with one stone: have Smith murdered and frame Joe for the crime. Bill repays his debt of life by alerting Judge Finney, just in time to save Joe from a lynching. And it turns out Smith had already given a full confession, incriminating Barnes. Bill helps Joe escape jail, and when the sheriff tries to arrest Barnes on Finney’s warrant, he’s shot for his pains, though this does make him realize Joe’s innocent.

Barnes abducts Carol and tries to make a stand at his hacienda, with her as a hostage. When forced to flee from there, Joe gives pursuit, but discovers that no matter how good your martial arts, a bullet will always be quicker. Fortunately, Bill is there to lend support with a weapon of his own, and Barnes gets gunned down just as he’s about to administer the coup de grace to Joe. This feature a surprisingly good stunt fall by Kinski, head first over a boulder onto what looks like a thoroughly unyielding surface. There doesn’t appear to be any opportunity for a stunt double either, since the shot begins with a medium close-up of Klaus.

To be honest, I didn’t think much of this at the time. But it got a second go-around during this write-up, and it seemed to play a bit better that time. Oh, there are still substantial flaws, such as the abominably jaunty theme-song, which appears to break out every time Joe goes in battle. And that happens a lot… It also doesn’t help that the martial arts on view here are feeble, even by the low standards of Italian comedy Westerns. The IMDb says this was the only role for Cheen, and it’s easy to understand why (though that may also have been a pseudonym adopted purely for this production*), since he possesses no screen presence at all. Meanwhile, Polgár is channeling Bud Spencer so hard, my teeth began to hurt, and the final revelation, that Joe is a federal agent… “I didn’t see that coming” is the kindest comment I can make.

The big positive is the sharply-increased quantity of Klaus – the Kinski Kuotient, if you will. As the main antagonist, he seems to pop in about every 10 minutes. Things inevitably liven up when he does, though the love triangle between Barnes, Carol and a previous victim of Barnes’s shenanigans, Manuel Garcia, doesn’t go anywhere. But it’s always fun to see him berating and slapping around his hapless and incompetent minions after they have, once again, failed in their allotted tasks. While unlikely to make it onto anyone’s list of ten greatest Kinski performances, this did help stop the film from becoming the painful dud it occasionally resembles.

* According to the Spaghetti Western Database, this is indeed a pseudonym, and was the final film of Ernest Van-Mohr.

Venus in Furs (1969)

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Dir: Jesus Franco
Star: James Darren, Maria Rohm, Barbara McNair, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Paroxismus – Può una morta rivivere per amore?

Watching the first couple of minutes of this, I was forcibly reminded of why I generally regard Franco as a talentless hack, who couldn’t direct his way out of a paper-bag. It begins with jazz trumpeter Jimmy Logan (Darren) digging his instrument up off a Turkish beach – for no reason we ever discover. He’s doing some random noodling on it, when he spots something washing up on the sand. Hanging his instrument on a convenient breakwater, he runs towards it… then Franco suddenly breaks into slow-motion. This was quickly shaping up to be the longest 86 minutes of my life.

But, actually, by the end, I was… Well, the word “enjoying” is probably still incompatible with me and any Franco movie, but I will stretch to tolerating it. There’s a lot here which is derisory, first and foremost being Logan’s voice-over, which drones on for virtually the entire movie, while failing to add anything of use. You’d think it might accidentally run into some insight, given the near-incessant commentary it provides, but no such luck. This reaches peak superfluousness near the end when it recites, word-for-word, the inscription on a gravestone which is clearly visible on screen. While it’s nice that Franco is taken the legally-blind into consideration here, those of us with functioning ocular equipment could do very well without it. And that’s not even counting painfully dated lines like, “Man, it was a wild scene, but if they wanted to go that route, it was their bag.”

It’s probably best to treat this as a cinematic love-letter to Rohm, then married to producer Harry Alan Towers. For the body of her character, Wanda Reed, is what Jimmy stumbles across on the beach. Cue a flashback to when he was playing at a ritzy party, when Wanda appears, drawing everyone’s attention, but in particular his. She wanders off with three friends: fashion photographer Olga, Arab playboy Ahmed Kortobawi (Kinski) and art dealer Percival Kapp. Jimmy follows and watches in horror as the trio sexually abuse, whip and eventually kill Wanda. Back in the present, he flees Istanbul for Rio after finding her corpse, but is stunned when Wanda – or someone identical to her – shows up there, and begins to extract vengeance on her three killers.. Jimmy become obsessed with the mysterious Wanda – much to the sadness of Rita (McNair), his singer girlfriend.

