Matalo! (Kill Him)

Six years after Sergio Leone's A Fist Full of Dollars created the term "spaghetti western" and the passing of the San Fransisco acid wave of the 60's, someone thought it would be a good idea to combine the two. It would be a showcase for the international talents of Bolivian born actor Lou Castel, Argentinian actor Luis Davila (a.k.a - Luis Devil), Zaire born actress Claudia Gravy, the Italian Corrado Pani and directed by Cesare Canevari. For those familiar with the sultry naiveté of Emmanuelle, Canevari was the director of the first. If you haven't guessed so far, this is all a recipe for disaster.

Speaking with "J" (a friend and I don't mean the John Malkovich currently residing inside of Will Smith) about my reviews, he suggested I should make them my own somehow. I thought I had already done that, but it got me to thinking. I'm not sure if anyone has used this concept before, but here goes. I could rate movies based on a "shot scale". That would be the amount of shots required to enjoy or completely forget about the movie in question. It would only be in use for what I consider to be bad movies (also includes the "good-bad"). So for example, Matalo would require me to down 7 shots of Jagermeister, SoCo (minus lime) or Gentleman Jim D (or a combination of all 3 that would total 7 shots still). So the higher the "shot count", the worse the movie (inverse order to the normal scale). Now back to Matalo.

The whole plot of the movie revolves loosely around the heist of a United States official luggage from a stagecoach in the middle of the desert. We don't get to this point until about 1/2 way through the movie, however. The main character loves the smell of gunpowder, money and women. From the predictable "gore" introduction, I was getting an uneasy feeling in my gut and it wasn't because of the two shots I had quickly guzzled. The "gore" is quite light (even by 1970 standards) and seems almost melodramatically over-theatrical. For an action western, the action is as lively as the ghost town backdrop ; squeaky, rundown, dusty, but with lots of water. I have never seen the desert and water concept/metaphor driven this much into the ground, yet with as little emotion (or sweat) as possible. The director was obviously very influenced by Chappaqua and other "psychedelic" films, as he over uses their effects ad nauseam (literally sometimes). I mean how many times can we show spinning, Outer Limit's tilted framings, and close-ups of thespians with goofy expressions? This is a poor, drunk, blind and deaf man's version of El Topo. It's an Italian import, but definitely not a Ferrari.

90 minutes of that, mixed in with bare-bones dialog and acting (the dialog and acting in this movie share a border with pantomime) is too long I think. The plot could help, right? Not really. Characters coming out of the desert can't help this one, either. The acid rock soundtrack is actually not too bad, however, it is metaphorically alone in the desert with no water. I felt like I was watching Sergio Leone's evil hack clone remaking Tell Your Children (Reefer Madness) for posterity. It's really a smelly, decaying carcass that one million boomerangs cannot save, but it is still in the desert. If you're going to go there, bring the essentials (drugs/alcohol and a gun to shoot yourself afterwards). If you heed my advice, seek Django.

Fans of bizarre semi-psychedelic Westerns like "Keoma" should check this out. The cinematography and editing are wonderfully out of control, lotsa slo-mo sadistic violence and the movie is drenched in loud fuzzy acid rock. The simple plot deals with four ruthless thugs (incl. one ultra sexy but deadly femme fatale Claudia Gravy), gold, lust, murder and betrayal.

These eccentric hardass Italian Westerns look way better than most contempoary movies.

i LIKE MOVIES THAT MAKE ME STRANGE SENSATION!According to Mereghetti's dictionary of movies, this western is "as a Leone at last in mescalina" and with some moments that reminds Monte Hellman's movies for the use of the empty moments. This movie seems to me an august nightmare, with the hot, the desolation and the wonderful state of madness that characterized the end of the summer. Also notable is the score of Mario Mingardi, a mix of Jimi Hendrix and Luciano Berio, with electronics that supplies dialogues. I think that in western there is nothing like the duel of Matalo, a pistol against boomerangs! Recommended for all who like strange movies in the heart of the night with a little drop of alcohol or something else!

Spaghetti westerns are known for their absence of well defined good and evil, a familiar element of most earlier Hollywood westerns, and this moral ambiguity is one of the key hallmarks of 60's and 70's pop culture. With a title like Matalo! (a term which is roughly translated as 'kill 'em all!') this 1970 film certainly has the cynical morals and body count of typical spaghettis, but director Cesare Canevari takes this all a step 'further' by adding superficially entertaining gimmicks of the era, like hippie fashions, druggy cinematography, and especially Mario Migliardi's preposterously enjoyable prog-rock soundtrack, which sounds like a melting Ash Ra Temple LP played through a phase shifter. The central character is a hoot; a smiling trigger-happy psychopath named Bart, played by Corrado Pani, who cheerfully shoots everybody in sight. This is a uniquely odd specimen of the spaghetti western genre, which makes it essential. Worth your time as long as you don't take it seriously.

This one emerges an outstanding, if eccentric, Spaghetti Western which certainly gives that notorious genre effort DJANGO, KILL...IF YOU LIVE, SHOOT! (1967) a run for its money in the weirdness stakes!

Though simply enough plotted - with the script itself admirably laconic - and effectively set (for the most part) in a ghost town, it's essentially a mood-piece: stylized to a fault, the film features virtuoso camera-work and bold editing throughout; still, the general tone - buoyed by the remarkable experimental electro-rock sounds created by one Mario Migliardi - is effortlessly hypnotic.

The cast is equally interesting: Spaghetti Western regular Lou Castel as the unlikely hero (who, admitting to be unskilled at handling guns, utilizes boomerangs for weaponry during the body-strewn climax!); Corrado Pani - surely one of the genre's most idiosyncratic villains - brings a topical, i.e. late 1960s, touch of hippiedom to the Old West (the film is, however, thankfully free of the politics which informed many latter-day similar efforts)! Incidentally, both these top-billed stars are off-screen for an inordinate length of time - thus allowing Claudia Gravy, the luscious female lead, to take centre-stage (no complaints there!).

Pani's sidekicks, then, are equally colorful: one is Gravy's current lover, who assumes leadership of the gang after Pani's untimely 'exit' early on, and the other a sadist who covets the girl (though she continually rejects his advances). In fact, for a film of its type, there's an unusual emphasis on sex here - as much to the fore, I'd say, as the violence...which is present in quite graphic fashion (the sadistic outlaw beats Castel repeatedly with a chain, but he later has his own hand trampled by horse's hooves!).

Regrettably, the film is only available on DVD in an English-dubbed version through Wild East; the fact that the original language is not included would normally be enough to dissuade me from acquiring it (in spite of an accompanying Lou Castel interview which ought to be interesting) - but my recent unhappy experience with Wild East's edition of another Spaghetti Western title, THE MAN FROM NOWHERE (1966), certainly doesn't help make a case for it...