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Morricone

The Morricone Collection: “Rampage” (1986)

Album cover art.

*This post is dedicated to Watercat, who was able to source a copy of the film for me, a major blind spot in my Friedkin viewings.

French poster for William Friedkin’s “Rampage” aka “Le Sang Du Chatiment.”
Album cover art.
The Maestro in 1986, with his score to Roland Joffe’s “The Mission,” a much more famous work composed the same as the music for William Friedkin’s “Rampage.”

Written, produced, and directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist), this barely released, and still little seen serial killer thriller features one of Morricone’s most quietly unnerving scores.

Trailer.
Original trailer.

The Album:

Album cover art.
Side One.
Side Two.
Reverse album cover.

Listen to Morricone’s complete score for “Rampage” here:

RAMPAGE (FULL VINYL)

Purchase the vinyl at Discogs here:

https://www.discogs.com/release/2102893-Ennio-Morricone-Rampage-Original-Motion-Picture-Soundtrack

The Film:

https://www.miramax.com/movie/Rampage/

Synopsis from Miramax’s official site:

“Legal insanity is so often the default, modern-day defense for gruesome crimes and for Alex McArthur the claim is no different. Alex is an outwardly normal man who goes on incredible killing and mutilating sprees. When he is finally captured and brought to trial, the district attorney is torn between his own liberal ideals on guilt and personal responsibility, and the heinous crimes for which the accused is being tried.”

From Wikipedia:

“Rampage is a 1987 American crime drama film written, produced and directed by William Friedkin. The film stars Michael Biehn, Alex McArthur, and Nicholas Campbell. Friedkin wrote the script based on the novel of the same name by William P. Wood, which was inspired by the life of Richard Chase.[4]

Original “Rampage” script.

The film premiered at the Boston Film Festival on September 24, 1987, but its theatrical release was stalled for five years due to production company and distributor De Laurentiis Entertainment Group going bankrupt. In 1992, Miramax obtained distribution rights and gave the film a limited release in North America. For the Miramax release, Friedkin reedited the film and changed the ending.

Plot summary

Charles Reece is a serial killer who commits a number of brutal mutilation-slayings in order to drink blood as a result of paranoid delusions. Reece is soon captured. Most of the film revolves around the trial and the prosecutor’s attempts to have Reece found sane and given the death penalty. Defense lawyers, meanwhile, argue that the defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity. The prosecutor, Anthony Fraser, was previously against capital punishment, but he seeks such a penalty in the face of Reece’s brutal crimes after meeting one victim’s grieving family.

In the end, Reece is found sane and given the death penalty, but Fraser’s internal debate about capital punishment is rendered academic when Reece is found to be insane by a scanning of his brain for mental illness. In the ending of the original version of the film, Reece is found dead in his cell, having overdosed himself on antipsychotics he had been stockpiling.

Alternate ending

In the ending of the revised version, Reece is sent to a state mental hospital, and in a chilling coda, he sends a letter to a person whose wife and child he has killed, asking the man to come and visit him. A final title card reveals that Reece is scheduled for a parole hearing in six months.

Cast

Influences

Charles Reece is a composite of several serial killers,[5] and primarily based on Richard Chase.[6]

The crimes that Reece commits are slightly different from Chase’s, however; Reece kills three women, a man and a young boy, whereas Chase killed two men, two women (one of whom was pregnant), a young boy and a 22-month-old baby. Additionally, Reece escapes at one point—which Chase did not do—murdering two guards and later a priest. However, Reece and Chase had a similar history of being institutionalized for mental illness prior to their murders, along with sharing a fascination with drinking blood and cutting open the organs of their victims. Reece wears a bright colored ski parka during his murders and walks into the houses of his victims, as did Chase. The two also share the same paranoia about being poisoned. When Reece is incarcerated, he refuses to eat the prison food since he believes it has been poisoned, which mirrors the behavior of Chase in prison. who tried to get the food he was being served tested since he thought it was poisoned.[7][8] Unlike with Reece in the 1992 cut, Chase was sentenced to death, but he was found dead in his prison cell, an apparent suicide, before the sentence could be carried out.[9][10] In the early 1990s, Friedkin said he changed this detail of Chase’s life in the second cut since having him be released from prison fitted better with the traditions of the United States.[11] In both versions of the film, Reece lives with his mother and has a job. When Chase’s crimes were being committed, he lived alone in an apartment and was unemployed. Reece’s father is also said to have died when he was a child, whereas Chase’s father was still alive when his crimes were being committed.

While Chase was noted for having an unkempt appearance and exhibiting traits of paranoid schizophrenia in public, the film’s makers intended to portray Reece as “quietly insane, not visually crazed.”[5] Alex McArthur said in 1992 that “Friedkin didn’t want me to play the guy as a raging maniac. We tried to illustrate the fact that many serial killers are clean-cut, ordinary appearing men who don’t look the part. They aren’t hideous monsters.”[5] To prepare for the role, Friedkin introduced McArthur to a psychiatrist who deals with schizophrenics. He showed McArthur video tapes of interviews with different serial killers and other schizoids.[5]

The incident where Reece goes on a rampage after escaping custody was inspired by a real-life event in Illinois, that occurred while the film was in production.[5] In this event, the killer painted his face silver, something which Reece also does.[5]

The film had a negative portrayal of courtroom experts, and this was personally motivated by Friedkin’s ongoing custody battle for his son, which he was having with his ex-wife.[12]

Soundtrack

The film’s score was composed, orchestrated, arranged and conducted by Ennio Morricone and was released on vinyl LP, cassette and compact disc by Virgin Records.[13]

Release

Rampage was filmed in late 1986 in Stockton, California, where it had a one day only fundraising premiere at the Stockton Royal Theaters in August 1987. It played at the Boston Film Festival in September 1987, and ran theatrically in some European countries in the late 1980s. Plans for the film’s theatrical release in America were shelved when production studio DEG, the distributor of Rampage, went bankrupt. The film was unreleased in North America for five years.[14] During that time, director Friedkin reedited the film, and changed the ending (with Reece no longer committing suicide in jail) before its US release in October 1992.[2][15] The European video versions usually feature the film’s original ending. The original cut of the film has a 1987 copyright date in the credits, while the later cut has a 1992 copyright date, and includes new distributor Miramax‘s logo at the beginning, instead of DEG’s. The original cut also has the standard disclaimer in the credits about the events and characters being fictitious, unlike the later cut, which has a customized disclaimer, mentioning that it was partly inspired by real events.

In retrospect, William Friedkin said: “At the time we made Rampage, [producer] Dino De Laurentiis was running out of money. He finally went bankrupt, after a long career as a producer. He was doing just scores of films and was unable to give any of them his real support and effort. And so literally by the time it came to release Rampage, he didn’t have the money to do it. And he was not only the financier, but the distributor. His company went bankrupt, and the film went to black for about five years. Eventually, the Weinsteins’ company Miramax took it out of bankruptcy and rereleased it. But this was among the lowest points in my career.”[16] There was a year long negotiation with Miramax, and a disappointing test screening of the original cut. The changes that Friedkin made with the 1992 cut addressed concerns from Miramax that the film was not coherent enough, in addition to addressing Friedkin’s changing stance towards the death penalty.[12] The 1992 cut included a previously unreleased scene of Reece buying a handgun at the beginning and lying about his history of mental illness (just as Richard Chase did), whereas the original cut begins with one of Reece’s murders, without explaining any of his background.

Regarding the five year gap between the film’s American release, McArthur said in 1992: “It was a weird experience. First it was coming out and then it wasn’t, back and forth. The fact that it was released at all is amazing.” McArthur added that: “I’ve changed a lot since that picture was made. I have three children now and I’m not sure I would play the part today. I certainly wouldn’t want my kids to see it.”[5]

In 1992, the film played at 175 theaters in the United States, grossing roughly half a million dollars against a budget of several million dollars. McArthur said in 1992 that the film was never intended to be a big commercial hit.[5]

Reception

The film received a polarized response.[17][18] Some critics ranked Rampage among Friedkin’s best work.[2] In his review, film critic Roger Ebert gave Rampage three stars out of four, saying: “This is not a movie about murder so much as a movie about insanity—as it applies to murder in modern American criminal courts…Friedkin[‘s] message is clear: Those who commit heinous crimes should pay for them, sane or insane. You kill somebody, you fry—unless the verdict is murky or there were extenuating circumstances.”[19] Gene Siskel opined the film needed more scenes in the courtroom.[20] Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised the acting and commented: “Rampage has a no-frills, realistic look that serves its subject well, and it avoids an exploitative tone.”[21]

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly called the film “despicable”, saying that the “movie devolves into hateful propaganda” and “its muddled legal arguments come off as cover for a kind of righteous blood lust”.[22] Stephen King, an admirer of Rampage, wrote a letter to the magazine defending the film.[2]

Desson Howard of The Washington Post noted that in the film’s five year delay, there had been several high profile serial killer cases, saying: “In this Jeffrey Dahmer era, McArthur’s claims of unseen voices and delusions that he needed to replace his contaminated blood with others’ are familiar tabloid fare”, however, he noted that despite this, the film “still preserves a horrifying edge.”[23] In a separate 1992 review for The Washington Post, Richard Harrington had a more negative view, criticizing the film for feeling like a made for television feature, and claiming that it had a dated look to it due to its long delay.[24]

In retrospect, William Friedkin said: “There are a lot of people who [now] love Rampage, but I don’t think I hit my own mark with that”.[16] In another interview, Friedkin said he thought the film failed because audiences perceived it as being too serious, and they were expecting something different from him.[12]

In 2021, Patrick Jankiewicz of Fangoria wrote: “Half-serial killer thriller, half-courtroom drama, Rampage is an unnerving study on the nature of evil and what society should do about it.”[25]

Home media

Friedkin’s original cut featuring the alternate ending and some additional footage was released on LaserDisc in Japan only by Shochiku Home Video in 1990.[2]

The American edit of the film was released on LaserDisc in 1994 by Paramount Home Video.[2] The film received a DVD release by SPI International in Poland.[26]

Kino Lorber announced plans to release Rampage on Blu-ray in 4K UHD sometime in 2024.[27]

Bibliography

The Director:

From Wikipedia:

“William David Friedkin (/ˈfriːdkɪn/; August 29, 1935 – August 7, 2023) was an American film, television and opera director, producer, and screenwriter who was closely identified with the “New Hollywood” movement of the 1970s.[1][2] Beginning his career in documentaries in the early 1960s, he is best known for his crime thriller film The French Connection (1971), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and the horror film The Exorcist (1973), which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

Friedkin’s other films in the 1970s and 1980s include the drama The Boys in the Band(1970), considered a milestone of queer cinema; the originally deprecated, now lauded thriller Sorcerer (1977); the crime comedy drama The Brink’s Job (1978); the controversial thriller Cruising (1980);[3][4] and the neo-noir thriller To Live and Die in L.A.(1985). Although Friedkin’s works suffered an overall commercial and critical decline in the late 1980s, his last three feature films, all based on plays, were positively received by critics: the psychological horror film Bug (2006), the crime film Killer Joe (2011), and the legal drama film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023), released two months after his death. He also worked extensively as an opera director from 1998 until his death, and directed various television films and series episodes for television.

Early life and education

Friedkin was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 29, 1935, the son of Rachael (née Green) and Louis Friedkin. His father was a semi-professional softball player, merchant seaman, and men’s clothing salesman. His mother, whom Friedkin called “a saint,” was a nurse.[5][6] His parents were Jewish emigrants from Ukraine, in the Russian empire.[7]His grandparents, parents, and other relatives fled Russia during a particularly violent anti-Jewish pogrom in 1903.[8] Friedkin’s father was somewhat uninterested in making money, and the family was generally lower middle class while he was growing up. According to film historian Peter Biskind, “Friedkin viewed his father with a mixture of affection and contempt for not making more of himself.”[5]

After attending public schools in Chicago, Friedkin enrolled at Senn High School, where he played basketball well enough to consider turning professional.[9] He was not a serious student and barely received grades good enough to graduate,[10] which he did at the age of 16.[11] He said this was because of social promotion and not because he was bright.[12]

Friedkin began going to movies as a teenager,[9] and cited Citizen Kane as one of his key influences. Several sources claim that Friedkin saw this motion picture as a teenager,[13] but Friedkin himself said that he did not see the film until 1960, when he was 25 years old. Only then, Friedkin said, did he become a true cineaste.[14] Among the movies that he also saw as a teenager and young adult were Les Diaboliques, The Wages of Fear (which many consider he remade as Sorcerer), and Psycho (which he viewed repeatedly, like Citizen Kane). Televised documentaries such as 1960’s Harvest of Shame were also important to his developing sense of cinema.[9]

Friedkin began working in the mail room at WGN-TV immediately after high school.[15] Within two years (at the age of 18),[16] he started his directorial career doing live television shows and documentaries.[17] His efforts included The People vs. Paul Crump(1962), which won an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival and contributed to the commutation of Crump’s death sentence.[16][18] Its success helped Friedkin get a job with producer David L. Wolper.[16] He also made the football-themed documentary Mayhem on a Sunday Afternoon (1965).[19]

Career

1965–1979

As mentioned in his voice-over commentary on the DVD re-release of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo, Friedkin directed one of the last episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1965, called “Off Season”. Hitchcock admonished Friedkin for not wearing a tie while directing.[20]

Complete film.
Trailer.
Not a musical!
Trailer.

In 1965, Friedkin moved to Hollywood and two years later released his first feature film, Good Times starring Sonny and Cher. He has referred to the film as “unwatchable”.[21] Several other films followed: The Birthday Party, based on an unpublished screenplay by Harold Pinter, which he adapted from his own play; the musical comedy The Night They Raided Minsky’s, starring Jason Robards and Britt Ekland; and the adaptation of Mart Crowley‘s play The Boys in the Band.[22]

His next film, The French Connection, was released to wide critical acclaim in 1971. Shot in a gritty style more suited for documentaries than Hollywood features, the film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.[23] Friedkin’s next film was 1973’s The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty‘s best-selling novel, which revolutionized the horror genre and is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time. The Exorcist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It won for Best Screenplay and Best Sound. Following these two pictures, Friedkin, along with Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich, was deemed one of the premier directors of New Hollywood. In 1973, the trio announced the formation of an independent production company at Paramount Pictures, The Directors Company. Whereas Coppola directed The Conversation and Bogdanovich, the Henry James adaptation, Daisy Miller, Friedkin abruptly left the company, which was soon closed by Paramount.[24]

Friedkin on location for “Sorcerer.”
Sorcerer Trailer 1977

Friedkin’s later movies did not achieve the same success. Sorcerer (1977), a $22 million American remake of the French classic The Wages of Fear, co-produced by both Universal and Paramount, starring Roy Scheider, was overshadowed by the blockbuster box-office success of Star Wars, which had been released exactly one week prior.[23] Friedkin considered it his finest film, and was personally devastated by its financial and critical failure (as mentioned by Friedkin himself in the 1999 documentary series The Directors). Sorcerer was shortly followed by the crime-comedy The Brink’s Job (1978), based on the real-life Great Brink’s Robbery in Boston, Massachusetts, which was also unsuccessful at the box-office.[25]

Publicity photo for “The Brink’s Job.“

1980–1999

In 1980, Friedkin directed an adaptation of the Gerald Walker crime thriller Cruising, starring Al Pacino, which was protested during production and remains the subject of heated debate. It was critically assailed but performed moderately at the box office.[26]

Trailer.

