Gone with the Pope

Being a major fan of Duke Mitchell's film Massacre Mafia Style, I couldn't wait to see Gone With the Pope, and I was not disappointed. Seeing the pristine, restored print in a theater was great fun, and Bob Murawski, who won the Academy Award for editing The Hurt Locker, did a great job resurrecting Duke Mitchell's lost masterpiece. Bringing Gone With the Pope to the world has been a passion of Bob's and it shows. Grindhouse Releasing has done some amazing re-releases, especially Cannibal Holocaust, I Drink Your Blood, and now Gone With the Pope is the next hit on their roll.

If you're unfamiliar with the work of Duke Mitchell, just wait until you see Massacre Mafia Style, which Grindhouse will also have on DVD soon, and if Gone With the Pope comes to your neck of the woods, be in, don't be in the way.

In the 1950s, Martin & Lewis were the hottest comedy team on the planet. Not surprisingly, their success encouraged likealikes...such as Mitchell & Petrillo. This pair was clearly a knockoff version of the famous team, with Mitchell impersonating Dean Martin, and when they managed to get a film contract, it was for a horrible cheapie called "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla". Amazingly, it's worse than it sounds and Mitchell & Petrillo (especially Petrillo) were simply awful.

I had no idea that Duke Mitchell managed to make a few films after his Lugosi debacle. I learned of this movie, "Gone With the Pope" when I was recently visiting Hollywood...where I saw a poster for this film in a retro theater. And, when I realized it was the same Duke Mitchell, I knew I had to find it. Fortunately, it's currently available on several channels on the Amazon Fire...and that's how I saw the movie.

The story behind this ultra-cheap film is a lot like what you'd expect from an Ed Wood movie. Mitchell scraped together a miniscule amount for a movie ($25-35,000 according to IMDB) and made it piecemeal over a couple years. Then, it appears he ran out of money and died a few years later. When cleaning out his things following his death, this very incomplete film was found in boxes....and someone decided to finish and release the movie...about three decades after Mitchell's death. Talk about a strange pedigree!

Paul (Duke Mitchell) was just released from prison and he isn't exactly repentant and ready to live the straight and narrow. After murdering a room full of mobsters, he comes up with a bizarro idea. He wants to kidnap the Pope and then charge every Catholic person $1 to get him back!

Much of the film was filmed using Mitchell's friends and associates. They clearly were NOT professional actors. You can tell this by the acting as well as the budget for the film. As far as the story goes, apparently there was no script. It is gritty and filled with expletives, racist comments and nudity you might not expect from a 1970s picture (that's when it was filmed).

Now I am NOT saying the movie is completely terrible. It has a few redeeming qualities and at least manages to be better than "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla"! On the plus side, there is a gritty realism about it and you get a chance to see 1970s Vegas and Rome. Also, for better or worse, the story IS original! On the negative side, the film looks cheap...really cheap. It also appears in places to just meander without any apparent thought to a plot. Overall, a bad film but not a terrible one...and mostly of interest to the curious.

By the way, at one point the gang is talking about getting a Citroën Maserati. This is referring to the Citroën SM...a Citroën with a Maserati engine...hence the name.

This is a film that, yes, was technically released for the first time in 2010. But it's also a kind of Grindhouse example of Metropolis, another movie that was restored this year. New footage was found and meticulous care was put to editing something that people had never seen before. One was a testament to man and his inner quest for self-knowledge set against an oppressive world, and the other was Metropolis.

But I jest. This was shot by real (and I mean REALLY) no-budget director Duke Mitchell, who made only one other film in the 1970s, and did shoot the footage for this film (you can tell, all HUGE warts and out-of-focus shots and all). But it was never finished due to lack of funds. Years later (as in two years ago) some former friends and people at the Grindhouse DVD company, got together and took all the footage Mitchell had shot and made a movie as competently as they could.