As should be clear from the above, any similarity to the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is purely coincidental. Though, along with Justine (another Franco/Towers feature), it does make Kinski part of an elite club: actors who have appeared in films named after the works of the men whose names gave us both the words of sadism and masochism. Yeah, that’s probably just a tad convoluted. This was never intended to be based on Sacher-Masoch’s book. The name was taken fairly late in the day, for purely commercial reasons – perhaps to cash in on the Velvet Underground song, which was released in 1967. Its original title was Black Angel, which remained the case in Germany. The Italian one given at the top translates as “Paroxismus – Can a dead woman live again for love?”, and should probably be considered as a bit of a spoiler.

For once, the delirious, dream-like quality of Franco’s directorial style works for the film, reflecting a world where we’re never quite sure what is objectively real. Indeed, the ending, with its not one but two (marginally) shocking and (extremely) implausible twists, seems to suggest the answer is: not much. Still, you can drift through its globetrotting, psychedelic fluffiness without it ever requiring too much attention, and a frequently unclad Rohm is not exactly a chore to look at. However, I could have done without a soundtrack which is best described as jazz honking of the most annoying kind. I was amused that it was partly-created by Mannfred Mann of Earth Band fame. He appears in the movie as a pianist, while Franco also cameos as a musician, playing the trombone.

It’s also very obviously padded, with about 40 minutes of actual content. There’s the initial murder, and the three scenes in which Wanda takes her revenge. Maybe add on the final reveals – though the jury is still out on the necessity of the car chase which precedes it, between the police and Jimmy + Wanda. Everything else? Skippable, particularly the gratuitous footage of Rio’s carnival. I’d have been happy to trade all of that for a slightly better explanation of what precisely is going on. The “trio of vengeance” sequences are not bad, being atmospherically shot, and imbued with a spooky sensuality, largely thanks to Rohm. Particular toasty is the encounter between Wanda and Olga. It begins with the former fondling a statue, in a manner that’s far more erotic than it has any right to be.

Kinski, playing an Arab (!), all but vanishes for the middle hour of the film, being the last of Wanda’s killers to receive their come-uppance. It is a little bit different from the previous, where she just seems to show up and guilt them either into a heart attack or suicide. This time, we get a kinda Arabian Nights-esque tale about a sultan and his obsession with a slave girl, that ends in the sultan/Ahmed dying of sexual ecstacy. But it’s little more than an extended cameo for Klaus, and the few lines he does have are dubbed. However, according to Franco, he did also work on the screenplay here, though Klaus didn’t receive any screen credit for it.

This should not be confused with the other Euro-flick of the same name, made the same year – that one was directed by Massimo Dallamano, and is rather more masochistically inclined. Nor should this be confused with a good movie. For I defy anyone to watch it, and provide an explanation to cover everything that happens, which makes logical sense, rather than raising more questions than it answers. That’s certainly not uncommon in Jesus Franco movies. But for once, I’ll tolerate it.

Psycho-Circus (1966)

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Dir: John Moxey
Star: Leo Genn, Christopher Lee, Anthony Newlands, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Circus of Fear

Regardless of what the IMDb says, I’d say that Circus was less the “also known as” than Psycho. The former was the original title for this British production. The rather more lurid name was applied for its American release, which also slashed close to half an hour from the running time. I’ve no idea what this did to the coherence of what is a pretty busy plot, but it can’t have been good. There is even a third alternative version: when released in Germany, this color production was shown in black-and-white. This was done in order to make it more consistent with the local Edgar Wallace productions, which were not yet being made in colour.

For, despite its thoroughly British setting, and largely British cast, this is a krimi, apparently based on Wallace’s novel, The Three Just Men (though some sources cite other books). It was co-produced by Constantin Film, who were also responsible, with local studio Rialto, for most of the German adaptations of Wallace’s work. Several of these were supposedly set in Britain, e.g. The Dead Eyes of London, though stock footage typically played an important role in establishing the locale for these. No such subterfuge was used here, with the movie shot at Bray Studios, the home of Hammer Films, and on location around the South of England. Billy Smart’s Circus, a British icon of the time, provided the circus setting, as it also did for other sixties productions, including Circus of Horrors and Berserk.

However, to improve the cross-over appeal, several English-speaking stars of the German franchise were sent over to the UK to take part. Not only Klaus is present, but also Eddi Arent, another veteran of many of the Rialto krimis, making a relatively rare (especially compared to Kinski’s globe-trotting career) excursion into another country’s film industry. He plays the circus accountant, Eddie, who wants to become a performer in the ring. Heinz Drache also appears, as circus ring-master Carl. But it’s a while before anything tent-related shows up. Initially, this is a heist film, with an armored car being held up and robbed of its cash contents on Tower Bridge, the perpetrators getting away down the Thames, by boat. Kinski plays Manfred Hart, the smuggler charged with getting the loot out of the country.