Friedkin had a heart attack on March 6, 1981, due to a genetic defect in his circumflex left coronary artery, and nearly died. He spent months in rehabilitation.[27] His next picture was 1983’s Deal of the Century, a satire about arms dealing starring Chevy Chase, Gregory Hines, and Sigourney Weaver.

Trailer.

In 1985, Friedkin directed the music video for Barbra Streisand‘s rendition of the West Side Story song “Somewhere“,[28] which she recorded for her twenty-fourth studio LP, The Broadway Album. He later appears as Streisand’s interviewer (uncredited) on the television special, “Putting It Together: The Making of the Broadway Album”.[29]

Streisand signs “Somewhere.”
Barbra Streisand – Somewhere (Official Video)
Trailer.

The action/crime movie To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), starring William Petersen and Willem Dafoe, was a critical favorite and drew comparisons to Friedkin’s own The French Connection (particularly for its car chase sequence), while his courtroom drama/thriller Rampage (1987) received a fairly positive review from Roger Ebert.[30] He next directed the cult classic horror film The Guardian(1990) and the thriller Jade (1995), starring Linda Fiorentino. Though the latter received an unfavorable response from critics and audiences, he said it was one of the favorite films he directed.[31]

Friedkin directs Nick Nolte in the under appreciated basketball drama “Blue Chips.”
“Blue Chips” trailer.
“Jade” trailer.
“Jade” suffered from the backlash against star David Caruso, who had the audacity (!) to leave his hit TV show, “NYPD Blue,” at the height of its popularity, seeking leading man status on the silver screen. The result of his short lived foray into big screen roles also included the excellent but overlooked pictures “Mad Dog & Glory” and “Kiss of Death,” both personal favourites of the period.
Brian De Palma favourite, Denis Franz (l), with Caruso, in the show that made him a star, NYPD Blue, which ruled the airwaves in the 90s.
This oddly miscast, occasionally misguided, but unmistakably charming De Niro / Bill Murray vehicle was written by Richard Price.
This remake of the Jules Dassin classic also features a crackling script by Richard Price.
Also under-appreciated in “Jade” is the small but crucial part played by redheaded supermodel Angie Everhart, who may have played a disproportionate role in why I loved the film so much as a 15-year-old in 1995.
Everhart in the Dennis Miller horror-comedy, “Tales From The Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood.”
Everhart in modelling photo circa the filming of “Jade.”

*Before this post gets derailed into an Angie Everhart appreciation, we now return to Friedkin’s late-period career:

2000–2023

In 2000, The Exorcist was re-released in theaters with extra footage and grossed $40 million in the U.S. alone. Friedkin directed the 2006 film Bug due to a positive experience watching the stage version in 2004. He was surprised to find that he was, metaphorically, on the same page as the playwright and felt that he could relate well to the story.[32] The film won the FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Later, Friedkin directed an episode of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled “Cockroaches”, which re-teamed him with To Live and Die in L.A. star William Petersen.[33] He directed again for CSI‘s 200th episode, “Mascara”.[34]

Trailer.

In 2011, Friedkin directed Killer Joe, a black comedy written by Tracy Letts based on Letts’ play, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon, and Thomas Haden Church. Killer Joe premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, prior to its North American debut at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. It opened in U.S. theaters in July 2012, to some favorable reviews from critics but did poorly at the box office, possibly because of its restrictive NC-17 rating. In April 2013, Friedkin published a memoir, The Friedkin Connection.[35] He was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the 70th Venice International Film Festival in September.[36] In 2017, Friedkin directed the documentary The Devil and Father Amorth about the ninth exorcism of a woman in the Italian village of Alatri.[37] In August 2022, it was announced officially that Friedkin would be returning to film directing to helm an adaptation of the two-act play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martialwith Kiefer Sutherland starring as Lt. Commander Queeg.[38] The film was completed before Friedkin’s death, and debuted in September 2023 in the out-of-competition category at the Venice Film Festival.[39]

After seeing Friedkin’s “Killer Joe,” you may never eat fried chicken again!
“Killer Joe” trailer.
Trailer.
Artwork for Friedkin’s remake.

Influences

Friedkin cited Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, and Akira Kurosawa as influences.[40] Friedkin named Woody Allen as “the greatest living filmmaker”.[41]

From left: Godard, Fellini, Kurosawa, Truffaut.
Woody Allen, before the controversies that would overshadow his film career.

In regard to influences of specific films on his films, Friedkin noted that The French Connection[‘s] documentary-like realism was the direct result of the influence of having seen Z, a French film by Costa-Gavras:

“Z” director, Costa Gavras.

After I saw Z, I realized how I could shoot The French Connection. Because he shot Z like a documentary. It was a fiction film but it was made like it was actually happening. Like the camera didn’t know what was gonna happen next. And that is an induced technique. It looks like he happened upon the scene and captured what was going on as you do in a documentary. My first films were documentaries too. So I understood what he was doing but I never thought you could do that in a feature at that time until I saw Z.[42]

Poster for Costa Gavras‘ “Z,” a major influence on Friedkin.
Z – 40th Anniversary Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_tJ5N6pQcw

Personal life

Friedkin was married four times:

Friedkin with his 1st wife, French film icon Jeanne Moreau.

While filming The Boys in the Band in 1970, Friedkin began a relationship with Kitty Hawks, daughter of director Howard Hawks. It lasted two years, during which the couple announced their engagement, but the relationship ended about 1972.[51] Friedkin began a four-year relationship with Australian dancer and choreographer Jennifer Nairn-Smith in 1972. Although they announced an engagement twice, they never married. They had a son, Cedric, on November 27, 1976.[52][53] Friedkin and his second wife, Lesley-Anne Down, also had a son, Jack, born in 1982.[46] Friedkin was raised Jewish, but called himself an agnostic later in life, although he said that he strongly believed in the teachings of Jesus Christ.[54][55]

Death

Friedkin died from heart failure and pneumonia at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles on August 7, 2023.[6][56]

Work

Directing Linda Blair on the set of “The Exorcist.”

Film

Narrative films

YearTitleDirectorWriterProducerRef(s)
1967Good TimesYesUncreditedNo[57]
1968The Birthday PartyYesNoNo[58]
The Night They Raided Minsky’sYesNoNo[57]
1970The Boys in the BandYesNoNo[57]
1971The French ConnectionYesUncreditedNo[57]
1973The ExorcistYesNoNo[57]
1977SorcererYesUncreditedYes[57]
1978The Brink’s JobYesNoNo[57]
1980CruisingYesYesNo[57]
1983Deal of the CenturyYesNoNo[57]
1985To Live and Die in L.A.YesYesNo[57]
1987RampageYesYesYes[57]
1990The GuardianYesYesNo[57]
1994Blue ChipsYesNoNo[57]
1995JadeYesUncreditedNo[57]
2000Rules of EngagementYesNoNo[57]
2003The HuntedYesNoNo[57]
2006BugYesNoNo[57]
2011Killer JoeYesNoNo[57]
2023The Caine Mutiny Court-MartialYesYesNo[58]

Documentary films

YearTitleDirectorWriterProducerRef(s)
1962The People vs. Paul CrumpYesNoYes[57]
1965The Bold MenYesNoNo[57]
Mayhem on a Sunday AfternoonYesNoYes[59]
1966The Thin Blue LineYesStoryYes[57]
1975Fritz Lang Interviewed by William FriedkinYesNoNo[57]
1986Putting It Together: The Making of the Broadway AlbumUncreditedNoNo[57]
2007The Painter’s VoiceYesNoNo[60]
2017The Devil and Father AmorthYesYesNo[58]

Television

TV series

YearTitleEpisodeRef(s)
1965The Alfred Hitchcock Hour“Off Season” (S3 E29)[58]
1967The Pickle BrothersTV pilot (S1 E1)[57]
1985The Twilight Zone“Nightcrawlers” (S1 E4c)[64]
1992Tales from the Crypt“On a Deadman’s Chest” (S4 E3)[58]
2007CSI: Crime Scene Investigation“Cockroaches” (S8 E9)[58]
2009“Mascara” (S9 E18)[58]

TV movies

YearTitleDirectorWriterExecutive
producer		Ref(s)
1986C.A.T. SquadYesNoYes[57]
1988C.A.T. Squad: Python WolfYesYesYes[57]
1994JailbreakersYesNoNo[57]
199712 Angry MenYesNoNo[58]

Stage

Operas

YearTitle and ComposerCountry / Opera HouseRef(s)
1998Wozzeck,
Alban Berg		Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Theatre[65]
2002Duke Bluebeard’s Castle,
Béla Bartók		Los Angeles Opera[66][67]
Gianni Schicchi,
Giacomo Puccini		[66][67]
2003La damnation de Faust,
Hector Berlioz		[68]
2004Ariadne auf Naxos,
Richard Strauss		[69][67]
2005Samson and Delilah,
Camille Saint-Saëns		June, New Israeli Opera
October, Los Angeles Opera		[67]
Aida,
Giuseppe Verdi		Teatro Regio Torino[70][71]
2006Salome,
Richard Strauss		Bavarian State Opera[72]
Das Gehege,
Wolfgang Rihm		[73]
2008Il tabarro,
Giacomo Puccini		Los Angeles Opera[74]
Suor Angelica,
Giacomo Puccini		[74]
2011The Makropulos Case,
Leoš Janáček		Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Theatre[75]
2012The Tales of Hoffmann,
Jacques Offenbach		Theater an der Wien[72]
2015Rigoletto,
Giuseppe Verdi		Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Theatre[76]

Bibliography

  • Friedkin, William. The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 2013. ISBN 978-0-06-177512-3
  • Friedkin, William. Conversations at the American Film Institute With the Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation. George Stevens, Jr., ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. ISBN 978-0-307-27347-5

The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir:

The Friedkin Connection by William Friedkin.

From the Amazon product page:

“’Friedkin’s book does the unthinkable: It relates the behind-the-scenes stories of his triumphs like The French Connection and The Exorcist, but also sees Friedkin take responsibility (brutally so) for his wrong calls. . . . In doing so, he captures the gut-wrenching shifts of a filmmaker’s life—the bizarre whipsaw from success to disaster.” —Variety

An acclaimed memoir from William Friedkin, a maverick of American cinema and Academy Award–winning director of such legendary films as The French Connection, The Exorcist, and To Live and Die in LA. The Friedkin Connection takes readers from the streets of Chicago to the suites of Hollywood and from the sixties to today, with autobiographical storytelling as fast-paced and intense as any of the auteur’s films.

Friedkin’s success story has the makings of classic American film. He was born in Chicago, the son of Russian immigrants. Immediately after high school, he found work in the mailroom of a local television station, and patiently worked his way into the directing booth during the heyday of live TV.

An award-winning documentary brought him attention as a talented new filmmaker and an advocate for justice, and it caught the eye of producer David L. Wolper, who brought Friedkin to Los Angeles. There he moved from television to film, displaying a versatile stylistic range. In 1971, The French Connection was released and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and two years later The Exorcist received ten Oscar nominations and catapulted Friedkin’s career to stardom.

Penned by the director himself, The Friedkin Connection takes readers on a journey through the numerous chance encounters and unplanned occurrences that led a young man from a poor urban neighborhood to success in one of the most competitive industries and art forms in the world. In this fascinating and candid story, he has much to say about the world of moviemaking and his place within it.”

The Doc: “Friedkin Uncut”

Poster for the career-spanning Freidkin documentary.

Watch a trailer for the career-retrospective documentary “Friedkin Uncut” here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBLUKjrdH3M
Trailer.

Watch a long discussion with William Friedkin at the New York Film Academy here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLCvMA4KM1I
Friedkin at NYFA.
From the late director’s X (Twitter) account.

Film Posters:

Miramax re-release poster.
French theatrical poster.
1987 Japanese mini-flyer.
1987 Japanese mini-flyer.
U.S. poster.

Lobby Cards:

Home Video:

French VHS cover art.
1992 Canadian VHS re-release.
Reverse 1992 Paramount and Miramax VHS cover.

Ebert’s Take:


Still my favourite film lover, the late-great Roger Ebert.

“He is a pleasant-looking young man with a smile on his face…

…perhaps too bland a smile, as if he is not smiling about anything – as if the smile is a mask. He goes into a sports store to buy a gun, and makes small talk with the clerk, who apologizes that there is an obligatory waiting period. Hey, no problem! He comes back two days before Christmas to pick up his purchase, and then walks into a home and shoots people dead and carves out parts of their bodies with the precision of an experienced butcher.

The police, confronted by the murder scene, call it the work of a madman. A few days later, he strikes again, in broad daylight, walking into a home and butchering a woman while her helpless child looks on in terror. Nobody in his right mind could commit an act like this, without apparent motive or even with one. And yet the man, whose name is Charles Reece, is played by Alex McArthur as the kind of guy you’d see at a football game, or out washing his car. He doesn’t even make much of an attempt to evade discovery, wearing the same windbreaker to all of his crimes.

William Friedkin’s “Rampage” is based, the movie assures us, on a real story. We do not need the assurances. Serial killing is the crime of our times, and who knows what confluence of forces has led to these strange people who stare out at us from the covers of true crime paperbacks, their appearance as normal as their crimes are bizarre. Jeffrey Dahmer, a bystander said on television, looked like such a nice young man.

Chevy Chase (l) cannot believe what Ebert (c) is saying, but Siskell (r) is amused.

Friedkin tells the story of his killer more or less as a police procedural. We meet a cop (Michael Biehn) who tracks the killer, and then we see Reece captured by a simple means: He is identified by an eyewitness. Cornered at the gas station where he provides service with a smile, Reece leaps the back fence and runs away. The act of a reasonable man.

Eventually we see where Friedkin is going with the story.

This is not a movie about murder so much as a movie about insanity – as it applies to murder in modern American criminal courts. Friedkin plays with two decks and is happy to stack them both. His killer’s crimes are beyond our conception of possible human behavior, and then, in court, he is defended on the grounds that he must have been insane, and prosecuted on the grounds that he acted reasonably in so many other ways that he must have been sane. The difference between these two theories is the death penalty.

Friedkin does not quite say so in as many words, but his message is clear: Those who commit heinous crimes should pay for them, sane or insane. You kill somebody, you fry – unless the verdict is murky or there were extenuating circumstances. “Rampage” is not, however, a polemical film; it doesn’t press its points and doesn’t spend a lot of time on theory. It simply lays out the facts of a series of gruesome crimes, and then shows us how our gut feelings of good and evil grow confused after the testimony.

We are not much persuaded by the court arguments for either side. Friedkin wants it that way. Reece was sane, the prosecution argues, because he planned ahead to buy the gun and fled to avoid arrest. He was insane, the other side argues, because his crimes could not have been contemplated by a sane man. The prosecution offers an expert psychiatrist known as “Doctor Death” because of his invariable diagnosis of sanity. So it goes.

The film is realistic and matterof-fact, subdued compared to Friedkin’s great film of evil, “The Exorcist.” Alex McArthur, as the killer, is as unemotional and inoffensive as the protagonist of “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.” The movie was completed five years ago and then caught in the bankruptcy of the Dino De Laurentiis studio. Finally released, it has, if anything, benefited by the delay; five years ago, we would not have known how much Charles Reece resembles Jeffrey Dahmer, how little the face can reveal of the soul.”

