Dir: Werner Herzog
Star: Klaus Kinski, Jose Lewgoy, King Ampaw, Salvatore Basile

In most of the other films, the character Kinski plays is out there: clearly orbiting a different star in terms of sanity. That’s perhaps less the case here, once the film hits its stride, at least. He plays the titular bandit, real name Francisco Manoel da Silva. He’s hired as a slave overseer on a Brazillian sugar-cane plantation, but incurs the wrath of the owner after impregnating three (!) of his daughters. To get rid of the outlaw, the owner ships Mr. Verde off to Dahomey to acquire more slaves, in the belief that it’s a suicide mission. Certainly, the ruined fort which he takes over on arrival does not bode well, or the story told by the sole survivor of the previous garrison.

However, once Francisco settles in there, it turns out he’s far from the most differently-sane person – not least the king, who is definitely a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, taking advice from his invisible friend. da Silva finds success there, delivering the slaves, but after discovering the king’s insanity first-hand, teams up with the son who wants to take over from his father, even though he has not exactly fallen far from the tree. The Cobra recruits an army of women warriors and helps with the coup, only to find his new life shattered when Brazil abolishes slavery. Proceedings end, in typical Herzog/Kinski fashion, with a broken hero trying to drag a boat back into the water, and rolling around in the surf, howling hysterically.

To misquote a proverb, in the land of the bat-shit crazy, Klaus Kinski is king, and that’s the case here. His character fits the Dahomey society like a glove, whether it’s helping his slaves in their work – they adopt a remarkably casual approach to the shrieking madman in their midst – or training a battalion of topless female soldiers in the finer points of spear-chucking. It has to be said, there are probably more bouncing breasts in this than the entire cinematic output of Fred Olen Ray – or, more appropriately, of National Geographic news-reels.

But, in terms of performances, I liked this one better than some of his more renowned work: I’d probably put it above Nosferatu, for instance (which, as noted above, is an undeniable chore), almost entirely on the strength of Kinski’s facial expressions. These communicate as much in a single look, as many less talented actors struggle to put over with an entire Tarantino of verbiage, and it’s just captivating: there have been occasional “looks” in the preceding films, but here, they’re in full effect. and you could probably put together a great montage of clips from this alone, of Kinski staring at the insanity unfolding around him.

In wonderfully Herzog-esque style, the mad King Bossa Ahadee of Dahomey, is played by a real African monarch, the wonderfully-named His Honor the Omanhene Nana Agyefi Kwame II of Nsein – it’s a village in Ghana, and based on the performance here, is entirely aptly named. He’s so convincingly out of his gourd, that it’s a shame it appears to have been his only screen credit, though I suppose the market for lunatic monarchs of colour is probably a somewhat limited one. Still, if you manage to make Klaus Kinski look sane and normal with your acting debut, you’re clearly doing something right in terms of your performance.

This would be Kinski’s last collaboration with Herzog – he’d die four years after its release, having made only two films, both nearly unwatchable (Nosferatu in Venice and Paganini). It seems to have gone about as well as the preceding four, going by Klaus’s comments.

I wish Herzog would catch the plague, more than ever. He was even more helpless, more stupid and at the same time more persistent against me, than he was in the last four films, I shot with him. Although he urgently needed my help, and pretended, he would kiss my ass for that, he did the opposite behind my back. The people from Ghana are friendly and peaceful. Herzog knew, how to use them for his purpose. I knew his criminal and enslaving methods since Peru, where he always went for the most helpless and where I eventually called him Adolf Hitler. In Ghana he excelled himself.

Yep, Kinski just Godwin’s Law’d himself.