Vengeance

Another matzoh ball-topped spag western featuring Lee Van Cleef and a very young Leif Garrett (before he became a teenage heart throb), who also "teamed" up in God's Gun which I have given a low rating, but this one rates even lower for worse acting, action and production. Tom Thurston (Leif Garrett) witnesses the brutal murder of his parents and the abduction of his elder sister by a mostly Mexican band of outlaws led by white man McClain (Van Cleef) who is the most un-western looking villain in a Western movie; with his greasy long hair, ornate headband and single earring, he looks like he wandered out of Woodstock Festival into a movie set by mistake and decided to stay there. On the spur of the moment, Tom is hellbent on revenge, pursuing the gang surreptitiously and surprisingly manages to whittle down their numbers in various ways, without being caught. And that's just the beginning of a long list of errors I can spot, in continuity and logic and others. And that's not even mentioning the passel of no-account lowlifes that try to rob the gold prospector Isaac (Jim Brown) of his hard-gained treasure, who are in my opinion the most moronic and incompetent bad guys I've ever come across in film. The climax and ending are simply unbelievable they're almost surreal. Watch the film and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Released in 1977 and directed by Joseph Manduke, "Kid Vengeance" (retitled simply "Vengeance") is a Matzo Ball oater starring Leif Garrett as an adolescent who witnesses his mother's raping followed by his parent's murder at the hands of a bandit gang in the Southwest desert. He teams up with a miner (Jim Brown) to enact vengeance and get his sister back (Glynnis O'Connor). Lee Van Cleef plays the outlaw leader.

This was shot before another Hebraic Western with Van Cleef and Garrett, 1976's "God's Gun," but released afterward. These turned out to be the last two Westerns for Van Cleef. "Kid Vengeance" is better than "God's Gun" simply because it's gritty realistic whereas the latter has an uneven semi-camp/parody tone. In any case, Garrett was about 14 during filming and O'Connor was 20-21 whereas Van Cleef looks like he wandered off the set of "Woodstock" with his headband, although they were no doubt used in the Old West. The plot may be hackneyed, but the cast is great. Unfortunately, the movie's strictly one-dimensional in tone and utterly desolate in location; and therefore a mite tedious. Still, it's worth checking out if you like the cast and 60s-70's Westerns.

The film runs 90 minutes and was shot in Israel.

GRADE: C+

Young Leif Garrett watches helplessly while his parents are murdered and his sister taken by a savage band of grimy cutthroats led by Van Cleef, who looks like a hippie with full facial growth, earring, long hair, and headband (probably holding the hair extensions in place), and Robert Morley. (best remembered for waking up next to a horse head in The Godfather)

Garrett tracks the bandits and begins to slay them one by one before teaming up with gold miner Jim Brown to finish them off.

Not a spaghetti western, this was an Isreali production made in Isreal by Golan-Globus, who did a better job (Van Cleef too) with God's Gun.

Most people agree that Lee Van Cleef's career in westerns ended with a whimper, but I thought it was okay. Too bad that in the following twelve years nobody got him back in the saddle with a six-shooter. It would have been great having seen Lee Van Cleef on a horse in the action packed eighties.

I may be the only person in the universe that actually likes this movie. Of course the last time I saw this, I was 16, and not yet force-fed twaddle like Resnais, and being conditioned as to what to appreciate in cinema. Even so, this film was enough to make the great Lee Van Cleef hang up his six-guns forever, with the exception of riffing his cowboy image for Cheetos and Midas Muffler commercials. He is superbly slimy in this one, nonetheless-- with a big earring, bandana and goatee, his character McLain is outlandish, but in a good way. Despite the exploitative nature of the material, much of the film is otherworldly- the violence and the characters. Shot in orange hues and dreamy soft focus, Leif Garrett (yes... Leif Garrett) rides the trail of vengeance after Van Cleef's gang of slimeballs after they murder his family. He gets an ally in Jim Brown, who shares his thirst for revenge after Lee rips off his mine. The fact that some of the violence is ludicrous actually works- take for instance the scene with the scorpion, or when an outlaw has rocks dropped on his head in slow motion. The last half of this revenge western has a dream-like quality; perhaps it was meant to accentuate the state of mind of Garrett's character, and of a child at that. Dealing with such a loss and seeking retribution for it puts one in a strange state of consciousness-- how often have we felt after the death of a loved one that we are dreaming. or hoping that we will wake up soon? But at least, because this film is so bizarre, it is not your average revenge oater. It at least makes you think about you are watching. Isn't that what cinema art is supposed to do?

Leif Garrett did this film a year after God's Gun (aka Diamante Lobo). In the previous film, Garrett was quite good in a challenging (for several reasons) role, but his performance felt a bit tentative (also for several reasons). In this film, just one year later and for the same infamous producers, he was confident, sure-footed and turned in a very fine performance. The film was his to carry, and he did so quite well. Garrett was one of Hollywood's most promising young actors at the time, when too many child actors were, at best, barely adequate. True, it was a low budget, cranked out film, but Leif was a class act. Lee Van Cleef had played similar roles before - many times. He could have phoned this one in, and sometimes it looked as though he did. Jim Brown, following up a legendary professional football career with a number of turns as a film actor, handled his assignment competently. The only other actors with anything significant to do were Glynnis O'Connor, who sometimes overacted and wasn't as good as in some of her later roles; John Marley, good as always in the sort of role he has played many times; and David Menachem, an Israeli child actor who did several other American films but somehow didn't catch on. He should have; he was quite good. The production values were much better than God's Gun. The script was much more coherent, the dialogue more speakable, the direction more fluid. At least part of it was shot in New Mexico (the rest in Israel). Being in the US meant that the production was controlled by a SAG contract, always an advantage. Kid Vengeance (also available at one time or another under several other titles: Vengeance, Vendetta, Take Another Hard Ride) gave Garrett the chance to launch a serious career as an actor. He demonstrated that he was up to the challenge. But then the music producers came along. Too bad.