Additional Links:

Watch the original 1987 VHS trailer for “Rampage” here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SwE6DXL3Ew
Original trailer.

Listen to Friedkin discussing his work with Morricone here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMA9QwtceiA
Friedkin on Morricone.

Read Giant Freakin Robot’s re-appreciation of “Rampage” here:

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/rampage-80s-crime-thriller.html

Read Fangoria’s re-appreciation of “Rampage” here:

https://www.fangoria.com/rampage-retrospective/

Purchase and download William Friendkin’s memoir, “The Friedkin Connection” from Amazon and Audible here:

The paperback.
The audiobook.

Purchase a rare copy of the original screenplay for “Rampage” here:

https://www.abaa.org/book/1497898512

Download the film for free at wipfilms.net

Download “Rampage.”

References (The Film)

  1.  Knoedelseder Jr., William K. (August 30, 1987). “Producer’s Picture Darkens”. Los Angeles Times. p. 1.
  2.  Kelley, Bill (December 6, 1992). “Delayed ‘Rampage’ a “New” Serial Killer Film is Actually a Re-Cut Version of a Movie Shelved for Six Years”. Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  3.  Rampage at Box Office Mojo
  4.  Liebenson, Donald (June 18, 1993). “But Soft, Friedkin Speaks”. Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on December 30, 2023. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  5.  “Alex McArthur starred in ‘Rampage’ five years ago and… – UPI Archives”.
  6.  “The Vampire of Sacramento Richard Trenton Chase”. Haunted America Tours. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007.
  7.  Sullivan, Kevin (2012). Vampire: The Richard Chase Murders. WildBlue Press. ISBN 978-1942266112.
  8.  Ressler, Robert; Thomas Schachtman (1992). Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI(First ed.). St. Martin’s. p. 14. ISBN 0-312-07883-8.
  9.  “Richard Trenton Chase – Crime Library”. truTV.com. Archived from the original on February 28, 2009. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  10.  Friedkin 2013, pp. 396–401.
  11.  Friedkin, William
  12.  Horn, D. C. (2023). The Lost Decade: Altman, Coppola, Friedkin and the Hollywood Renaissance Auteur in the 1980s. United States: Bloomsbury Publishing.
  13.  “Ennio Morricone – Rampage (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)”. Discogs. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  14.  “Friedkin vs. Friedkin: RAMPAGE Revisited”. Video Watchdog. No. 13. September 1992. p. 36.
  15.  Friedkin 2013, pp. 400–401.
  16.  Ebiri, Bilge (May 3, 2013). “Director William Friedkin on Rising and Falling and Rising in the Film Industry”. Vulture. Archived from the original on May 5, 2013.
  17.  Dry, Sarah C. (October 29, 2002). “AN EYE FOR AN EYE: “Rampage” Shows the Horror of Murder”. The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  18.  Terry, Clifford (October 30, 1992). “From mad to worse”. Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on December 30, 2023. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  19.  Ebert, Roger (October 30, 1992). “Rampage”. Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved July 28, 2017 – via RogerEbert.com.
  20.  Siskel, Gene (October 30, 1992). “Friedkin’s ‘Rampage’ Skims Surface of Provocative Subject”. Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on December 30, 2023. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  21.  Maslin, Janet (October 30, 1992). “Review/Film; Random Murder Spree In a Friedkin Thriller”. The New York Times. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  22.  Gleiberman, Owen (November 6, 1992). “Rampage (1992)”. Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on May 20, 2007. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  23.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/rampagerhowe_a0af2c.htm [bare URL]
  24.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/rampagerharrington_a0ab4d.htm [bare URL]
  25.  Jankiewicz, Patrick (April 28, 2021). “William Friedkin’s RAMPAGE: How An Underrated Modern Serial Killer Thriller Was Lost And Found”. Fangoria. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  26.  “Rampage (DVD) Michael Biehn McArthur William Friedkin PL IMPORT”. Amazon. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  27.  Hamman, Cody (December 28, 2023). “Rampage: William Friedkin serial killer thriller is getting a 4K UHD release”. JoBlo.com. Retrieved December 30, 2023.

References (Friedkin)

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  4.  Guthmann, Edward (1980). “THE CRUISING CONTROVERSY: William Friedkin vs. the Gay Community”. Cinéaste. 10 (3): 2–8. JSTOR 41685938.
  5.  Biskind, p. 200.
  6.  Bahr, Lindsey (August 7, 2023). “William Friedkin, Oscar-winning director of ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘The French Connection,’ dead at 87”. AP News. Retrieved August 12, 2023.
  7.  Pfefferman, Naomi. “‘Killer Joe’s’ William Friedkin: ‘I Could Have Been a Very Violent Person’.” Jewish Journal. August 2, 2012.Archived August 22, 2016, at the Wayback Machine Accessed April 29, 2013.
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  13.  Emery, p. 237; Claggett, p. 3.
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  41.  “William Friedkin on Woody Allen”. Youtube. May 21, 2021. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
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  161.  “CONFUSING LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT WITH STAR POWER”. Sun Sentinel. February 9, 2000. Retrieved August 13,2023. Ms. Burke handed over the dais to producer Richard Zanuck (Jaws, Driving Miss Daisy), who would present the evening’s first Lifetime Achievement Award to director William Friedkin.
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Categories
Morricone

The Morricone Collection: “Revolver” (1973)

Album cover art.
Spanish theatrical poster.
The Maestro around the time he composed the score for “Revolver.”
“Revolver” stars Oliver Reed, Fabio Testi, and their excellent coats.

The Album:

Not to be confused with Guy Ritchie’s film of the same name, most people will be familiar with Morricone’s excellent 1973 score for director Sergio Sollima’s poliziottesco “Revolver” through the standout track “Un Amico,” which Quentin Tarantino repurposed for his 2009 WWII opus, Inglourious Basterds.

Morricone-super-fan, Quentin Tarantino.
Tarantino’s “sound of war.”

Other Editions:

Original 1973 Italian pressing.
1977 Japanese pressing.
1995 German CD release.
German CD back cover.
2006 Italian CD re-issue.

The Film:

Synopsis from MoMA’s Ennio Morricone Film Series:

“Revolver” at the Moma.

“Revolver. 1973. Italy/West Germany/France. Directed by Sergio Sollima. Screenplay by Dino Maiuri, Massimo De Rita, Sollima. With Oliver Reed, Fabio Testi, Agostina Belli, Paola Pitagora. In Italian; English subtitles. DCP. 111 min.

An Italian resistance fighter during World War II, Sergio Solima wrote and directed some of the most socially conscious Spaghetti Westerns The Big Gundown and political crime thrillers, or poliziotteschi, of the 1960s and ’70s. Revolver is a gripping example of the latter, the bitterly cynical story of a deputy prison warden (Oliver Reed) who becomes a pawn in a shadowy conspiracy when his wife is kidnapped by the mob and he’s forced to ally with a convict (Fabio Testi). The film boasts one of Ennio Morricone’s most propulsive scores, anticipating that of Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. Quentin Tarantino, a giddy fan both of Solima and Morricone, quoted the beautiful “Un amico” for the climax of his Inglourious Basterds, the song that seems to capture a lover’s—or a criminal’s—inclination to hope against hope.”

Reed reaches out to touch someone.

Blu-ray review from cineoutsider.com:

Partners in crime

Oliver Reed is at his restrained best as a prison warden forced to facilitate a jailbreak in order to save his wife in REVOLVER, Sergio Sollima’s rivetingly handled 1973 crime drama. Slarek explores the film on Eureka’s new Blu-ray, and adds another favourite to an increasingly long list.

How’s this for a pre-title sequence? In the darkest of dark Italian nights, the sound of hurried footsteps and exhausted panting is revealed to belong to two men, one of whom is nursing a serious stomach wound and being helped along by his concerned companion. As they reach a row of parked cars, they pause and steal one of them, then speed off into the night to the sound of approaching sirens. As dawn breaks, the car stops at an isolated spot beside a river, and the driver helps his injured cohort out and onto the riverbank, where he bemoans the fact that he came all the way to Italy to be killed by a night watchman. Realising that his injury will soon prove fatal, the wounded man makes his companion promise not to let his body end up on an autopsy table at a morgue. Moments later, he dies, and the man that we by now know is a close and devoted friend mourns his loss with a farewell kiss. Then, as the opening titles unfold, he digs a hole by the riverside and buries his friend with the gun that probably led to his death. And so begins the 1973 Italian poliziotteschi Revolver, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who suspects an influence on the post-title scene of Reservoir Dogs.*If the above wasn’t enough to grab your attention – and it certainly did mine – then worry not, because the intrigue doesn’t stop there. In the next scene, wealthy oil magnate Harmakolos (Jean de Grave) walks out of his plush Parisian hotel and opts to walk instead of taking their car as suggested, dismisses his aide’s concerns about the recent threats to his life. He’s only a few hundred metres from the hotel when a motorcycle rider pulls up and shoots him dead. Elsewhere in the city, popular singer Al Niko (Daniel Beretta) is cheerfully batting away questions from the press about what his connection could be to this assassination as he arrives at police headquarters. Once inside the office on an unnamed Inspector (Marc Mazza), he is shown the wreck of a motorbike, which he recognises as one he bought a couple of years ago and gave to a former friend named Jean-Daniel Auger. It turns out that Jean-Daniel once worked for Harmakolos as his bodyguard and made threats against him after he was fired, and this was the bike ridden by his assassin. The vehicle and the mangled body of its rider were discovered on an unmanned level crossing in Jean-Daniel’s home town of Lyon, and a trip to the morgue sees Niko confirm that the body of the rider is indeed Jean-Daniel. To the Inspector’s coolly expressed relief, the Harmakolos case is thus officially closed.

Over in Italy, a well-dressed Frenchman (Frédéric de Pasquale) disembarks from his flight and is met outside the airport by two taciturn men in a black Mercedes – only later do we discover that the man has flown in from Paris, and that his name is Michel Granier. The purpose for his visit is not yet clear. Meanwhile, on a platform at the central Milan railway station, two Sicilians (Giovanni Pallavicino and Bernard Giraudeau) are approached and offered work by a dodgy-looking tout (Vittorio Pinelli). One of the men takes the tout’s card, looks briefly at it and hands it back. “No,” he says gruffly, “Got work.” Elsewhere in the same city, a woman visible only from the knees down takes off her shoes and steps onto the feet of a man, who begins walking down an apartment hallway, carrying her as he goes, as the two kiss and items of clothing fall to the floor. Eventually, these intimately entwined appendages are revealed to belong to Vito Cipriani (Oliver Reed) and his young wife Anna (Agostina Belli), who are clearly very much in love. We learn that Vito is a warden of the city’s prison when he is called into work the following morning in order to talk a crazed prisoner out of stabbing himself. When he arrives home with flowers of apology later, however, the apartment is empty and a phone call confirms that Anna has been kidnapped. If Vito wants to see her alive again, he’s assured, he must arrange the escape of an inmate named Milo Ruiz (Fabio Testi). It’s only when Vito asks to be taken to Milo’s cell that we discover he’s the man who buried his friend by the riverside in the opening sequence.

A lot of story threads are spun in these opening scenes, and while it is perfectly possible to draw a logical if speculative line of connection between them, not all is what it seems. Indeed, one of the many strengths of Revolver is its ability to continually surprise newcomers and catch them out. With that in mind, if you want to avoid having any of them spoilt even a little bit, then I’d skip the next paragraph, and eve n then proceed with a degree of caution, as it’s nigh on impossible to discuss the film in any more detail than I already have without giving a few things away. That said, I promise to keep the reveals to a minimum and avoid being explicit on later developments.

The first surprise comes when Vito follows a tip from Milo’s cellmate (Sal Borgese) and walks in on sleazy but wealthy criminal kingpin Grappa (Peter Berling). The expectation – my expectation –was that Grappa would get bolshy and the desperate Vito would lose his cool and smack the required information out of him. Instead, after a small bout of self-congratulatory verbal sparring, Grappa is fully cooperative and tells Vito what he knows without fuss, resistance or a hint of irritation, and Vito accepts that what he’s saying the truth and even offers him a small nod of appreciation. The second surprise comes when Vito returns to the jail and has Milo brought to his office, where he sets about viciously beating him about the face. On the surface this is an expression of his anger and frustration, but his actions are then revealed to have a secondary purpose, with the essentially superficial injuries inflicted on Milo providing a reason for him to be moved to the prison hospital, from where, Vito tells him, he will be able to affect his escape. This he does in a process that is lengthy enough to feel plausible, but Milo has only just hit the streets when a car screeches up beside him in a car and he’s ordered to get in at gunpoint by Vito. This gameplaying with expectations and genre convention sets the scene for a plot that rarely follows the predicted path. Thus, a colleague of Vito’s whose arrival looks set to expose his wrongdoing becomes an unexpected ally, a switch of fortune for both Vito and Milo is cancelled out by a surprise rebalancing of their relationship, and even the true reasons for Milo’s forced release prove to be more sinister than they initially seem.

That trademark Oliver Reed (nostril) flare.

The foundations are laid by a smartly constructed script by director Sollima, Arduino Maiuri and Massimo De Rita, and Sollima’s direction is tight, economic and purposeful, never flashy and always in service of the story and characters. Action scenes are rationed, but when they come they are blisteringly handled, their urgency enhanced by their sharp sense of realism, cinematographer Aldo Scavarda’s immaculate camera placement, and Sergio Montanari’s breathless editing. Adding a further layer of class is a typically fine score by Italian maestro Enno Morricone, one that hits all the right emotional buttons without overplaying them, and at one point feels like a trial run for the main theme of the composer’s score for The Untouchables (1987).

An amused Fabio Testi.

Even more crucial to audience engagement are the performances, the best of which comes from a top-of-form Oliver Reed, albeit with a small but curious caveat. As was often the way with Italian films of the period, particularly those with international casts, all of the dialogue was post-dubbed. And while there’s not a hint of mismatch between Reed’s on-screen delivery and his redubbing of his own voice, for reasons that no-one seems to be able to clarify, he elected to do the whole thing with an imperfect American accent. Given that his character name is Vito Cipriani and that he is a former police detective, we can assume that he is meant to be native Italian rather than Italian-American, and as all of the film’s dialogue was delivered in English with an eye on sales to the American market, for the life of me I can’t work out why he didn’t stick to his usual precise English delivery. The thing is, although this does initially feel a little odd, Reed is so bloody good in all other respects that after just a couple of minutes it ceases to matter. Everything else about his performance is sublime, peaking when he is visibly wrestling to keep his true feelings from exploding, and as so often with Reed, the potential for extreme violence can always be seen bubbling just beneath the surface. It’s a masterclass in restraint and emotional control, and up there with Reed’s very finest work on film. As Milo, Fabio Testi proves he’s more than just a handsome face, balancing the character’s cocky disposition with his increasing commitment to a cause he has been unwittingly recruited to help serve. Frédéric de Pasquale (who the two years previously played drug-smuggling TV personality Henri Devereaux in The French Connection) is appropriate unflustered as gangland middle-manager Michel Granier, and Paola Pitagora has a strong role as politically convicted people trafficker Carlotta. The supporting cast is also peppered with the sort of faces you only seem to find in European and East European cinema, providing the film with thugs who look and behave like the real deal, memorably when the Sicilians track down a potential witness and convincingly arrange his subsequent death to look like an accident.

