Black Killer

I was sold when I saw Klaus Kinski on the poster artwork. Playing the title character too. Sadly in spite of that, he actually plays secondary to Fred Robsahm's rugged heroic cowboy, corrupt townsfolk judge and flamboyant dressed, evil cackling Mexican bandit brothers in this surprisingly ruthless, yet formulaic spaghetti western set in the town Tombstone?!

What starts with a loose string of story threads and characters eventually had Kinski's sly, scheming lawyer as the glue holding the (confounded and raggedly edited) plot together. It's rather a collected performance, although the intensity in his eyes is all on show emoting every lingering thought. However he doesn't get much to do on the action front. Unless you enjoy watching him read, glare down, creeping about, peering out of windows or behind red curtains with books always in hand. Books you say, yep books. Oh there's a catch. Think Django with his coffin... now how about Black Killer/James Webb with his books. Even one with a built in draw string. Kinski gets creative with his pistol handling, real creative on the quick draw and faultless with his aim. The problem... I just wish we had more of it. It's a small novelty, but this along with the wicked spaghetti flavoured music score made a lasting impression.

This film features good performances by the Italian actresses Marina Malfatti and Tiziani Dini. Bizarrely, although Malfatti is correctly credited in several of the earlier reviews on IMDb, and is also correctly credited on Wkikpedia, the cast list for this title on IMDb has been changed (vandalised) within the last year or so to credit Malfatti's part to a little-known actress named Marina Rabissi. I attempted to correct this some months ago, but the change has not been made. Malfatti looks convincing as a Native American, but the weakest feature of this film is the 'brownface' make-up of some of the Italian actors playing the O'Hara brothers who are the villains of this movie.

(1971) Black Killer SPAGHETTI WESTERN DUBBED

Co-written and directed by Carlo Croccolo including a small role as deputy sheriff, that has James Webb (Klaus Kinski) coming and moving into a small town called Tombstone with a load of books. Aside from those books he has some guns hidden inside of them. It appears the criminals of the O'Hara brothers has been terrorizing the town and as a result of the reward poster for the capture and kill of one of them being so small, he goes and murders the deputy sheriff so that the reward would be higher. After that one sheriff is murdered and killed, it is during then Burt Collins (Fred Robsham) comes into town and gets blackmailed to replace that dead sheriff. His actual intention is to visit his brother and see how he is doing living with his native American wife. And of course, he is going to butt heads with the O' Hara brothers.

Although, they are a dime a dozen quickie westerns for a fast buck, I like some for it's uniqueness as this movie is a prime example of it, even though guns hidden in books was done before in other Westerns and so forth, this movie more than overdose it.

Many spaghetti westerns had absurd gimmicks that made them memorable while at the same time subverting the iconography of their traditional American counterparts. Perhaps most famously there was Django and his coffin, in Black Killer we have Klaus Kinski's lawyer with his guns disguised as books! Like a lot of the spaghetti western gimmicks it's simultaneously completely silly and very cool. On the whole though, its business as usual spaghetti western style in this movie. We have a lawless town called, perhaps unsurprisingly, Tombstone which is terrorised by a gang of Mexican bandits called somewhat improbably the O'Hara gang. A mysterious drifter called Burt who is adept with a fire-arm comes into town and is made new sheriff by the fearful locals. The bandits subsequently kill his brother and rape his sister-in-law, an Indian called Sarah. Burt and Sarah band together, with the help of Kinski's lawyer to get revenge.

To be honest, the story-telling is a little confused and messy in this one. And it can appear a lot more convoluted than it really should do. But it ultimately is a pretty straightforward violent western. The sexual violence is fairly unpleasant, while one of the unfortunate early sheriffs is shot several times and then killed with a knife. It was good to see the character of Sarah get in on the retribution though – a female Indian with deadly skills with a bow and arrow made for a pleasant contrast to the typical taciturn gunfighter anti-hero she teams up with. Kinski is good as always as the lawyer who we can only assume the film is named after. He is in a rare good(ish) guy role in this one. He is dubbed with a silly English accent though it has to be said which is quite distracting. All-in-all though, this is a pretty entertaining spaghetti western.

A dark, gritty and to the bone nihilistic western, that is really fun to watch. By all means one of the cheaper spaghetti's. But it's blessed with many cool scenes of violence, strange dialog and good old sleazzzzz. There's more than one moment of unnecessary nudity here. Don't take it to seriously though cause it's just a fun ride, and nothing more. The white horse Burt Collins rides is said to be the same horse that gets loaded in Cat Ballou. The actor Fred Robsahm is actually from Norway and he's currently residing in a small town called Lillesand. He does a lot of the stunt work in this movie (not just he's own). Kinski is cool as the weird lawyer that has a strange habit of transforming he's law books into deadly weapons. Great soundtrack and some nice cinematography gives the film good atmosphere and it's well worth the watch. Available on DVD from xploitedcinema