However, there’s a wrinkle, in that a member of the gang, Mason (played by Victor Maddern, a face familiar from many Brit-flicks of the time) shoots one of the van’s guards, who subsequently dies. Mason is sent off to deliver the loot to a location near Windsor, but ends up with a knife thrown into his back. Some of the stolen and now vanished money starts turning up in local businesses, drawing the attention of Scotland Yard’s Inspector Elliott (Genn), who is under increasing pressure from his boss to find the culprits and recover the cash. His attention is drawn to Barberini’s Circus, wintering nearby. But when he starts to investigate it and its owner (Newlands), this opens an entirely new and even more murderous can of criminal worms. Not helping the overall sense of menace is Hart’s presence, as he also seeks to find the cash-filled suitcase.

For the circus itself has no shortage of odd characters, probably headlined by Gregor the lion-tamer (Lee), who wears a mask to conceal a badly-scarred face. There’s also a hyper-jealous knife thrower, his wandering fiancee (Margaret Lee), Gregor’s niece (Suzy Kendall), the ring-master and Eddie the accountant mentioned above, plus a midget (Skip Martin) with a fondness for lurking in the shadows and blackmail. By the time all is said and done, there will be multiple further dead bodies, and the original heist will be all but forgotten by Inspector Elliott. The finale, in which he gathers the performers together in the ring, is instead all about revealing the circus shenanigans. The question of the mysterious “Mister Big” behind the robbery, whose anonymity is specifically mentioned early on, is never answered.

Despite the (quite glorious) Italian poster above, and also gracing the film’s opening shot, Kinski is very much a supporting character, working again for producer Harry Alan Towers, who wrote the screenplay here under the pseudonym of Peter Welbeck. Like the midget, Hart spends most of his time lurking in the shadows, in his case watching to see if he can figure out the loot’s location before Elliott does. There’s only one scene at the circus where he has much to say for himself, an oddity where he pops in to ask for a job, presumably in an effort to go undercover. He’s rather less than forthcoming with the requested personal information, shall we say:

Carl: What’s your name?
Hart: That’s my business.
Carl:  I see. Have you ever worked in the circus before?
Hart: Maybe.

Unsurprisingly, he’s not employed, and thereafter, Hart is back to lurking on the outside. He meets an undignified fate, also at the business end of a throwing knife. Though as shown above, Hart does get to clutch a gigantic carnival-esque head as he goes down to the straw in the barn of his demise. There is, however, enough other stuff going on here, that the viewer may hardly even notice – perhaps after a brief pause, to cross Hart off the list of possible killers. The film does a fairly good job of keeping the multiple different threads moving, and I’ll confess that I didn’t guess the identity of the killer until it was revealed. However, I will say that the usual guideline of it being the least likely person, might get you pointed in the right direction.

It does feel a bit of a waste to have an icon like Lee spend 90% of the film hidden behind a ski-mask, even if there’s no concealing his sonorous tones, or his imposing figure. But this is an ensemble piece, with Lee taking a back-seat to Genn, who delivers a nicely likeable turn. I was especially amused with the way Elliott deftly handles his irascible boss, and was also struck by the footage of London and Docklands, pre-gentrification, which really adds to the period air. All told, I felt this was very much the equal of any of the German Wallace adaptations, and didn’t even mind the relatively early exit of Kinski too much.

Il mano spietata della legge (1973)

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Dir: Mario Gariazzo
Star: Philippe Leroy, Tony Norton, Sylvia Monti, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. The Bloody Hands of the Law

The force of organized crime is reaching out with impunity in contemporary Italy, under the control of the mysterious Vito Quattroni (Kinski). The film opens with the assassination of crime family member Frank Esposito, who is recuperating in hospital, under police custody. Obviously, this triggers a massive police investigation. Though the cop in charge, Commissario Gianni De Carmine (Leroy) feels handcuffed by the new approach to policing, and would far rather continue his approach, which largely consists of extracting confessions from people through violence.

It doesn’t help that any time progress is made, and a potential witness found by authorities, Quattroni and his minions quickly tidy up the loose end by killing them before they can provide any useful evidence. It’s apparent that there’s someone inside the police, feeding information to the bad guys which allows them to keep one step ahead of the police. De Carmine, in between bouts of lounging around in bed with wife Linda (Monti), decides that the only way he can match them, is to go all lone wolf, and revert to his former, punchier methods of investigation. It’s kinda a case of “If you can’t beat them… Well, go ahead and beat them anyway.”