I came to the cinema of Sergio Sollima via his superb 1967 western, Face to Face [Faccia a facia], and while Revolver is a very different work, it does share some of that film’s central themes. In both, two individuals with opposing moral values find themselves switching position over the course of the story, and like Face to Face, Revolver later moves into the area of political commentary, questioning the power structure of a system that protects the wealthy and is able to arrange the disposal of inconvenient elements of what it regards as the lower order. The result is a compellingly structured, impeccably directed, splendidly scored, and powerfully acted gem of Italian crime cinema, and one of the best films I’ve watched so far this year. It also pulls that rare trick of keeping you guessing right up to the final scene. Even the title is not what it initially seems, being a type of gun not used by the central protagonist, and likely instead intended to be read as a commentary on the transformative journey that Vito and his initially unwilling companion undertake over the course of the story.
sound and vision

Sourced from a new 4K restoration (that’s all the detail I have on this one), the 1080p transfer of Revolver on this Eureka Blu-ray is seriously impressive in all respects. Detail is very clearly defined, and the contrast is nicely balanced, nailing the black levels without crushing the shadows. The colour palette has a very slightly muted feel with a slight greenish hue, all of which look right for the film’s downbeat tone and very nicely captured by this transfer. The image is very clean, with no trace of dirt or damage, and a fine film grain is visible. Very nice.


Revolver was shot with the actors delivering their lines in English and their dialogue redubbed in post-production, and here you have the option to watch the film with either the English or Italian language tracks, both of which are Linear PCM 2.0 mono. The dynamic range is a little restricted on both – there are no deep bass thumps or rumbles here – and while voices seems to have slightly more breadth on the Italian track, they also sometimes have a more dubbed feel. Morricone’s music is of similar quality on both tracks, but differs during the opening titles, with the orchestral title theme of the English track turned into a song on the Italian track.


Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired are available for the English language track, and a second set of optional English language subtitles kick in automatically if you select the Italian language track. Both seem fine, but there is a small omission here, at least on the review disc (it may be adjusted on the release disc). At one point, Vito reads a note written in Italian, and at another the Inspector looks down at a newspaper headline written in French. If you watch the film with the Italian soundtrack, the subtitles offer English translations of both. If you watch the film with the English language track, however, even with the hearing impaired subtitles enabled, no such translations are provided. Fortunately, it’s just a matter of switching between the subtitle tracks if your French or Italian are as weak as mine, and you don’t need to read either to understand what’s going on. It’s also worth noting (again, we’re talking review disc here) that there is no option on the menu to activate hearing impaired subs, but they can be switched on using the disc player’s remote control.


Special Features

Audio Commentary by Barry Forshaw and Kim Newman
Author of Italian Cinema: Arthouse to Exploitation, and a ton of others, joins author, critic and genre commentary favourite Kim Newman to explore a film that they were both impressed by and rate above the poliziotteschi norm. Individual scenes and plot turns are discussed, as is Ennio Morricone’s score, and the work on this film and others of director Sergio Sollima, particularly his 1970 Violent City [Città violenta] (for which there are spoilers). They opine that Fabio Testi was an actor with a limited range but what he could do he did well, and praise the rare depth and strength (at least for this genre) of the Carlotta character played by Paola Pitagora. But the lion’s share of the discussion is focussed on Oliver Reed, whose performance here both men rank as one of his best, and whose work on this and other key films in his career is covered in considerable detail. There’s a lot more discussed here, all of it compelling and acutely observed, and these two really know their Italian crime cinema.

Stephen Thrower on ‘Revolver’ (21:59)
Nightmare USA author Stephen Thrower examines the work of director Sergio Sollima, with particular focus on Revolver, though also covers the director’s segment in the multi-story L’amore difficile (1962), and his westerns The Big Gundown [La resa dei conti] (1966) and Face to Face [Faccia a facia] (1967). Like Forshaw and Newman above, he’s full of praise for the film, for Sollima’s skilled direction, and for Oliver Reed’s central performance. Like them, he’s also confused by the decision to have Reed play the whole thing with a not completely convincing American accent, but argues that the story and the acting are so good that you soon forget about it, a point on which I am in complete agreement.

Tough Girl (10:21)
Actor Paola Pitagora, who plays Carlotta, recalls working with Oliver Reed, who was an idol of hers but used to start drinking early on in the morning, which sometimes caused problems on set, though she does note that he was always top-notch on camera. She intriguingly describes Sergio Sollima as “a war machine,” as someone who was focussed and meticulous but also funny, and Fabio Testi as gorgeous, very enthusiastic, and focussed on his role. She praises the film scores of Ennio Morricone, though admits her admiration for the composer was soured a little by his claim that women all belonged in the kitchen, and has a revealing story about how Reed’s drinking ultimately cut short her role in the film. She also opines that for her, at least as an audience member, genre cinema begins and ends with Thomas Milian.

Action Man (17:07)
An archival interview with actor Fabio Testi, shot in June of 2006 and redressed with new opening titles and credits for this release, and the remastering of what looks like analogue video to HD. Testi looks back at how his work as a stuntman eventually led to him being cast – and doing all of the stunts – in Demofilo Fidani’s 1968 western, And Now… Make Your Peace with God [Ed ora… raccomanda l’anima a Dio!], and how this prompted him to enrol in acting school and embark on a successful career in films and theatre. He manages to top Paola Pitagora’s description of Sergio Sollima with his claim that “he works like a martial artist, every shot is like a sabre blow,” notes how Italian cinema lost its political edge after the arrival of commercial television and a slew of American imports, and remarks that it’s  nice that people remember him despite his age, which would have been 64 when this interview was shot. And he still looks damned good here. 

English Credits (6:23)
When you select to watch the English language version of the feature, the credits are in the original Italian, so the opening and closing credits of the English language version have been included as an extra.

Original Theatrical Trailer (3:40)
A trailer that really pushes the film’s crime thriller credentials, and employs a trick later favoured by American distributors to sell non-English language films to a potentially subtitle-averse audience by including no audible dialogue – characters speak, but all we hear is Morricone’s score and a few gunshots.

International Trailer (1:15)
Sold here under its original American title of Blood on the Streets, the US trailer sports a seriously toned but hyperbolic narration that includes the news that the film stars “Oliver Reed in a performance that makes Charles Bronson’s Death Wish look like…wishful thinking,” which I have no problem with at all.

Radio Spots (1:33)
Two radio spots pushing the American release, the second considerably longer than the first and both proclaiming that “This is a story of a day all the guns went off.” Er, not quite.
Also included with the release version is a Limited Edition Collector’s Bookletfeaturing two new essays by author Howard Hughes – one covering the background to the making of Revolver – and an extensive piece on Ennio Morricone’s ‘Eurocrime’ soundtracks, but this was not available for review.

Summary
A tightly directed and terrific poliziotteschi that is more thoughtful and restrained than the genre norm, and boasts an excellent performance by Oliver Reed, despite the enduring mystery of that American accent. As is noted in the commentary, it seems likely that the film was at the very least an unconscious influence on the likes of 48Hrs and Midnight Run, but it absolutely holds its own as a compellingly handled and impressively unpredictable crime thriller almost 50 years after it was made. Eureka’s Blu-ray spots a first-rate transfer and some fine special features, including an excellent commentary track. Highly recommended.

The Director:

Italian director Sergio Sollima.
Sollima’s screen credit.

Sergio Sollima (17 April 1921 – 1 July 2015) was an Italian film director and script writer.

A young Sollima.

Biography

Sollima graduated from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1935. During World War II he was in the Italian Resistance.[1]

Sollima (r) with his “Faccia a Faccia” stars Gian Maria Volonte (l) and Tomas Milian (c).

After the war, he gradually progressed from working as a film critic to screenwriting to becoming a director[2] Like many Italian cult directors, Sollima started his career as a screenwriter in the 1950s and wrote many peplum films in the 1960s. He made his directing debut doing one of the four sequences in the anthology film Of Wayward Love. Sollima filmed three Eurospy films and then moved to spaghetti westerns. The Big Gundown (starring Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian) was released in 1966 with big success, despite the fact that it had to compete with Sergio Leone‘s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Sergio Corbucci‘s Django. Sollima soon filmed two more westerns. Face to Face (Milian and Gian Maria Volonté) was released in 1967 and Run, Man, Run! (Milian) in 1968. Although Sollima directed only three westerns and they never reached the level of popularity as the ones by the other Sergios (Leone and Corbucci), each of them is highly regarded among genre enthusiasts.

In 1970, Sollima switched genres again and directed the Charles Bronson and Telly Savalas starred Violent City, which was one of the first violent and fast-paced Italian crime films often known as poliziotteschi. Like for all of his westerns, the soundtrack was provided by Ennio Morricone. Sollima’s last well-known film is Revolver, a poliziotteschi film starring Oliver Reed and Fabio Testi.

Sollima directed the six-part Italian TV series Sandokan starring Kabir Bedi with several feature films spun off the series.

Selected filmography

References

  1.  p. 93 Fisher, Austin Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western: Politics, Violence and Popular Italian Cinema I.B.Tauris, 6 Feb 2014
  2.  Vivarelli, Nick (3 July 2015). “Sergio Sollima, Italian Director Best Known Internationally For Spaghetti Westerns, Dies at 94”. Variety. Retrieved 6 April 2019.

Posters:

German poster. Also includes the alternate English title “Blood In The Streets.”
Nikos Bogris’ alternative poster.
Original Italian lobby card.

Links:

Purchase a copy of the vinyl at Discogs here:

“Revolver” on Discogs.

Watch the trailer from Eureka Classics here:

REVOLVER (Eureka Classics) New & Exclusive Trailer
REVOLVER (Eureka Classics) New & Exclusive Trailer

If you’re in the Toronto area, stop in and say hi to my Filmography podcast co-host, at “the last great video store,” Bay Street Video, and find a copy of “Revolver” in store, or if outside of Toronto, online here:

https://baystreetvideo.com/title.php?page=1&title=Revolver

Watch the film for free here:

Revolver (1973) di Sergio Sollima (film completo ITA)
Revolver (1973) di Sergio Sollima (film completo ITA)

Purchase the film on Amazon here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Revolver-Oliver-Reed/dp/B000096IA3

Categories
Morricone

The Morricone Collection: “Hornet’s Nest” (1970)

The Album:

Jonathan Broxton’s review from moviemusicuk.us

https://moviemusicuk.us/2021/02/07/ennio-morricone-reviews-part-ix/

Other Editions:

From the Quartet Records’ CD booklet:

The Film:

Brian Hannan’s review for themagnificent60s.com:

“Given exceedingly short shrift in its day. Viewed as in exceptionally poor taste. Marketed in some respects as Lord of the Flies Meets The Dirty Dozen. Audiences accepting of kids putting on a show or, the modern equivalent, making a movie, not so keen on youngsters going to war. In any case there’s an inbuilt repugnance as you get the distinct impression some of these kids would have been ideal recruits for Hitler Youth or the Mussolini version.  And Italy, one-time ally of Hitler, becoming suddenly heroic seemed to jibe. Not to mention Rock Hudson’s marquee value fading fast after a gigantic turkey called Darling Lili (1969). Despite some distinctly unsavory aspects, bordering on exploitation, this seems enormously underrated, not just as an actioner, but for a raw depiction of war, far more realistic than many in the genre that toplined on violence.

Sure, it’s an odd concept, Italian kids, in the absence of adults, turned into a fighting force by dint of letting loose their innate venality and savagery. But they’ve not been washed up, adult-free, on a desert island. This small bunch have been orphaned and bloodily. Germans on the hunt for local partisans execute an entire village and then, finding a quisling, proceed to massacre the local resistance and for good measure destroy a team of American parachutists dropped into the area to facilitate the Allied advance.

The kids come across the one survivor, Turner (Rock Hudson), hide him from the enemy and dupe German doctor Bianca (Sylva Koscina), sympathetic to the plight of the innocent, into caring for the wounded soldier. Rather than hang around and accept the ministrations of such a beauty and see out the war with a view to possible romance, Turner is intent on single-handedly completing his mission of blowing up a dam.

Given the kids have amassed a secret armory and are trigger-happy, desperate to avenge their parents, and getting down to the gung-ho aspects of war, Turner, with appalling disregard for their safety, decides to commandeer them for his own unit. Bianca objects and watches with horror and for most of the rest of the picture confines herself to the pair too young to be considered combatants and who reek of desolation or to find ways of killing Turner or betraying him to the Germans.

Meanwhile, the kids have their own ruthless leader, Aldo (Mark Colleano), one part John Wayne, one part the creepy Maggott (Telly Savalas in case you’ve forgotten) from The Dirty Dozen, who objects to taking orders. Training consists of little more than a bit of marching in file and learning how to quickly reload a machine gun. Turner’s clever plan is to use their perceived innocence to distract the Germans guarding the dam. The distraught Bianca, stepping out of line once too often, is raped for her trouble.

Oddly enough, Koscina does take a machine gun to the Germans, which you would have thought would be catnip to the marketeers, but that image is excluded from the poster.

Setting aside all audience misgivings about the premise and the sexual undertones, the mission is very well done, plenty tension, a workable plan, and the eventual dam-burst impressive on the budget.

But the misgivings are not glossed over. There’s a dicey moment when it looks as if the kids, crawling all over the nurse, tearing off her clothes, are about to embark on mass juvenile rape. And the bloodlust will only be slaked when, by dint of secreting the detonators essential to the plan, they force Turner to lead them on a raid on the Germans, tossing hand grenades into houses and opening fire from the back of a truck on the unsuspecting enemy.

Aldo, in particular, gets a taste for killing and in a later battle doesn’t hold back when one of his comrades inadvertently gets in his way.

Sold as a junior edition of a mission picture, the trailer would have probably been enough to put off large sections of the audience, uncomfortable with kids being employed in such mercenary fashion. Kids grow up in war but not that fast seemed to be the general reaction. Okay if they’re portrayed as victims, less acceptable as gun-happy butchers.

So, the best elements of the movie is in not avoiding such misgivings. It was soon clear from the American experience – though this is not specifically alluded to – that hordes of kids in Vietnam were going down this route. The point at which kids cross over into bloody adulthood and lose the essence of childhood is dealt with too. That scene on the face of it and in isolation appears maudlin but in the context of the picture works very well. But the violence or its aftermath are not the most striking images. Again and again, the camera returns to the dirty, clothes-tattered, Bianca clutching the two infants, the detritus of conflict.

Setting aside his moustachioed muscle, Rock Hudson (Seconds, 1966) gives a well-judged performance and Sylva Koscina (A Lovely Way To Die, 1968), shorn of glamor, holds the emotional center. Mark Colleano (The Boys of Paul St, 1968) gives a vicious impression of a young hood on the rise. Directed by sometime cult director Phil Karlson (A Time for Killing, 1967) from a script by S.S. Schweitzer (Change of Habit, 1969) and producer Stanley Colbert. Great score from Ennio Morricone.

It’s worth pointing out that the idea of kids taking up arms received positive critical approval when it was applied to such an arthouse darling as If… (1969) but of course they were public schoolboys forced into action by bad teachers and in reaction to “the establishment” and not after seeing their families slaughtered. Double standards, methinks.

Worth reassessment.”

Film tie-in novel.

The Director:

Director Phil Karlson.

