Kill Them All and Come Back Alone

If you like cheese the chance is great that you watched one of the movies of Enzo G. Castellari without knowing or remembering his name - like every good Italian director in the 60s up to the 80s he directed a lot of different movies in different genres - be it war, horror, adventure, sci-fi, or some Spaghetti western. A broader audience outside of Italy may know such "gems" like Striker or The New Barbarians among a few others. Ammazzali tutti e torna solo (Kill Them All and Come Back Alone) is one of this contributions to the Western genre and a fun one: a solid production, some well known faces of B-movies of that era and a lot of shooting and killing. The story is a kind of commando movie set in the time of the Civil War in the USA spiced up with some humor and cool guys on the loose and we witness maybe the first panzerfaust ever in action. For sure not to be taken seriously, this one is a fun and entertaining piece for the right kind of audience: nothing more and nothing less. In my youth I loved such kind of movies a lot. Good.

Confederate secret-agent Chuck Conners assembles a group of master thieves and cutthroats in order to steal a large shipment of Union gold. His orders are then to kill them all and come back alone with the gold, a task that isn't so easy for him to do.

Typical of director Enzo G. Castellari, Kill Them All And Come Back Alone is pretty light-hearted, with tons of humorous moments and wall-to-wall action, staying true to the winning formula he's perfected over his career and across genres. (Watch the real Inglorious Bastards.)

The ever smooth Chuck Conners is also in fine form here, his first of only a few spaghetti western appearances. He should have stuck around a little longer and made a few more!

Helping Chuck out is a great cast of familiar European faces, including Spanish actor Leo Anchóriz, who was also quite memorable opposite George Hilton in A Bullet For Sandoval.

More people should definitely check this out!

Chuck Connors stars in KILL THEM ALL AND COME BACK ALONE!, not to be confused with GO KILL AND COME BACK by the same director. He's assigned, along with his hand-picked team, to make off with a huge sum of Yankee dollars from an impregnable fort, to thwart the Union buying weapons to defeat the south, Connors' employers. Among his team, the usual: a knife thrower, dynamite expert, the Kid, the strongman. Along for the ride is the Captain (Frank Wolff) who dreamed up the whole scheme. The expected treachery occurs and when the dust settles not too many of the characters are still around to divvy up the loot. Connors is very good in this, although he's not, as one of the prints in the poster gallery boast THE SUPREME American ACTION STAR! Most of the team is played by stuntmen like Ken Wood and Alberto Dell'Acqua and seeing them leap and tumble is part of the fun. Nicely produced, with sweeping panoramas of the Spanish countryside, and with a great score by Francesco de Masi, this one is a lot of fun. The Wild East version is widescreen and in English for the first time, and has an interview with Ken Wood that reveals many interesting facts about the Italian cinema of the 60s and 70s.

This is a Testosterone driven movie, if I ever saw one. Normally in westerns, the hero would have a love interest or at least a few saloon dancers will appear to provide a bit of eye candy. "Ammazzali tutti e torna solo", though, has absolutely no female person in the cast. It is just a bunch of rogues fighting for a few boxes of gold, and that's all there is of a story. Constant action and violence keeps you on the edge of your seat, it's a tremendous roller-coaster ride. Tall Chuck Connors walks through this happy massacre with a broad smile to show white teeth, while Frank Wolff plays his most dangerous opponent and a bunch of familiar genre actors like Ken Wood, Leo Anchoriz and Alberto dell'Acqua take care of guns, dynamite, knives and anything else that makes holes in people. Kind of fun, but on the other hand not all movies need to be like this for my taste.

I always reckoned Chuck Connors just came along ten years too late to be a "Tarzan". He has precious little acting ability but would have been great rolling around in a loin cloth, or swinging through the trees with a knife between his teeth. Well, to be fair to that image - it's sort of what he ends up doing here in this very routine spaghetti western. He is "Clyde" who is charged with pinching an huge gold consignment being held by the Yankee army during the American civil war. Allied with half a dozen pretty disparate cutthroats and an even more duplicitous union captain "Lynch" (Frank Wolff) we now follow their escapades as betrayal begets betrayal and killings become routine as they search for the loot. It's all very cheap, cheerful and predictable - and Connors must have a jaw made of wrought iron. Francesco De Masi is no Ennio Morricone so we haven't even a quirky or original score to rely on to help this as it limps along to a denouement that matters not. The production - especially the editing - is really basic, but it might have worked better had the cast, dialogue and story been a bit more robust. As it is, though, well it just passes the time, that's all.