The seventies was very much a time of change for police around the world, with the concept of rights for those in custody becoming more prevalent. The tension between this and “old-school” officers was a common source of inspiration for fictional police, and not just in Italy. Dirty Harry (1971) was probably the source for many. Though what comes most immediately to mind as a comparison for this is British TV show The Sweeney, which was a huge success from 1975-78. In it, John Thaw played a London equivalent of De Carmine – which meant running round and yelling “You’re nicked, my son!” at suspects, before or after pounding them into submission.

These all tended to have a sympathy for their protagonists, who were typically depicted as well intentioned law officers, who needed to be able to play the criminals without restriction, in order to defeat them. That’s certainly the case here: it’s only when De Carmine reverts to form that he is effectively able to combat Quattroni. This is partly due to the departmental mole becoming useless as a result, and unable to raise the alarm. Yet it also relies on the effectiveness of the hero’s robust methods, and tacitly endorses them as a result. Of course, the Mafia in seventies Italy was undeniably a serious problem, likely more so than organized crime in most other Western countries.

However, there’s a twist at the end, when De Carmine discovers the true “power behind the throne,” in terms of Quattroni carrying out their orders. For it turns out, rather than being traditional organized crime, to be an international group of stock traders, located on Wall Street. By manipulating events, and knowing about them in advance, they can take advantage of the changes in share price which result. This feels an interesting foreshadowing towards the dark nexus between crime, business and government, which would blossom in Italy into the notorious P2 scandal, early in the eighties.

Kinski’s portrayal of Vito Quattroni is certainly one of the less voluble of his career, to put it mildly. Indeed, I’m not sure he says anything of note. Or, possibly, anything at all, leaving the talking to his sidekick. But he still delivers the film’s most memorable scene and one that certainly ranks in any top 10 list of “Klaus’s characters do some really fucked-up shit”. One of Quattroni’s henchmen has succeeded in abducting a witness, and is holding her for his boss in an garage. While waiting there, he’s flicking through a porno mag, and gets the idea that molesting the witness is a good way of passing the time. However, Quattroni’s opinion on the matter when he shows up differs quite considerably…

It’s not like he’s gallantly riding to the rescue. For after he tenderly pulls the woman’s clothes back over her half-naked body, he immediately pulls a revolver, presses it to her side and shoots the witness dead. Quattroni then turns to his naughty associate, who is now being held firmly in the grasp of Quattroni’s sidekick. This being a garage, there are all manner of tools around. Quattroni reaches for the blow-torch, pulls out and puts on his aviators shades (below), gets the torch ablaze… and applies it to the wannabe rapist’s crotch. It’s nice to see even criminals can have a zero tolerance policy for sexual abuse, and you get the impression Quattroni and De Carmine may not be as far apart morally as you’d expect.

It’s a shame they don’t get to share the screen more, as it’d make for an interesting dynamic, like Pacino/De Niro in Heat. Instead, when De Carmine eventually get the tip he has been waiting for, that his quarry is in a roadhouse, this leads to a car-chase through the Italian countryside. Quattroni’s vehicle plunges over an embankment, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to unleash a hail of lead on his pursuers. Of course, De Carmine gets to yell the Italian equivalent of “You’re nicked, my son,” and his enthusiastic interrogation technique soon has Quattroni singing like a canary.

That, effectively, is the end of Kinski’s contribution to the movie, and it kinda peters out from there. It becomes clear that Quattroni is more of a bit player, just a cog in a far larger machine – which makes De Carmine’s obsession with catching him for the vast bulk of the running time, rather pointless. However, I guess that ties in well to the film’s generally cynical attitude towards justice in general, and the task of law enforcement in particular. I have a sneaking admiration for movies like that, and as a snapshot of seventies style, mentality and morality, it offers considerably more than a worthless time-capsule.

Heroes in Hell (1974)

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Dir: Joe D’Amato (as Michael Wotruba)
Star: Lars Bloch, Ettore Manni, Rosemarie Lindt, Klaus Kinski

It’s rarely a good sign when the amount of stock-footage in a film exceeds the amount of Klaus Kinski. Yet that is basically what we get here. Klaus doesn’t show up until the very end – literally, less than twelve minutes before the end-credits roll. It’s far too late to salvage what is a very plodding entry in the spaghetti war genre. It’s certainly one which does nothing to dispel my belief that Joe D’Amato is a talentless hack, who is best served by sticking to porno.