From Wikipedia:

Phil Karlson
BornPhilip N. Karlstein
July 2, 1908
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
DiedDecember 12, 1982 (aged 74)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Alma materSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago
Loyola Marymount University
OccupationFilm director

Phil Karlson (born Philip N. Karlstein; July 2, 1908 – December 12, 1982) was an American film director. Later noted as a film noir specialist, Karlson directed 99 River Street, Kansas City Confidential and Hell’s Island, all with actor John Payne, in the early 1950s.[1]

Other films include The Texas Rangers (1951), The Phenix City Story (1955), 5 Against the House (1955), Gunman’s Walk (1958), The Young Doctors (1961) and Walking Tall(1973).

Biography

Early life

Karlson was the son of Irish actress Lillian O’Brien.[2] His father was Jewish.[3]

He attended Marshall High School and studied painting at Chicago’s Art Institute. He tried to make a living as a song and dance man but was unsuccessful. Then he studied law, at his father’s request, at Loyola Marymount University in California. He took a part-time job at Universal Pictures “washing toilets and dishes and whatever the hell they gave me” according to Karlson.[4] He also sold some gags to Buster Keaton. Eventually he decided to pursue a career in film, quitting college a year before graduation.[5]

Assistant Director at Universal

Karlson got a job at Universal Pictures, doing a variety of jobs.

He worked as assistant director on Destry Rides Again (1932) and My Pal, the King with Tom Mix; The Countess of Monte Cristo(1934) and Cheating Cheaters (1934) with Fay Wray; I Like It That Way (1934); Romance in the Rain (1934); and Strange Wives(1934), directed by Richard Thorpe.

He worked on The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935) with Claude Rains; Princess O’Hara (1935); Alias Mary Dow (1935), for Kurt Neumann; Werewolf of London (1935); Sing Me a Love Song (1935); She Gets Her Man (1935); The Affair of Susan (1935); Love Before Breakfast (1936), with director Walter Lang; The Girl on the Front Page (1936); and Top of the Town (1937).

Karlson said that Sam Goldwyn put him under contract intending to use him as a director, but Karlson wound up spending nine months idle. He asked for a release of his contract and got it.[4] He joined a company of Maurice Kosloff.[6]

He went back to Universal where he worked as an assistant on The Black Doll (1938); The Case of the Missing Blonde (1938); The Last Express (1938); His Exciting Night (1938), The Last Warning (1938), Newsboys’ Home (1938), and Society Smugglers (1939), directed by Joe May.

His credits became more distinguished: Rio (1939), with Basil Rathbone, directed by John Brahm; The Invisible Man Returns (1940) and The House of the Seven Gables for May; I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby (1940), a musical; You’re Not So Tough(1940), for May; Margie (1940), Seven Sinners (1940), with John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich for director Tay Garnett; Where Did You Get That Girl? (1941), for Arthur Lubin; and The Flame of New Orleans (1941), with Dietrich for René Clair.

Karlson did In the Navy (1941) with Abbott and Costello for Lubin, and he became friendly with Lou Costello, often pitching him gags.[4] He worked on It Started with Eve (1941) for Henry Koster with the studio’s other big star, Deanna Durbin.

Karlson quit Universal in 1940 to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Forces. In 1943, he was injured in a plane crash ending his career as a flight instructor.[5]

Monogram Pictures

Karlson, still using his real name of Philip Karlstein, took a job at Monogram Pictures, as an assistant director. He was contacted by Lou Costello, who wanted to produce a film and offered Karlstein the job of directing it. The resulting movie was A Wave, a WAC and a Marine (1944), starring comedian Henny Youngman.[5] Karlson called it “probably the worst picture ever made… a nothing picture, but I was lucky because it was for Monogram and they didn’t understand how bad it was, because they had never made anything that was any good.”[4] However, Karlson did like his second film as director, G. I. Honeymoon (1945), with Gale Storm, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Music.

Karlson made Monogram’s low-budget productions look much more expensive by being creative with the staging. He used light and shadow to add mood to ordinary dialogue scenes, and employed careful camera angles to maximize the size of the limited sets. Karlson’s resourcefulness made him Monogram’s choice to launch a new series (The Bowery Boys, The Shadow) or invigorate an existing one (Charlie Chan). An excellent example is Karlson’s Charlie Chan mystery The Shanghai Cobra (1945) in which the director, given a small exterior set, established a film noir atmosphere by shooting the scene at night during a rainstorm. Karlson was well aware of Monogram’s budgetary limitations: “They knew what they were doing, because there was a certain class of picture they were going to make and they weren’t going to make anything any different.”[4]

Slightly more distinguished was Wife Wanted (1946) which starred and was produced by Kay Francis. Both she and Karlson disliked the original script so they rewrote it together. It turned out to be Francis’s last movie.[5] He followed it with Kilroy Was Here (1947), co-starring former child actors Jackie Cooper and Jackie Coogan.

Karlson received acclaim for Black Gold (1947), a story of the plight of the American Indian, based around the true story of the racehorse Black Gold. It was an early lead for Anthony Quinn and the first film released by Monogram’s new, higher-budget division, Allied Artists. Karlson took a year to make that film because he wanted seasonal shots; he says he directed four films while also making Black Gold.[4]

Karlson then made Louisiana (1947) with governor Jimmie Davis.[7] He followed this with Rocky (1948) with Roddy McDowall.

Columbia

Karlson went over to Columbia Pictures where he directed two Westerns, Above All Laws (1947) and Fury (1948). He then made Ladies of the Chorus (1948), with Marilyn Monroe in her first substantial role.

British production company Eagle-Lion Films hired Karlson to direct The Big Cat (1949), which he later described as his answer to The Grapes of Wrath (1940).[4] While at Eagle-Lion Karlson also did Down Memory Lane (1949) with Steve Allen, shot in two days.[5]

Edward Small

Karlson teamed with producer Edward Small for The Iroquois Trail (1950) with George Montgomery, based on The Last of the Mohicans. Small liked Karlson’s work and used him on Lorna Doone (1951), an adaptation of the famous novel with Richard Greene, and The Texas Rangers (1951), a Western with Montgomery.[8]

These films were distributed by Columbia, who used Karlson for Mask of the Avenger (1951), a swashbuckler with John Derek. For Small he did Scandal Sheet (1952), a newspaper melodrama from a novel by Sam Fuller, and The Brigand (1952), another swashbuckler.[9]

Karlson started directing Assignment: Paris (1952) for Columbia in Paris but was fired by studio head Harry Cohn during filming and replaced by Robert Parrish.[5]

Karlson bounced back with two films for Edward Small starring John Payne that were released through United Artists: Kansas City Confidential (1952) and 99 River Street (1953).

Karlson did episodes of The Revlon Mirror Theater (1953) and did all episodes of the TV series Waterfront (1954).

Karlson was invited back to Columbia to do a Western They Rode West (1954) and a film noir Tight Spot (1955). He also directed episodes of Ford Television Theatre and Studio 57.

After making Hell’s Island (1955) with John Payne for Paramount Pictures, he did 5 Against the House (1955), a heist movie at Columbia, which gave Kim Novak one of her first roles.

Karlson returned to Monogram (now known as Allied Artists) to make The Phenix City Story (1955), based on the murder of Albert Patterson. It was a hit and came to be regarded as one of his best movies. He went back to Columbia for The Brothers Rico (1957), a thriller, and Gunman’s Walk (1958), a Western.

Desi Arnaz hired Karlson to direct the pilot for the TV series The Untouchables (1959), later released theatrically as The Scarface Mob. Although The Untouchables had a long run on TV, Karlson only received a straight salary for his work on the pilot.[5]

1960s

Karlson was Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman‘s first choice to direct their first James Bond film Dr. No (1962), but they were forced to decline him after he asked for too high of a salary.[10]

For Allied Artists he did a war biopic Hell to Eternity (1960), followed by Key Witness (1960). Both starred Jeffrey Hunter.

Karlson directed The Secret Ways (1961) from a novel by Alistair MacLean, although he clashed with star-producer Richard Widmark. He made a melodrama, The Young Doctors (1961);[11] an Elvis Presley film, Kid Galahad (1962); and Rampage (1963), an adventure story with Robert Mitchum. He directed the pilot for a TV series about Alexander the Great with William Shatner that was not picked up and did uncredited work on Ride the Wild Surf (1964).

Karlson enjoyed a big hit with the first Matt Helm movie with Dean Martin, The Silencers (1966). It was made by Columbia who asked Karlson to take over from Roger Corman on A Time for Killing (1967). He returned to the Matt Helm movies for the fourth and final one, The Wrecking Crew (1968), co-starring Sharon Tate and Elke Sommer.

1970s

Karlson made a war movie in Europe with Rock Hudson, Hornets’ Nest (1970). He did a horror movie, Ben (1972), best remembered for its Michael Jackson theme song.

He had a huge success in 1973 with Walking Tall, the fact-based story of a crusading sheriff Buford Pusser in the most corrupt county in Tennessee.[12] It was a major domestic and international hit, costing $500,000 and grossing more than $23 million. It also made Karlson a fortune, thanks to the fact that he owned a large percentage of it.[5]

His last film was Framed (1975) with Joe Don Baker.[13]

Career appraisal

Wheeler Winston Dixon later wrote of Karlson:

[He] emerges as a violent American original, born and brought up in Chicago, used to violence as a way of life, someone who was forced to make a great many films that he didn’t believe in, just so that he could finally get a free hand with the minor studios to make the films that he did … In Karlson’s best films, a truly bleak vision of American society is readily apparent; a world where everything is for sale, where no one can be trusted, where all authority is corrupt, and honest men and women have no one to turn to but themselves if they want any measure of justice. For Karlson, everything comes with a price – in blood, death, and betrayal. … In his finest work, Karlson seems to be saying “don’t you believe what they tell you. Authority figures only look out for themselves. There are no easy answers. You won’t get what you deserve, and you won’t even get what you fight for. You’ll get what you can take, and that’s got to be enough.”[5]

The Academy Film Archive has preserved his films Tight Spot and Scandal Sheet.[14]

In 2019, Karlson’s film The Phenix City Story was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registryfor being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.[15]

Partial filmography

References

  1.  Hal Erickson (2016). “Phil Karlson”. Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016.
  2.  “Phil Karlson”. Tcm.com. Retrieved July 8, 2009.
  3.  Conesr, John W. (October 8, 2012). Patterns of Bias in Hollywood Movies. Algora Publishing. pp. 85, 93, and 98. ISBN 9780875869582.
  4.  Todd McCarthy and Richard Thompson. “Phil Karlson: Interview, November 19, 1973” Kings of the Bs; Working Within the Hollywood System, eds. Todd McCarthy and Charles Flynn (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1975), pp. 327-345. Rpt. Cine Resort, Oct. 7 2014
  5.  Dixon, Wheeler Winston (June 2017). “Phil Karlson: The Forgotten Master of Film Noir”. Senses of Cinema.
  6.  “Kosloff Forms Film Company: New Organization Will Produce Musicals Featuring Youngsters” Los Angeles Times 16 Dec 1937: 8.
  7.  “LOUISIANA GOVERNOR SUCCEEDS AS ACTOR” Scott, John L. Los Angeles Times 2 Mar 1947: B1
  8.  “Oriental setting for new Grable musical”. The Australian Women’s Weekly. Vol. 18, no. 3. June 24, 1950. p. 44. Retrieved October 5, 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
Karlson (r) with Dean Martin (l).

Posters:

Italian theatrical poster.
Alternate Italian poster.
Alternate Italian poster.
Alternate US theatrical poster.
Alternate poster.
French theatrical poster.
DVD cover art.

Stills:

Lobby Cards:

Links:

Listen to the complete score here:

Complete score on YouTube.

Purchase the vinyl on Discogs here:

“Hornet’s Nest” on vinyl.

Watch the film’s trailer here:

Trailer on YouTube.
baystreetvideo.com

If you are in Toronto, stop in at “the last great video store,” Bay Street Video, say hi to my Filmography podcast co-host, Bjorn, and find a copy of “Hornet’s Nest” on blu-ray in store or online:

Or purchase the DVD on Amazon here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Hornets-Nest-Rock-Hudson/dp/B007232B5K

Watch sequences from the film here:

Categories
Morricone

The Morricone Collection: “La Califfa” (1970)

Album cover art.

*This post is dedicated to Ewa, who suggested it.

The Album:

Reverse album cover.
Lato A.
Lato A (detail).
Lato B (detail).
Album insert.
Reverse insert.

Other Editions:

The Film:

The Lady Caliph herself, Romy Schneider.

The Director:

The eye has it.

From Wikipedia:

Alberto Bevilacqua (27 June 1934 – 9 September 2013)[1] was an Italian writer and filmmaker. Leonardo Sciascia, an Italian writer and politician, who read Bevilacqua’s first collection of stories, The Dust on the Grass (1955), was impressed and published it. Mario Colombi Guidotti, responsible for the literary supplement of the Journal of Parma, began to publish his stories in the early 1950s.

Publicity photo.

Friendship Lost, his first book of poems, was published in 1961. Caliph, published in 1964, was his breakthrough novel. The protagonist, Irene Corsini, imbued with his own sweet and energetic temperament, is one of the strongest female characters in Italian literature. His novel This Kind of Love won the Campiello Prize in 1966. In both This Kind of Love and Caliph, Bevilacqua oversaw the adaptations and productions of the film versions. This Kind of Love won Best Film at Cannes.

The author with his books. It’s actually hard to find images of Bevilacqua WITHOUT his books in the shot, for which I love him.

Bevilacqua was also a poet. His writings have been translated throughout Europe, the United States, Brazil, China and Japan. In 2010, his seven “stories” as he liked to call them, were included in the Novels volume of the prestigious series “I Meridiani.”[2]

More books!

Bevilacqua directed seven films between 1970 and 1999. His 1970 film La califfa was entered into the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.[3]

You get the picture.

Bevilacqua, aged 79, died in Rome on 9 September 2013 from cardiac arrest.[4] He had been hospitalized since 11 October 2012 for heart failure.[1]

Posters:

German Theatrical Poster.
Alternate Italian Theatrical Poster.
German DVD cover art.
Montparnasse Edition.
DVD cover art.
DVD cover art.
DVD cover art.
Set of “La Califfa” lobby cards.

The Novel:

Italian printing.
Italian printing (back cover).

Translation of back cover (according to Google):

The story of the passions and rebellion of a beautiful, authentic and proud woman, against the backdrop of a city - Parma - and its stream, which symbolically separated the poor from the rich.

Califfa is a beautiful girl of popular origin who becomes the lover of Annibale Doberdò: the most powerful industrialist in the city, a sort of Mastro-don Gesualdo, authoritative and unscrupulous. Memorable portrait of a free woman, fundamentally healthy and, in her own way, innocent. Califfa is a lover without servility in whose loving frankness the industrialist finds, in a crucial point of his existence, a new desire for life and his own freedom. All the powerful people in his court arm themselves against this relationship, but only Doberdo's sudden death will end it. And Califfa will return to her neighborhood of origin, alone, but with the awareness of having contributed to transforming not only the soul and intimacy of a man, but also the social aspect of a city.
«Central novel» in the 1960s, for its clear literary success and because it testifies, through some great protagonists, to the splendors and miseries of that Italian economic miracle that would inspire the best fiction and the best cinema of the time.
The novel's notoriety was amplified by the film shot by Alberto Bevilacqua himself and starring an unforgettable Romy Schneider together with Ugo Tognazzi.