This takes place in the latter days of World War II, as Allied forces are fighting their way across Europe after the Normandy landings. The film begins with the arrival of a pair of captive Allied soldiers, Captain Alan Carter (Bloch) and his co-pilot, Lt. Stain, at a prisoner of war camp in occupied France. Stain has a shrapnel wound in his shoulder, which introduces us to the camp physician, Bakara (Manni), a man who was driven to drink after the death of his wife, and now functions in an entirely alcoholic fog. I sense Oliver Reed was probably the first choice for this part. However, he still seems to know his medical stuff, and is instrumental in coming up with the escape plan, which we’ll get to shortly.

The problems here start early. Half of the first twenty minutes of this are lumps of stock footage, either rolling behind the opening credits, or during a dream sequence as a delirious Stain relives the events which led up to his capture. On its own, as part of a military documentary, this footage might actually be quite interesting, given its authenticity. However, without any explanatory voice-over, it serves no purpose here, except to pad shamelessly the film’s running time. Though there is some mild amusement to be had from the wild cockpit face-pulling by Stan Simon, the actor playing Stain, which is interspersed with the stock footage.

We then get into everyday life in a prisoner of war camp, which seems to consist largely of roll-call, interspersed with escape attempts. And yelling from the guards. So. Much. Yelling. [Though it is a nice touch that the Germans aren’t dubbed, simply left to speak in their unintelligible native tongue] Now, we get to Baraka’s plan. It is fairly loopy: the sort of thing you’d come up with at the end of a binge of heavy drinking. Or as the doctor calls it, Tuesday… The plan involves rubbing poisonous leaves on the participants, to raise blisters which Bakara convinces the camp commandant are the symptoms of bubonic plague. Somehow, it works, and gets the “infected” prisoners shipped out of the camp, for fear of infecting the rest.

On the road, they break out of the vehicle transporting them, which leads to significant amounts of roaming the French countryside and avoiding the pursuing Nazis. They eventually link up with the local resistance under their commander Julien, including token love-interest, Maria (Lindt). They are working on a plan to kidnap a high-ranking Nazi official present in the area, General Kaufmann (Kinski, naturally!) in order to extract the information he knows about troop strengths, movements, etc. The partisans welcome the escaped POWs, since they could use all the help they can get. Including, apparently, even a thoroughly-soused doctor like Baraka.

Before we get to that, there is some further dawdling to be done, with a subplot involving a local family, arrested by the Gestapo for collaborating with the resistance. Julien bravely gives himself up to save the wife, and the rest of his team ride to the rescue as he and the husband are literally facing the firing squad. It’s another example of the film wasting time on a plot thread which is of no significance or relevance, and could easily be removed. But then, if you removed everything from this which was superfluous, you’d have about 15 minutes of actual content. For finally – and we’re talking well over an hour into a film which runs only 83 minutes – we get round to the attempt to kidnap Kaufmann.

The General, as portrayed by Kinski, is a bit of an art connoisseur, more interested in restoring a lost Da Vinci painting than, oh, rounding up Jews and sending them off to death camps. He believes protecting these works of art is an important part of the occupying army’s duties: “Imagine how the Americans would act,” he declares. “They’d no doubt use these paintings to light fires!” That’s the last straw for his abductors, who have managed to talk their way in to an audience with Kaufmann, and they demand at gunpoint that he hand over the defense plans. The film does manage to generate some moments of tension as they make their way through the building with the captive, or as the lookout outside – who doesn’t speak German – has to handle a conversation with a Nazi soldier. Complicating matters, is that Kaufmann must be taken alive, because… reasons?

It all ends in a moderately-sized battle, though the impact is severely dampened by the movie’s budget not apparently extending to blood squibs. So, when people get shot, they just fall down, like kids playing war in the schoolyard. And there is a lot of this, with not many survivors on either side. It all ends with Baraka, who has somehow managed to survive, staring into the camera, over a montage of all his fallen comrades. If you can find it in yourself to give a damn about any of them, you’re more easily swayed than I. The pacing is perhaps the biggest problem here. There’s no sense of escalation, the film instead lurching from a POW story to a resistance one, then onto the mission to abduct the general, as if D’Amato repeatedly got bored with his own film.

It would be no trouble at all to take the same elements and come up with ways to improve it. Forget the POW aspects entirely, and just focus on a partisan plan to abduct the general. Introduce him way earlier, build him up as an actual character, and have the Allied fighters deal with obstacles as they try to complete their mission. Concentrate on one or two of them, so that their loss has an actual impact. This is basic film-making. That the director here seems oblivious to it, says a lot about his “talents”, as does his almost complete waste of Kinski. Even by the low standards of D’Amato, this is unimpressive, and very definitely the lesser of the films in which he directed Klaus [see also Death Smiles on a Murderer].