By Alberto Bevilacqua. Einaudi published La polvere sull'erba (2000), his first novel, unpublished since 1955, the year in which it was written, Viaggio al principio del giorno (2001), La Pasqua Rossa (2003), Storie della mia storia (2007) and the collections of poems: Piccole questioni di eternità (2002), Tu che mi ascolti (2005), Duetto per voce sola (2008).
Spanish printing.

Links:

Purchase the vinyl on Discogs here:

“La Califfa” vinyl on Discogs.

Listen to the complete score here:

Ennio Morricone – La Califfa (The Lady Caliph) – Full Album (High Quality Audio)

Watch an 8 min compilation of scenes from “La Califfa” here:

LA CALIFFA (Lady Caliph)(1970) Romy Schneider

Purchase the DVD on Amazon here:

“La Califfa” on DVD (German import).

Read The Guardian’s Alberto Bevilacqua obituary here:

Obituary.

Categories
Morricone

The Morricone Collection: “Il Grande Silenzio” (1968)

Album cover art.
Theatrical poster.
Morricone around the time of composing the score to Sergio Corbucci’s “Il Grande Silenzio.”
Director Sergio Corbucci on location

The Album:

Dagored’s 2016 double-coloured vinyl pressing of Morricone’s 1968 score (one of my all-time favourite Morricones) to Sergio Corbucci’s great Spaghetti Western, “Il Grande Silenzio,” represents the “the first re-issue ever” and is limited to 500 copies.

Album sticker

From the album sticker:

“The legendary soundtrack composed by the Maestro ENNIO MORRICONE for IL GRANDE SILENZIO, directed in 1968 by SERGIO CORBUCCI and staring Jean Louis Trintigant and Klaus Kinski.

Reverse album cover.

A melancholic, emotive score, deeply moving and cold as the snow covered landscape of the film, is considered one of the best “western” work by Morricone since the collaboration with Sergio Leone.

Side A.

FIRST VINYL REISSUE EVER
LIMITED EDITION OF 500 COPIES
DOUBLE COLORED VINYL

This edition © 2016 Dagored
℗ & © 1967 NEAPOLIS (SIAE)
Licenziata da Beat Records.”

Earlier Album Pressings:

Original Italian 1968 pressing.
Reverse album cover.
1978 Italian re-issue (blue).
Reverse album cover.
Alternate 1978 Italian re-issue (black).
Reverse album cover.
Alternate 1978 Italian re-issue.
Reverse album cover.
Soundcloud thumbnail.

The Film:

IMDb movie data.
Jean-Louis Trintignant, beloved giant of European New Wave cinema, as “Silenzio” (Silence).

From A.O. Scott’s 2018 NY Times review:

“I’m not generally one for nostalgia, but I do regret the loss of a certain kind of craziness that used to flourish in movies — the kind that is on rich and ripe display in “The Great Silence,” a 1968 Italian western by Sergio Corbucci that is only now receiving a proper theatrical release in this country.

The cast of “Il Grande Silenzio” in a lighter moment on set.

There is something about the film’s brazen mixing of incompatible elements that defies categorization, imitation or even sober critical assessment. It’s anarchic and rigorous, sophisticated and goofy, heartfelt and cynical. The score, by Ennio Morricone, is as mellow as wine. The action is raw, nasty and blood-soaked. The story is preposterous, the politics sincere.

Title shot.

In 2018, it’s possible — and perhaps inevitable — to view “The Great Silence” as a footnote to the oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino, whose admiration for Corbucci is well documented. Corbucci’s 1966 western “Django” was an inspiration for Mr. Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” and “The Hateful Eight” shares a snowbound aesthetic and a gleeful commitment to cruelty with “The Great Silence.” The scholarly minded viewer can trace other connections and divergences as well — to classic American westerns and to the contemporaneous and better-known work of the spaghetti maestro Sergio Leone.

The great Jean-Louis Trintignant rides into town.

But this plate of pasta — bitter and pungent, nourishing and perhaps a bit nauseating — should be savored on its own. It takes place at the end of the 19th century in “Snow Hill, Utah,” a place name that sounds infinitely more exotic in Italian. There, farmers have been driven off their land and forced into banditry, leaving them at the mercy of bounty killers, the most fearsome and sadistic of whom is played by Klaus Kinski.

Klaus Kinski, legendary madman of Werner Herzog classics like “Fitzcaraldo.”

His character — referred to as Tigrero aloud and Loco in the subtitles — is a whispering sociopath and a symbol of the Darwinian brutality that governs Snow Hill. The actual governor wants to bring the area under the rule of law, and dispatches a bumbling, decent sheriff (Frank Wolff) to bring Tigrero and the rest of the bounty killers into line. The lawman’s earnest efforts are a sideshow to the main drama, though, which pits Tigrero and his minions against a solitary avenger known as Silenzio.

Played by the great Jean-Louis Trintignant, Silenzio is a tragic, poetic variation on Clint Eastwood’s taciturn Man With No Name. Silenzio is not a man of few words, but a survivor of horrific violence. When he was a child, the bounty hunters who murdered his parents severed his vocal cords to keep him from talking. He has grown up into Tigrero’s double and opposite, meting out justice for money and following a strict code of ethics. He will never draw his gun first, but he will always shoot faster than his adversary.

Silenzio packs heat.
Kinski fires his pistol (and remembers to keep his ears warm at all times).

Silenzio’s services are solicited by Pauline (Vonetta McGee), the widow of one of Tigrero’s victims. The fact that she and her husband are black is at once a casual detail and a sign of the film’s anti-authoritarian, democratic ideology. The couple seems to have been welcomed by the other good people of Snow Hill, but their race is a big issue for the bad guys.

Vonetta McGee as Pauline.

The plot takes a twist or two, but serves mainly as a thread linking shootouts and glowering confrontations, with a brief respite for love. The mood is sometimes jaunty, but “The Great Silence” is no joke, and the fatalism of its ending serves as an implicit critique of the sentimental optimism of many Hollywood westerns. Power speaks louder than silence.”

Album cover art.

Perhaps the greatest influence “Il Grande Silenzio“” has had on contemporary cinema is on display in the snowy landscapes of die-hard Corbucci & Morricone fan Quentin Tarantino’s 2nd western, “The Hateful 8,” which also features (an Oscar-winning) score by Maestro Morricone.

Alternate poster.
Still from “the 8th film by Quentin Tarantino.”
UK theatrical poster.

Tarantino’s 1st western, 2012’s “Django Unchained,” was likewise inspired by another Corbucci Spaghetti Western, the one for which he is probably most famous, “Django,” released two years previously (1966).

Corbucci ‘s best known work, “Django” released two years before “Il Grande Silenzio.”
Original “Django” (1966) poster, and the film itself, are obvious influences on…
…the original poster (and film) for Robert Rodriguez’ ‘s take on the Spaghetti Western, “Desperado” (1995).
Tarantino’s Django, Jamie Foxx, with Corbucci’s original Django, Spaghetti Western icon, Franco Nero, in Tarantino’s 2012 ode to Corbucci’s picture.
Title shot.
Alternate poster.

Worthy of note in any discussion on “Il Grande Silenzio” is the performance by American actor Frank Wolff as the doomed sheriff first hired by the put-upon townspeople to go after Kinski and his fellow bounty hunters. Having worked extensively in the U.S. with the prince of independent cinema, Roger Corman, Wolff later distinguished himself in many Italian and European films that sprung forth as part of the boom of filmmaking in Rome (and other European cities) in the 1960’s and 70’s. Wolff was an extremely likeable character actor who met a very tragic end, “slashing” his own throat, allegedly over the unrequited love of a young woman, after being left by his wife for another man.

American actor and Italian cinema stalwart, Frank Wolff, who tragically committed suicide just 3 years after appearing as the doomed sheriff in “Il Grande Silenzio.”

From Wikipedia:

(Frank Wolff’s) Death:

Wolff committed suicide by cutting his throat in the bathroom of a residence in his Rome hotel room, a few steps from the Hilton hotel, at the age of 43 on December 12, 1971.[2] Long the victim of a deep depressive crisis, the actor was separated from his wife Alice Campbell, who lived like him in Rome. According to one hypothesis, Wolff would have injured himself for the first time with a razor blade. Having dropped the blade from his hand, the actor would have taken a second one, with which he would have cut the carotid artery. This second injury caused a cerebral anemia that led to his death in a short time.[3]

His body was found by a 24-year-old Austrian friend on the same day, and police said he had slashed his throat.[4] It was speculated that the unrequited love for the young woman might have contributed to Wolff’s fatal act, already suffering from a nervous breakdown for some time, after his wife had left him for another man.[3]

His final two Italian-made films, Milano Caliber 9 and When Women Lost Their Tails were released posthumously in 1972. His voice in the English-language version of Milano Caliber 9 was dubbed in by his frequent co-star and roommate at the time of his death Michael Forest.

Additional Film Stills:

Scars and core wounds.
A love story fraught with danger and trauma.
Even in winter, the dead must be buried.
Frosted windows and a grumpy Silenzio.
Silenzio reflects in the glow of a solitary candle.
Kinski with the bounty hunter’s greatest prop, the wanted poster.
Trintignant rides the high country.
Crosses in the snow: a recurring motif.
Trintignant makes a grand entrance as “The Great Silence.”

The Director:

“Il Grande Silenzio” director Corbucci likes what he sees through the viewfinder.
“The Great Silence,” Corbucci’s great achievement.
Compilation album of 3 collaborations between Morricone and Corbucci.

Morricone is forever associated with the most famous of the “three Sergios” of Italian cinema, Leone, but equally great are the 7 soundtracks the Maestro scored for another Sergio, that being Mr. Corbucci, for whom Morricone composed the scores for “Compañeros,” “I Crudeli,” aka “The Hellbenders,” “Che C’entriamo Noi Con La Rivoluzione?“, “The Mercenary, ” “Navajo Joe,” “Sonny & Jed,” and of course, “Il Grande Silenzio.”

Album cover art.
Album cover art.
Album cover art.
Album cover art.
Album cover art.

From Wikipedia:

Sergio Corbucci (Italian: [ˈsɛrdʒo korˈbuttʃi]; 6 December 1926 – 1 December 1990) was an Italian film director, screenwriter and producer. He directed both very violent spaghetti Westerns and bloodless Bud Spencer and Terence Hill action comedies.[1]

He is the older brother of screenwriter and film director Bruno Corbucci.[2]

Biography

Sergio Corbucci.

Early career

He started his career by directing mostly low-budget sword and sandal movies. Among his first spaghetti Westerns were the films Grand Canyon Massacre (1964), which he co-directed (under the pseudonym, Stanley Corbett) with Albert Band, as well as Minnesota Clay (1964), his first solo directed spaghetti Western. Corbucci’s first commercial success was with the cult spaghetti Western Django, starring Franco Nero, the leading man in many of his movies.[3] He would later collaborate with Franco Neroon two other spaghetti Westerns, Il Mercenario or The Mercenary (a.k.a. A Professional Gun) (1968) — where Nero played Sergei Kowalski, a Polish mercenary and the film also starring Tony Musante, Jack Palance and Giovanna Ralli — as well as Compañeros (1970) a.k.a. Vamos a matar, Companeros, which also starred Tomas Milian and Jack Palance. The last film of the “Mexican Revolution” trilogy – The Mercenary and Compañeros being the first two in the installment – was What Am I Doing in the Middle of the Revolution? (1972).

Corbucci.

After Django, Corbucci made many other spaghetti Westerns, which made him the most successful Italian Western director after Sergio Leone and one of Italy’s most productive and prolific directors.[4] His most famous of these pictures was The Great Silence (Il Grande Silenzio), a dark and gruesome Western starring a mute action hero and a psychopathic bad guy.[5][6] The film was banned in some countries for its excessive display of violence.

Corbucci (r) on location with “Navajo Joe” star, Burt Reynolds.

Corbucci also directed Navajo Joe (1966), starring Burt Reynolds as the title character, a Navajo Indian opposing a group of bandits that killed his tribe, as well as The Hellbenders (1967), and Johnny Oro (1966) a.k.a. Ringo and his Golden Pistol starring Mark Damon. Other spaghetti Westerns he directed include Gli specialisti (Drop Them or I’ll Shoot, 1969), La Banda J.S.: Cronaca criminale del Far West (Sonny and Jed, 1972), with Tomas Milian and The White the Yellow and the Black (1975), with Tomas Milianand Eli Wallach.

Corbucci (r) with actor Tomas Milian on set of “Compañeros.”

Corbucci’s Westerns were dark and brutal, with the characters portrayed as sadistic antiheroes. His films featured very high body counts and scenes of mutilation. Django especially is considered to have set a new level for violence in Westerns.[7]

Corbucci was born in Rome.

Corbucci.

Later career and legacy

In the 1970s and 1980s Corbucci mostly directed comedies, often starring Adriano Celentano. Many of these comedies were huge successes at the Italian box office and found wide distribution in European countries like Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland, but were barely released overseas.[8]

His movies were rarely taken seriously by contemporary critics[9][10] and he was considered an exploitation director, but Corbucci has managed to attain a cult reputation.[6][11]

He died in Rome in 1990, at age 63, of a heart attack.[12]

His nephew Leonardo Corbucci[13] continues the legacy of film directors in the family in Los Angeles.

In 2021 was released a documentary about Corbucci, directed by Luca Rea, Django & Django, that relies to a considerable extent on an interview with Quentin Tarantino.[14]

In 2022 German thrash metal band Kreator released the instrumental song “Sergio Corbucci is Dead” as an intro to their album Hate Über Alles. According to vocalist/guitarist  Mille Petrozza, “Sergio Corbucci was someone who was very anti-authoritarian in his film. In all his films he has a protagonist who rebels against the authorities. Often these characters are very obscure. I was wondering if there are still people like that who make really political films without trying to preach anything to you. It’s a bit of a dig at the bands who don’t speak their minds out of fear of losing fans.”[15]

Filmography

Corbucci times three.

Director and writer

Actor

References

  1.  “Sergio Corbucci”. Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 11 May 2008. Retrieved 23 January 2019.
  2.  Bondanella, Peter; Pacchioni, Federico (19 October 2017). A History of Italian Cinema. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 490. ISBN 9781501307645.
  3.  Cox, Alex (1 June 2012). “Once Upon a Time in Italy”. The New York Times. p. 16. Retrieved 23 January 2019.
  4.  “Mondo Esoterica – Sergio Corbucci Film Reviews”. mondo-esoterica.net. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
  5.  Scott, A. O. (28 March 2018). “Review: ‘The Great Silence,’ a 1968 Spaghetti Western Unchained”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
  6.  Hoberman, J. (28 December 2018). “’68 Rides Again: The Return of Sergio Corbucci”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
  7.  Tarantino, Quentin (27 September 2012). “Quentin Tarantino Tackles Old Dixie by Way of the Old West (by Way of Italy)”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 27 June2020.
  8.  “SERGIO CORBUCCI BOX OFFICE”. BOX OFFICE STORY. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
  9.  Wong, Aliza S. (15 December 2018). Spaghetti Westerns: A Viewer’s Guide. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 123–124. ISBN 978-1-4422-6904-0.
  10.  Bondanella, Peter (25 July 2019). The Italian Cinema Book. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-83902-024-7.
  11.  Mask, Mia (28 February 2023). Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western. University of Illinois Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-252-05402-0.
  12.  Flint, Peter B. (1 May 1989). “Sergio Leone, 67, Italian Director Who Revitalized Westerns, Dies”. The New York Times. p. 8. Retrieved 23 January 2019.
  13.  “Behind the Scenes: The Legendary Series with Leonard Corbucci on Apple Podcasts”. Apple Podcasts. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
  14.  DeFore, John (8 September 2021). “‘Django & Django’: Film Review | Venice 2021”. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 6 April 2023.
  15.  “Album review: Kreator – Hate Über Alles” (in German). 8 June 2022.

Film Posters:

50th anniversary restoration poster.
German lobby card.
20th Century Fox international poster.
Japanese poster
Italian DVD cover art.
German theatrical poster.
French theatrical poster.
Alternate poster.
Alternate poster.
Danish theatrical poster.
British DVD cover art.

Links:

Listen to the complete score on YouTube here:

Complete score on YouTube.

Purchase a copy of the vinyl on Discogs here:

“Il Grande Silenzio” on Discogs.

Watch Alex Cox’s introduction to “The Great Silence” here:

Alex Cox’s intro to “The Great Silence.”

Watch the trailer for “The Great Silence” here:

Trailer.

Watch a 10-minute behind-the-scenes feature on the making of “Il Grande Silenzio” here:

The making of “Il Grande Silenzio.”

Read J. Hoberman’s NY Times piece celebrating “The Great Silence” (and other Corbuccis) on the occasion of its digital streaming release here:

NYTimes on “The Great Silence.”

The above article links to A.O. Scott’s 2018 Times‘ review for “The Great Silence,” which you can read here:

A.O. Scott’s review in the Times.
www.baystreetvideo.com

If in the Toronto area, say hi to my Filmography podcast co-host Bjorn, and find a copy of “The Great Silence” on DVD or blu-ray at Toronto’s “last great video store,” Bay Street Video, in store or online at baystreetvideo.com:

Order the blu-ray on Amazon here:

“The Great Silence” blu-ray.

Categories
Morricone

The Morricone Collection: “Storie Di Vita E Malavita” (1975)

Album Cover Art
Original Italian Theatrical Poster.
The Maestro around the time he composed the score for “Storie Di Vita e Malavita.“
Morricone’s screen credit.

The Album

Album cover sticker.

From the Cam Sugar journal:

Cam Sugar’s write up for “Storie Di Vita e Malavita.”

“In 1975 Ennio Morricone composed the music for Storie di Vita e di Malavita, the film with which director Carlo Lizzani followed up his investigation on youth deviance and crime in Milan. The opus documented the city’s lowlives, the malavita, based on a reportage by Marisa Rusconi, a pioneering author and journalist who could seamlessly move from investigative to lifestyle and fashion journalism, as witnessed by her work with the likes of Panorama, L’Espresso and Vogue.

As the soundtrack by Ennio Morricone finally resurfaced in its entirety from the CAM Sugar archive with its first-ever vinyl release on the occasion of Record Store Day, photographer Fabrizio Vatieri reimagines the film’s iconography in the streets of contemporary Milan.”

The Film:

“Storie Di Vita e Malavita” on blu-ray.
Title shot.

Aka “The Teenage Prostitution Racket,” 1975’s “Storie Di Vita e Malavita” was directed by Carlo Lizzani, who also directed the excellent Italian crime picture “Wake Up & Kill” aka “Svegliati e Uccidi,” the Spaghetti Western “The Hills Run Red,” and the political drama “Mussolini: Ultimo Atto,” all of which, like this picture, feature stunning scores by the Maestro.

Album cover art.
Album cover art.

Here is the synopsis of the film from the Amazon product description:

“Occupying a creepy cinematic netherworld somewhere between Eurocrime and erotica, Carlo Lizzani’s Teenage Prostitution Racket (Storie di Vita e Malavita) is an unapologetically sordid film that explores the troubled sexuality of a series of young women coming of age in 1970s Milan. Beginning on the outskirts of town, where a peasant woman pimps her thirteen-year-old companion to passing truck drivers, Lizzani s film worms its way into the metropolis, where the oldest profession, in its varied forms, is dramatized in a series of interlocking narratives. A working-class girl is lured into prostitution by a boyfriend; a rich girl uses sex to rebel against her wealthy parents; a photographer s model discovers sex is an unspoken requirement of her job; an ex-convent girl becomes a nymphomaniac after being seduced at school; an independent hooker relies on a vicious dog to defend her against a gang of mobsters. As sensational as the episodes may be, Lizzani doesn’t reduce the characters to mere sex objects. Instead, he endows each woman with enough depth that even the most voyeuristic viewer can t help but become invested in her struggles to survive, and share her resentment toward the shady characters who try to control her. Special Features: Documentary (Italian language with English subtitles) | fotogallery | Cut scenes.”

Still from “Storie Di Vita e Malavita.“

The Director:

Italian director Carlo Lizzani.
Carlo Lizzani on IMDb.
Director highlights from IMDb.

Carlo Lizzani’s bio from Wikipedia:

“Born in Rome, before World War II Lizzani worked as a scenarist on such films as Roberto Rossellini‘s Germany Year Zero, Alberto Lattuada‘s The Mill on the Po (both 1948), and Giuseppe De Santis‘ Bitter Rice (1949), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story.

After directing documentaries, he debuted as a feature director with the admired World War II drama Achtung! Banditi! (1951). Respected for his awarded drama Chronicle of Poor Lovers (1954), he has proven a solid director of genre films, notably crime films such as The Violent Four (1968) and Crazy Joe (1974) or crime-comedy Roma Bene(1971). His film L’oro di Roma (1961) examined events around the final deportation of the Jews of Rome and the Roman roundup, grande razzia, of October 1943.[2] For his 1968 film  Bandits in Milan, he won a David di Donatello award as best director and a Nastro d’Argento award for best screenplay.[3]

Lizzani worked frequently for Italian television in the 1980s and supervised the Venice International Film Festival for four editions, from 1979 to 1982.[4] In 1994 Lizzani was a member of the jury at the Berlin Film Festival.[5]

For his 1996 film Celluloide, which deals with the making of Rome, Open City, he received another David di Donatello award for his screenplay.[3]

While preparing for the film L’orecchio del potere (“The Ear of Power”, a project he cultivated since the late nineties with the title Operazione Appia Antica), Lizzani committed suicide in Rome at the age of 91, when he jumped from the balcony of his apartment in Via dei Gracchi on 5 October 2013.[1] On 10 October his coffin was transferred to a room in the Capitol that was set up as a funeral home, and the following day the civil funeral was held. Later, his body was transferred to the Flaminian cemetery for cremation.”

Italian director Carlo Lizzani.

Earlier Album Release:

Double CD release for “Storie Di Vita e Malavita” and “Un Delitto Inutile.“

Posters:

Carlo Lizzani Retrospective in 3 Films.

Links:

Listen to “Sotto Controllo” from Morricone’s score for “Storie Di Vita e Malavita” here:

“Sotto Controllo” on YouTube.

Purchase a copy of the vinyl on Discogs here:

“Storie Di Vita e Malavita” on Discogs.

Watch the complete film for free on YouTube here:

The complete film on YouTube.

Purchase the blu-ray on Amazon here:

“Storie di Vita e Malavita” on blu-ray.

Categories
Morricone

The Morricone Collection: “Faccia a Faccia” (1967)

Album Cover Art.
Original Italian theatrical poster.
Morricone closes his eyes and hears a symphony (or so I imagine!).
Side A.
Side B.
Reverse album cover.
Morricone blows his horn.
elusivedisc.com
elusive disc.com

Album write-up from elusivedisc.com:

“This is the soundtrack to Sergio Sollima’s Italian Spaghetti western film Faccia a Faccia (also known as Face To Face), starring Gian Maria Volonte, Tomas Milian and William Berger. Composed by the legendary Ennio Morricone, the 1967 movie’s music is a beautiful mix of typical epic ’60s Morricone western moods, experimental moments and even some sheer Country. The orchestra and chorus are directed by Bruno Nicolai, the famous Italian film music composer. His work is featured in Kiss Kiss…Bang Bang and Kill Bill Volume 2 amongst many other movies.”

Kiss Kiss… Bang Bang.
Kill Bill vol. 2.

Other Pressings:

“Faccia a Faccia” aka “Il Etais Une Fois Dans L’Arizona (“Once Upon A Time In Arizona”).

The Film:

Opening title card to Sergio Sollima‘s “Faccia a Faccia.”
The perpetually smoldering icon of ’70s international cinema, Gian Maria Volonte.

British cult-auteur Alex Cox is probably best known to movie lovers for his ‘80s classics “Repo Man,” and “Sid & Nancy,” but he is also one of the foremost authorities on all things Spaghetti Western, as evidenced by his excellent compendium on the genre, “10,000 Ways To Die,” in which he provides a wealth of information and insight into the film and its production.

British director (and Italian Western scholar), Alex Cox.
Alex Cox’s “director’s take on the Italian Western.”
Alex Cox’s best works, “Repo Man” and “Sid & Nancy.”

Below is the transcript to Alex Cox’s Moviedrome introduction to Sergio Sollima’s “Faccia a Faccia,” originally broadcast by the BBC on August 29th, 1993:

Cox introduces “Face To Face” aka “Faccia a Faccia” on BBC’s Moviedrome program.

“Face to Face is one of three ‘political westerns’ by the Italian director Sergio Sollima, who sometimes operates under the pseudonym ‘Sterling Simon’. The other two were The Big Gundown, an excellent bounty-hunter movie starring Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian, and Run, Man, Run, a rather worse-than-mediocre sequel involving the further adventures of Milian. They were ‘political’ in much the same way as all the spaghetti westerns, setting up a rural/urban conflict in which the city dwellers are always insidious degenerates or usurous bankers, and the rural characters innocent exploitees, often championed by a glamorous social bandit. It’s a straight-forward, simple-minded view that you can find even in supposedly sophisticated Italian films, the most lumbering example perhaps being 1900.

Tomas Milian takes aim.

“Face to Face has been described as a parable of the rise of European fascism. Well, maybe. It certainly has the political schematic outlined above, but to me it seems more of a Borgesian tale of fate and doppelgangers. You can take your pick. It also has, and this is where it gets good, some of the most improbable character names, and some of the most outlandish haircuts ever seen in a western. Gian Maria Volonte plays professor Brad Fletcher, a consumptive Boston University professor who heads west for his health. Volonte is, of course, one of the great spaghetti western actors – he was the bandit chief in A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More; he was the unwilling revolutionary in A Bullet for the General. Volonte was a serious actor who had been blacklisted for being a Communist – Leone was the first director to break ranks and give him a job. Later he went on to appear in more ‘serious’ political films, including Sacco and Vanzetti, and Francesco Rosi’s Lucky Luciano. He’s always good, and this is one of his better western roles.

Pistol in the sand.

“In Face to Face, Brad Fletcher becomes involved with a Mexican bandit with the unlikely moniker of Solomon ‘Beauregard’ Bennet, leader of a hippie-esque outlaw gang called Bennet’s Raiders. Beauregard is played by Tomas Milian – the Cuban actor who appeared in Sollima’s other political westerns, and in many other spaghettis including the truly extraordinary Django Kill. Milian, like Volonte, is a ‘proper’ actor – he played the priest in Dennis Hopper’s Peruvian epic The Last Movie, and recently was seen as one of the anti-Castro hitmen in Oliver Stone’s JFK.

Preparing For Battle.

“The chemistry between Volonte and Milian is really interesting, and it keeps the film alive when it might otherwise expire – as, for instance, in the incongruous hippie commune scenes. There are also those haircuts to contend with. But Face to Face is really quite an entertaining and intriguing film. Watch out for several spaghetti western regulars, including William Berger as the mysterious Charlie Sirringo, Aldo Sambrel as the treacherous polecat Zachary Shot, and Angel del Pozo in the role of the gentleman gunfighter, Maximilian de Winton.”

Watch Alex Cox’s Moviedrome intro to “Faccia a Faccia” here:

BBC Moviedrome – Face To Face – Introduced by Alex Cox.

The Director:

Italian writer-director Sergio Sollima.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0813177/
Sollima’s Filmography Highlights.

Though he may not be the most famous or critically lauded of the “Three Sergios” (Leone and Corbucci would take gold and silver, respectively, in that contest), Italian filmmaker Sergio Solima was a prolific critic-turned-writer-director with 34 writing credits and 19 directing credits to his name.  

The lesser-known of “The Three Sergios,” Italian writer-director Sollima.
Leone, king of the Sergios.
The other other Sergio, “Django” director Corbucci.

A tough and stylish filmmaker who worked confidently and successfully in many genres, Sollima is best known for his excellent Spaghetti Westerns “Faccia a Faccia,” aka “Face to Face,” and “The Big Gundown,” aka “La Resi Dei Conti,” both released in 1967, and “Run Man Run,” released the following year (in which Tomas Milian reprised his Chuchillo character from “Big Gundown“). All three pictures were scored by the Maestro.

Morricone’s other collaboration with director Sergio Sollima from 1967 resulted in one of the Maestro’s best Western scores.
Alternate “The Big Gundown” album pressing under the original Italian title, “La Resa Dei Conti”
Cover art for Blue Underground’s DVD release of “Run Man Run.”

The director and composer duo would reunite with similarly impressive results on the films “Citta Violenta” aka “Violent City” aka “The Family,” and “Il Diavolo Nel Cervello” aka “Devil In The Brain.”

Recent vinyl re-issue of “Citta Violenta” by Ennio Morricone.
Album cover art.

But my favourite Morricone/Sollima collaboration has to be 1973’s “Revolver,” starring Fabio Testi and Oliver Reed, featuring the standout track “Un Amico,” which rabid-Morricone fan Quentin Tarantino repurposed to great effect in “Inglourious Basterds.”

Listen to “Un Amico” from “Revolver” & “Inglourious Basterds!” on YouTube here:
Listen to “Un Amico” by Ennio Morricone on YouTube.
Album cover art.
Watch the “Un Amico” clip from Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” on YouTube here:
Cinema’s avenging angel, Mélanie Laurent in Tarantino’s WW2 epic.

Sergio Sollima’s Director filmography from IMDb:

Sollima’s 1st of two screen credits from the”Faccia a Faccia”‘ title sequence.
Sergio Sollima on IMDb.
VENICE, ITALY – SEPTEMBER 02: Stefano Sollima attends a photocall for the “Adagio” at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on September 02, 2023 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Stefania D’Alessandro/WireImage)

Worth mentioning is that Sollima is the father of director Stefano Sollima, who has established an impressive career in his own right, both in television, directing episodes of acclaimed Italian series “Gomorrah,” and “Zero, Zero, Zero” (both adaptations of non-fiction works by Roberto Saviano), and in features, in Italian productions like “ACAB,” aka “All Cops Are Bastards,” and “Suburra,” and more recently, with Hollywood productions “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” and the Tom Clancy thriller “Without Remorse,” though Sollima returned to Italian cinema with last years’ “Adagio.”

TV adaptation of Roberto Saviano’s “Gomorrah” (also the basis for Matteo Garrone’s 2008 film).
Another Roberto Saviano adaptation for television also directed by Sollima Jr.
“All Cops Are Bastards” (“ACAB”) poster.
“Suburra“ character poster.
Sicario II poster.
Sollima takes on Tom Clancy
Sollima’s most recent picture, 2023’s “Adagio.”