L’occhio del Ragno (1971)

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Dir: Roberto Bianchi Montero
Star: Antonio Sabàto, Lucretia Love, Klaus Kinski, Van Johnson
a.k.a. Eye of the Spider

The English title makes it likely to be confused with another, unrelated Kinski movie made in 1971, Web of the Spider. Though it’s probably relevant that I spent half of this film coming up with an eight-legged version of that song from Rocky: “It’s the eye of the spider / It’s the thrill of the web / Rising up from a rosebush in the garden…” On the one hand, it’s not the film’s fault, considering the Stallone classic came out more than a decade later. However, it’s still telling to realize, I got more amusement out of coming up with arachnid-based parodies, than from… oh, I dunno… watching the damn movie.

For it’s a thoroughly pedestrian tale of revenge. Paul Valéry (Sabàto) is spring from a prison van by Prof. Orson Krüger (Johnson). He was the mastermind behind the diamond heist which put Paul in jail, after the rest of the gang betrayed both Valéry and Krüger, absconding with the loot instead. Orson wants to team up with Paul to get revenge, putting him through “plastic surgery” [really, removing the very bad make-up job previously applied to Sabàto!] and giving him a new identity as Frank Vogel. He is then sent, along with Krüger’s main squeeze, Gloria (Love), off on his mission.

Though it soon turns out that Valéry is his own man, not just the Prof’s attack-dog. That’s especially true where the leader of his former colleagues, Hans Fischer (Kinski), is concerned. Valéry’s fondness for acting first and thinking later, puts him at odds with his employer, who wants a more cautious and deliberate approach, and is keener on getting the loot than his revenge. Frankly, I’m with Paul: this film already has far more than its share of dawdling around, and anything which gets us to the meat of the vengeance is alright by me. If Orson had his way, we’d probably still be sitting around, thinking about how to move forward. I know revenge is a dish best served cold: however, Krüger seems to think that involves waiting until it’s past its sell-by date.

Not that Paul is necessarily much smarter. I mean, the first thing he does with his new face and secret identity… is call up one of his old pals and threaten him. So much for the element of surprise, eh? This does lead to an element of slight intrigue, as the gang are a bit confused, and have to deal with someone who is attempting to sell them photos of the man apparently targeting them. But, like just about everything else in the film, it’s depicted in a way which robs it of all tension and interest. Similarly, the relationship between Paul and Gloria is completely uninteresting. About the only sequence of note is the final fight between Paul and Hans, which takes place in a boathouse by the sea. It’s reasonably well-staged, and packs more of a wallop than everything else combined.

Sadly, that also includes Kinski in this case. It certainly doesn’t help that the English-language dubbing in the version I saw (on Amazon Prime) is particularly abysmal. He’s given an outrageous Italian accent for some reason, which completely buries his entire performance. Still, I guess it could have been worse. According to a comment on the IMDb, in the German-language dub, “his character is named ‘The Polack’ and given a dreadfully fake Polish accent”! Count your blessings… Oddly, the various promotional artworks also vary in his importance, the Italian poster choosing to omit him entirely. Or the German poster (above) has him painted in. Your choice…

I was somewhat impressed by the black-and-white flashbacks, which help illuminate what happened in the original robbery. And I was also not averse to the bleak ending, sudden though it was. [Something about “dig two graves,” would be appropriate] Otherwise? Generally, I aim to write about a thousand words per movie, and even in the films where Kinski isn’t present much, I can generally find enough to cover for that. This one, however, basically defeats me. I’m cutting my losses at around seven hundred, and calling it a night.

A Bullet for the General (1966)

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Dir: Damiano Damiani
Star: Gian Maria Volonté, Lou Castel, Klaus Kinski, Martine Beswick
a.k.a. El Chucho Quién Sabe?

Likely regarded as one of the top tier of spaghetti Westerns – at least, outside those directed by Sergio Leone – this founded the genre of ‘Zapata Westerns’. Wikipedia defines these as featuring a variant of the hero pair with “a revolutionary Mexican bandit and a mostly money-oriented American from the United States frontier.” Certainly, this is considerably more overtly political than most others in Kinski’s filmography, being set in the Mexican Revolution. This took place in the nineteen-tens, beginning as a revolt against the established order, but ending in a messy, multi-factioned civil war, and resulting in the death of more than a million Mexicans overall.

It’s clearly well under way when we join the action, a government train coming under attack from rebel forces under El Chuncho (Volonté), seeking to “liberate” the weapons it is carrying. Their raid eventually succeeds, thanks largely to help from an American passenger, Bill Tate (Castel), who joins the rebel gang. El Chuncho is less a philosophical rebel than a mercenary one, and intends to sell the arms to the leader of the rebels, General Elias. But there’s work to be done before that, such as pursuing Chuncho’s “white whale”, a legendary golden machine gun. It’s also clear from early on that Tate, nicknamed Niño by the gang for his boyish good looks, has an agenda of his own, and also has a love-hate relationship with gang moll Adelita (Beswick).

Right from the beginning, the harsh nature of the war is made clear: the first scene shows a firing squad executing rebels. Then the train is stopped by El Chuncho placing ahead of it, a captured Mexican officer, who has been crucified on the tracks. Still alive, the only way for the train to get out of the rebels’ “kill box” is to drive over the prisoner. This sets the tone for a film which is generally brutal in tone, with Damiani pulling no punches about the selfish nature of many of those involved, on both sides. The key point on which the film hangs is El Chuncho’s decision to leave the town of San Miguel. He and his gang have already overthrown the town’s leader, Don Felipe, executing him. But he and the bulk of his gang then leave the town, taking all the weapons with them to sell to Elias – and leaving San Miguel wide open to government reprisal. When the inevitable happens, El Chuncho feels personally guilty.

Kinski’s role here is as El Chuncho’s sibling, a man of God known as El Santo. There’s almost some foreshadowing of Jesus Christus Erlöser, filmed five years later. When El Santo is asked by another priest why he is living with thieves, he spits back, “Christ died between two thieves! God is with the poor and the oppressed. If you’re a good priest, you should know that.” A subsequent rant causes Tate to ask El Chuncho, “Is he mad?”, to which the response is a shrug and “He’s my brother.” Half-brother, to be exact: “Same mother, and the father, who knows?” But Santo doesn’t realize that Chuncho is in the arms business, thinking the weapons are donated to Elias “for the triumph of the revolution.”

SPOILERS. It’s this deceit which eventually proves his downfall. When El Chuncho delivers his arms to Elias, he discovers his greed led to the defenseless inhabitants of San Miguel being slaughtered. He accepts execution as his fate, only for El Santo to pop up – apparently the sole survivor – and demands the right to carry out the punishment: “He’s my brother. My blood.” When Chucho remind his brother he had said that God is good and generous, we get one of the classic Kinski lines: “God is. But I’m not…” And neither is Tate. For having carried out what has been his mission all along – the assassination of Elias – the American then saves Chucho by shooting his brother, as the priest is about to execute him.

That alone would be a wonderfully bleak way to end a movie. But, wait! There’s more! For Chuncho tracks down Tate, who has just received his 100,000 pesos bounty from the government, with the aim of killing him. But Tate shows that he had left behind half the bounty for Chuncho, in thanks for the (unwitting) help, and the two men agree to return to America and begin a new life. But when Chuncho discovers everything had been a set-up from the train robbery in the beginning, he has a further change of mind and announces he must kill Tate. The American asks why to which El Chuncho replies, “¿Quién sabe?” [Who knows?] before gunning the assassin down. END SPOILERS.

Damn. That’s some cynical cinema. Damiani makes it clear his sympathies are with the rebels – as you’d expect, considering the film is generally considered to have been written by Franco Solinas, who was also responsible for The Battle of Algiers. Yet there’s no black and white to be found here: it’s all shades of murky grayness, such as El Chuncho’s enthusiasm for destroying the old order, even as he lacks anything at all credible with which to replace it. The original plan was to film this in Mexico, but it ended up being Spain as usual.

For Kinski, the highlight is a raid on an army outpost, where El Santo interrupts a medal ceremony: “Don’t pin medals on criminals! They’ve killed children and women. They’ve tortured people. And now your hour is come! The Lord curses you thieves and murderers! I curse all of you, d’you hear me? Assassins of Mexico, I challenge you!” before reciting the Trinitarian formula, punctuating each element by lobbing a hand-grenade at the soldiers. Again, classic Klaus. It’s a large part of the reason why the Village Voice said, “The best reason to see the movie is for Kinski, who delivers the film’s most arresting performance. Coasting on manic charm, Kinski steals every scene he’s in.” Hard to argue with that.

Last of the Renegades (1964)

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Dir: Harald Reinl
Star: Pierre Brice, Lex Barker, Karin Dor, Klaus Kinski
a.k.a. Winnetou – 2. Teil

From a modern perspective, I guess this is a fairly sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans, who are portrayed as being largely peaceful, and only reacting when betrayed by the white men. Of course, this German Western (Wurstern?) kinda blows it, by having the main such parts played by a French actor and a German actress. But, hey: most of the Americans aren’t played by Americans either, being the usual continental breakfast buffet of Germans and Italians. Not the least of the latter being an early appearance from Mario Girotti as Lt. Robert Merrill – the actor better known as Terence Hill from the Trinity movies. So, I guess it’s at least equal opportunity Eurowashing here.