Title Sequence:

“Faccia a Faccia” opens with one of my favourite title sequences of all time (of those not created by Saul Bass, of course), and certainly distinguishes this film from the many homogeneous Spaghetti Westerns produced in its era. Wildly colourful two-tone graphics using (seemingly) hand drawn text, images of its stars, and of various Western film motifs (horses, wagons, etc.) evoke a gritty, expressionistic atmosphere, indisputably fueled by the emotional charge Morricone’s rousing theme music (“Faccia a Faccia (Titoli)”) provides in abundance.

Opening image.
Title card.
The Maestro’s Screen Credit.
Sollima’s 2nd screen credit.

Watch the psychedelic title sequence from “Faccia a Faccia” here:

Title Sequence.

Posters:

Original Theatrical Poster.
French Theatrical Poster.
Alternate French theatrical poster playing on the title of another Morricone and Sergio (Leone, this time) collaboration, “Once Upon A Time In The West.“
Alternate Theatrical Poster.
Alternate Poster.
French blu-ray cover art.
Theatrical Poster For United Artists’ American Release of “Face To Face.”
French DVD cover art for “Faccia a Faccia” aka “Le Dernier Face A Face” (“The Last Face To Face”).
DVD cover art.
“Cara a Cara” aka “Faccia a Faccia” DVD cover art.
German theatrical poster for “Faccia a Faccia” aka “Von Angesicht zu Angesicht.”
German DVD Cover Art.

Links:

Purchase a vinyl copy of Morricone’s “Faccia a Faccia” on Discogs here:

“Faccia a Faccia” on Discogs.
Listen to “Faccia a Faccia (Titoli)” on YouTube here:
“Faccia a Faccia (Titoli)” by Ennio Morricone.
Mubi.com

Watch the trailer for “Faccia a Faccia” on Mubi.com here:

https://mubi.com/en/films/face-to-face-1967/trailer
www.mubi.com

Watch the trailer for “Faccia a Faccia” on YouTube here:

International trailer.

Watch a clip from “Faccia a Faccia” on YouTube.


Clip on YouTube.

If you’re in Toronto, say hi to my Filmography podcast co-host, Bjorn, and pick up a copy of “Faccia a Faccia” by it’s English title “Face to Face” (1967) at “Toronto’s last great video store,” Bay Street Video, in person, or online (with the link below):

“Face to Face”

Meet my pal, Bjorn, and discover his Pride Week ’24 film recommendations here:

Queer cinema classics for Toronto’s Pride Week 2024.

Outside of Toronto, purchase a copy of the blu-ray on Amazon here:

“Faccia a Faccia” blu-ray on Amazon.ca

Watch the complete film (for free) here:

Complete Film Online.
See Morricone in a documentary on his improvisational collective, Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza (aka Il Gruppo / The Group), filmed in 1967, the same year the Maestro composed the score for “Faccia a Faccia“:
The Group on YouTube
Morricone with his Group.

Read up on Morricone, The Group, and the 1967 documentary in this tribute piece from The Austin Film Society:

AFS’s Morricone tribute.

Categories
Morricone

The Morricone Collection: “Wolf” (1994)

Album Cover Art (detail).

Power without guilt. Love without doubt. It feels good to be Wolf… doesn’t it?

-Dr. Alezais, “Wolf.”
Theatrical Poster.
Album Sticker.

From the liner notes:

Working with Ennio Morricone and the resultant score was the most gratifying experience I’ve had in a long life of making movies. His extraordinary music has the mystery and integrity of the work of a great composer. But Morricone is very much a film composer. He is unmatched at finding the secrets and the undercurrents of a scene in a film and of its overall story. Working with a true artist is always an enlightening experience. I was very happy working on ‘Wolf‘ with Morricone and I am happy with the result.

-Mike Nichols.
Front Cover Art.
Reverse Album Cover

This is a film of the highest level and of great importance for the cinema. The musical score was a very elaborate and complex process. Certain pieces were widely discussed between Mike Nichols and myself with great care and passion, so as to find the creative balance within each piece between the poetic and the primitive, the romantic and the naturalistic. The process of creating this two-fold interpretation composed many intense and passionately creative moments between Mike Nichols and myself.

-Ennio Morricone.

This 2017 Music On Vinyl pressing of Morricone’s 1994 score is part of their excellent Ennio Morricone Classic Soundtrack Series (see image below for the complete collection).

Legendary Director Mike Nichols smiles in a publicity photo for “Wolf.”
Nichols directing Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer on location.

In Mike Nichols‘ 1994 romantic-horror film, “Wolf,” Jack Nicholson stars as Will Randle, a mild-mannered publishing executive who is losing his wife and job to the machinations of his slippery, duplicitous protegé, James Spader, until he is bitten by a wolf one night on a dark back road and begins to act…strangely.

Nicholson as the man who will become Wolf.
Nicholson with the always excellent Kate Nelligan (see “Frankie & Johnny” – also starring Michelle Pfeiffer – for further evidence) as his unfaithful wife, and James Spader as his conniving protogé.
Nicholson about to be bitten.
Nicholson’s bad hair day.

As he begins to transform into the Wolf of the title, he begins a romantic relationship with Michelle Pfeiffer, the daughter of Nicholson’s publishing mogul boss (Christopher Plummer) .

Nicholson’s wolfish grin.
Spader feeling his inner Wolf.
Pfeiffer in Lobby Card for “Wolf.”
Nicholson & Pfeiffer grace the cover of the now defunct Premiere magazine, for which 12-year-old Reece had a subscription.

Links:

Listen to Morricone’s score for “Wolf” here:

Complete score on YouTube.

Watch the trailer for Mike Nichols‘ “Wolf” here:

Trailer on YouTube.

Watch Nicholson get bitten here:

The Bite on YouTube.

Watch an excellent Om Puri explain the legend of the Wolf to Nicholson (in one of my favourite scenes) here:

Dr. Alezais scene from Wolf on YouTube.

See Nicholson’s transformation (old-school make-up and prosthetics, not CGI) into the Wolf here:

The Transformation on YouTube.

Watch the climactic fight sequence between Nicholson and Spader here:

Duelling Werewolves on YouTube.

Discover the story behind the making of “Wolf” here:

The Story of “Wolf” on YouTube.

Purchase a vinyl copy of Morricone’s “Wolf” at Discogs here:

https://www.discogs.com/release/10938422-Ennio-Morricone-Wolf?srsltid=AfmBOopJtpkYSElb-5lKVccX0sE-scxm6wnagrXt0HD__95x5Fb6DjhV

If you’re in the Greater Toronto Area, say hi to my Filmography podcast co-host, Bjorn, and rent or purchase a copy of “Wolf” at “Toronto’s last great video store” Bay Street Video.

Outside of Toronto, you can find a copy of the Indicator blu-ray on Amazon here:

a.co/d/6q3WZ5L

Categories
Morricone

The Morricone Collection: “Grazie Zia” (1968)

Album Cover Art
Theatrical Poster.

From the album liner notes:

“For the first time on LP, Maestro Morricone’s full score for the erotico-giallo ‘Grazie Zia‘ directed in 1968 by Salvatore Samperi and starring Italian actress Lisa Gastoni.

Reverse Album Cover.

…On this unique soundtrack, the genius composer has created a magical and suspenseful atmosphere based on the recurrent use of the boy’s choir of Renata Cortiglioni.

Side A

Side B

In 1971, CAM issued a 45 repo single in Italia, whereas in France a 45 rpm EP was released on the AZ label, with 5 selections. Therefore, you’re holding the first complete version of the OST on vinyl.

Album Insert.
Reverse Album Insert.

Including the killer theme ‘Guerra e pace, pollo e brace‘ with its funny rhyme and ferocious drums.”

Italian actress Lisa Gastoni.

“Grazie Zia” (aka “Thank You, Aunt” and “Come Play With Me“) stars Lisa Gastoni, who also starred in the Morricone-scored pictures “Wake Up & Kill” (aka “Svegliati e Uccidi” and “Maddalena,” and Lou Castel, who appeared in the Morricone-scored “Fists In The Pocket” (aka “I Pugni In Tasca“).

Blu-ray Cover Art.
Album Cover Art.
Album Cover Art.
Alternate Theatrical Poster.
Alternate Theatrical Poster.
Alternate Theatrical Poster.
Alternate Theatrical Poster.
Alternate Theatrical Poster.

Links:

Listen to the complete score here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cq9QDYzpyM&list=PLabUwu_IeFjxr6lfbIdY3SrNN0RJcFmjc

Purchase the album on Discogs here:

https://www.discogs.com/release/12574009-Ennio-Morricone-Grazie-Zia

Watch the trailer for “Grazie Zia” here:

https://mubi.com/en/films/grazie-zia/trailer

Purchase the DVD on Amazon here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Grazie-Zia/dp/B08P4M47H9?ref_=v_sp_product_dpx

Categories
Morricone

The Morricone Collection: “Navajo Joe” (1966)

Album Cover Art.

Never so bold!

-Lyrics from “Navajo Joe” main theme.
Theatrical Poster Art.
A young Ennio Morricone around the time he composed the score for “Navajo Joe.”

Though it was released under the pseudonym Leo Nichols, the score to Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 Spaghetti Western, “Navajo Joe” is unmistakably the work of the Maestro. Despite a screenplay co-written by Fernando Di Leo (“Calibro 9“) “Navajo Joe” is certainly not Corbucci’s best film (that would be “Il Grande Silenzio“), but the music for which it was composed should be counted amongst Morricone’s greatest contributions to the genre.

“Navajo Joe” director Sergio Corbucci on location
“Navajo Joe” synopsis from MGM’s North American DVD release.

“A band of outlaws, headed by a sullen leader named Duncan, sweeps across the country like the plague, destroying everything in its path, including an Indian village. The outlaws arrive in the town of Esperanza, where they are hired by a crooked doctor to hijack a bank train and share in the wealth. But the sole survivor from the Indian village, a renegade Navajo named Joe (Burt Reynolds), fells the plan by relocating the money. An irate Duncan holds an innocent Indian girl hostage until Joe surrenders; the brave citizens of Esperanza, under siege by the bandits, risk their lives to free Joe, who is their only hope of surviving. Joe once again takes on Duncan and his ruthless comrades with unforgettable vengeance.”

James Southall’s review of Morricone’s “Navajo Joe” album:

“Sergio Leone’s masterpieces with Clint Eastwood were just beginning to make their mark on America when Navajo Joe came along, attempting to do a similar kind of thing but in an even grittier way; a different Sergio was in the director’s chair (Corbucci, who had made the seminal Django), and Burt Reynolds was in place of Eastwood.  One constant was the composer – of course, Ennio Morricone, whose work in this genre I would rank as the most extraordinarily creative and brilliant film music there has been.

Album Cover with Morricone given proper credit on Apple Music.

The main title theme for Navajo Joe is a hoot, unexpected even from this most unpredictable of film composers – it begins with a woman’s screech, a primal and startling sound, before a choir sings the name of the character and occasionally utters some words of wisdom about him (eg: ‘Never so bold!’) – a memorable, striking, vintage piece of Morricone, famously used in Alexander Payne’s ‘Election‘ over thirty years later.  And there aren’t many film scores which become ingrained in popular culture because two entirely separate pieces from them cropped up in entirely different films decades later, but as well as the main title in Election, Quentin Tarantino used ‘A Silhouette of Doom‘ in ‘Kill Bill‘ – it’s a driving, suspenseful piece for the villains of the story, built around a five-note motif hammered at the low end of a piano which forms a key building block of the score as a whole.

Election soundtrack.
Kill Bill vol. 2 soundtrack.
NOT Josh Brolin, but Burt Reynolds as “Navajo Joe.”

Those two pieces dominate, cropping up in countless variations over the 45-minute score, but always given fresh impetus with each new appearance thanks to the composer’s ingenious knack for building up whole scores sometimes from relatively small (in terms of volume) ideas.  It also helps that there are one or two other set-pieces along the way – the inevitable saloon music, ‘The Peyote Saloon‘, with the piano and banjos, the wonderfully outlandish ‘But Joe Say No‘, the two ‘Navajo Harmonica‘ source cues and the breathtakingly beautiful ‘The Demise of Father Rattigan.’

Reynolds with Nicoletta Machiavelli in “Navajo Joe.”

A kind of legend has built up about this score over the years due to numerous factors – no doubt the fact that it is such good music is the key one, and the use in other films has also helped, the fact that Morricone wrote the score (somewhat mysteriously) under the pseudonym Leo Nichols (and the possibly apocryphal story that Burt Reynolds was furious that the producers were too cheap to hire Morricone so got this Nichols fellow instead) but its peculiar release history also plays a part, with various LPs being issued through the 1960s and 70s which were all unsatisfactory for one reason or another, and the only CD release (in the mid-1990s) suffering from very poor sound.  Now Film Score Monthly has put out the definitive release, of the whole score, plus 10 minutes of bonus tracks, in easily the best sound yet (though it is still certainly not problem-free).  Even by their standards the liner notes are good, with a short essay by John Bender, track-by-track analysis from Lukas Kendall and Jim Wynorski and a brief note from the latter about his history with the score.  Top-notch.”

http://www.movie-wave.net/titles/navajo_joe.html

The Corbucci smile.
Young Ennio at the keys

Corbucci would also engage Morricione to score his next film, “The Hellbenders” (aka “I Crudeli“), as well as “The Great Silence” (aka “Il Grande Silenzio“), “The Mercenary,” “Companeros,” and “Sonny & Jed.”

Original Theatrical Poster.
Tarantino’s fake Rick Dalton poster.

Above, the original “Navajo Joe” theatrical poster served as inspiration for the fictional “Comanche Uprising” poster featuring Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood.”

United Artists’ poster for North American Theatrical Release.
Alternate Theatrical Poster.
Spanish Poster Art for “Navajo Joe.”
DVD cover art for MGM’s North American release of “Navajo Joe.”
Thumbnail from YouTube.
Danish VHS cover art for “Navajo Joe.”

Links:

Find a copy of the vinyl for “Navajo Joe” on Discogs here:

https://www.discogs.com/release/2291564-Leo-Nichols-Navajo-Joe-Original-Motion-Picture-Soundtrack?srsltid=AfmBOop41YLUm_uLZRlIGGAojqDo_HsZkiSEBbT2OPJ2rJNe4OXavfWO

Listen to the 13-minute “Navajo Joe Suite” here:

Morricone’s “Navajo Joe Suite” on YouTube.

Watch the trailer for “Navajo Joe” here:

“Navajo Joe” film trailer on YouTube.

Watch the train robbery sequence from “Navajo Joe” here:

Train Robbery Scene on YouTube.

Watch Quentin Tarantino talk about the fictional meeting between Sergio Corbucci and his “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” protagonist, Rick Dalton, here:

Watch Netflix’s Sergio Corbucci documentary, “Django & Django,” featuring Quentin Tarantino here:

https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/81519575

If you are in the Toronto area, say hi to my Filmography podcast co-host, Bjorn, and find a copy of “Navajo Joe” at “the last great video store” Bay Street Video here:

www.baystreetvideo.com
Toronto’s last great video store, located on Bay Street, just south of Bloor.

Outside of Toronto, purchase a blu-ray of “Navajo Joe” on Amazon here:

https://a.co/d/daiSXDL