Qualms about such things aside, this is not a bad film, with a good storyline and strong characters. Despite the alternate title suggesting otherwise, it’s actually the fourth of the movies based on the Winnetou character, created in the late 19th century by German author Karl May. The first came out in 1962, with ten following between them and 1968, all starring Brice as the noble Indian, and mostly with Barker as his (originally German in the books, though considerably more vague here) friend, Old Shatterhand. Here, Winnetou is crossing the West, trying to keep the piece between the natives and the waves of settlers encroaching on their land, preaching peace and negotiation over retaliatory violence.

The problem is, not everyone wants that. In particular, there’s oil baron Bud Forrester (Anthony Steel, an actual English speaker – though still British rather than American), who is intent on fomenting war, with the goal of getting the Indians wiped out or moved elsewhere, so he can claim the land and the resources under it. To that end, he is staging attacks on both sides, and making it look like the other is responsible. This includes making sidekick David ‘Luke’ Lucas (Kinski) pretend to be the sole survivor of an attack on a caravan of settlers, actually wiped out by Forrester’s men. Meanwhile, the good guys are trying to build an alliance, not least by Lt. Merrill marrying Ribanna (Dor), the daughter of a local chief.

Which is a bit of a double-edged tomahawk, since Winnetou has also fallen for her. They first meet when he saves Ribanna from a bear attack – though this is hardly The Revenant, being deep in obvious “man in a suit” territory. Ribanna turns out to be a bit of a warrior princess, good with a bow and arrow, because her father did not have any sons. Despite this bright start – particularly for the time – she seems increasingly and infuriatingly passive as the film proceeds. After she lets herself be married off to an Army officer for the sake of diplomacy, the Indian loses all self-agenda, and ends up being a damsel in distress, rescued from the cave system where she and the other women and children are hiding, after Forrester takes them and Merrill hostage. [Of note: Dor was married to the director at this point, the first of her three husbands]

That final confrontation was apparently shot in the Postojna cave system, one of the largest in what was then Yugoslavia (now Croatia). While I question quite how… well-lit these are, they certainly add value, and I have to say, the whole thing looks quite lovely. Not just the caves, but all the Croatian scenery is stunning, and a fitting stand-in for the West – even if the script’s grasp of Indian territories is more than a little wobbly! There’s also a grand sequence involving a large number of giant fireballs, where one of Forrester’s oil-wells is sabotaged and blown up: it’s reported that three thousand liters of fuel were used. All told, the quality here in terms of the overall production is palpable.

However, it’s a movie not without its flaws – and not just the bear suit, either. In particular, Eddi Arendt’s efforts to act as comic relief are neither welcome nor successful, his scholarly Lord Castlepool proving almost entirely useless. That applies both in terms of his character, and to the movie as a whole, because it distracts from what is a thoroughly serious topic. Really, it’s about genocide for the direct, economic benefit of the genociders, and is approached elsewhere in the film with the sober approach it deserves. This is particularly true at the end, which I’ll confess I found thoroughly satisfying – more on that in a moment.

It’s a relatively early Western in the Kinski filmography. But he has already found his niche as a black hatted villain, who thinks nothing of actively participating in the slaughter of an entire settlement, on the orders of Forrester. Lucas literally says at one point, after Merrill calls him out for his crimes, that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. [A line reputedly originated by Colonel Philip Sheridan in 1869] He then takes a back seat in the middle of the movie, focus moving on to Winnetou, before returning as a key component of the “false flag” attack on the settlers. Initially succeeding in convincing the military Indians are to blame, he is eventually exposed. Lucas escapes his captors in impressive style; somehow, managing to burn through ropes which are tying his hands behind his back!

He returns to Forrester (you have to admire that kind of loyalty in a henchman) and reveals the location of the cave where Ribanna and the other non-combatants are hiding out. This sets up the final face-off between Forrester and his men, against Winnetou and Shatterhand, who are trying to stall for time so the cavalry can get there. [To no-one’s great surprise, Forrester rejects their offer of a fair trial in a court of law] This ends in a gun-battle, Lucas being shot in the back as he tries to retreat into the cave, though it appears Forrester will escape, a convenient rope-ladder offering him an unexpected escape. To avoid spoilers, let’s just say “Not so fast…” As you’d perhaps expect from a film based on a series of books with a generally optimistic view of human nature, just deserts are served to those who who should have them.