Frankly, that it turned out as well as it did is something of a miracle because, quite frankly, this stinks. But it stinks in a way that is friendly to fellow bad-movie lovers. The craftsmanship is so terrible, the acting so non-existent, the story so WTF, that I wondered at certain points if Torgo from Manos the Hands of Fate would make an appearance. All I could really gather about anything relating to a "story" was that Paul (also Mitchell) is released from jail, kills some gangsters, and then takes a boat trip with some friends from California to Rome to kidnap the Pope and hold the world hostage: every Catholic pays 1 buck. That's a lot of bucks.

From the dialog that is at best decent street-tough stuff to at worst really racist and sometimes just dull dialog - and the racist stuff especially, as Paul makes wisecracks (and not the subtle kind) to a black prostitute who, somehow, takes it in stride, is hilariously painful to hear spoken - to the cinematography that gives cinematography a bad name (FOCUS, goddamn it, FOCUS!), to the one or two actors such as Paul's wife or Giorgio, who both look like they were picked up from the local deli counter, to the very mixed messages sent about religion (a very *nice* Pope who somehow gets everyone except Paul on his side! and a polemic speech by Paul at one point that rivals ANY of the preachifying in Machete), this is trash cinema at its base level.

It's not a good movie really. If you're looking for things like, say, motivation on the character's part, be it things like killing lots of other people we haven't seen before (sometimes with telephones) or to a random "prank" scene with a huge fat woman getting naked and surprising one of Paul's friend asleep and proceeding to lock her in the room for a good, it's more than absent. It's almost like Mitchell seemed to forget what a movie makes - albeit he is awe-inspiring at making montages, such as one with him and his wife frolicking at a park - and was more transfixed by his own sideburns than anything else. When he tries to get genuine laughs, such as the fat woman scene, it feel so awful that you just recoil in your seat. The movie also disappoints, if in one major way as a Midnight Movie, in not having more craziness with the religious angle. Without saying too much, the film needed to be more like the last scene, which did leave me with a big smile and almost clapping with the rest of the audience.

But for all of the dull moments, and believe you-me there are plenty, and the cringe-worthy performances, it's a very funny movie without knowing that it is. It's also commendable to the editors and producers of this finished version that there are some scenes and transitions that move to a cool beat, maybe in ways Mitchell himself never envisioned. Song selections vary; some are genuinely fantastic, while others go along with the hokey nature of the film. It frustrates and entertains, and it actually has a sense of admiration for the Pope (!) in all his cardboard-performing glory. Then again, his dead-pan is just what's needed on the flip-side of Mitchell's mugging.

"Gone With the Pope" was for years, a kind of cinematic "urban myth." Film fanatics knew it existed, but nobody ever imagined it would ever see the light of day. Well 'Grindhouse Releasing' has performed a miracle here, and this is certainly their finest restoration to date. Poring over 5 hours of film reels from the Mitchell family archive, they painstakingly put the film together in the order of what Duke Mitchell most likely intended, and have created an incredible film of the grindhouse genre. Having an obsessive fascination for Duke's previous film, "Massacre, Mafia Style,' getting to see this was a big deal for this viewer. I had feared that this one couldn't possibly be as good as 'Massacre...' but as it turned out, this one is BETTER. The camera work, the editing, the framing, are all more competent and professional, like a work from a film maker who has learned from past mistakes, and grown more confident in his craft. "Gone With the Pope" looks like it had a higher budget, featuring location shooting in Las Vegas and Rome. This time around Mitchell's character Paul, has a collection of Rolls Royce automobiles and access to a yacht, which he charters with his mobbed up buddies, to Rome, carrying an unprecedented plan to kidnap the Pope, and charge every Catholic on the planet $1 for his release. The writing at times is so powerful and emotional that one has to wonder just how much of the real Duke Mitchell was infused into the fictional character of Paul. His opinions of the Catholic church are intense and controversial, and obviously written from a very personal point of view. At a certain point Paul's buddies all have their own revelations about God and religion, and begin to change their minds about this outlandish and sacreligious plan, but Paul is not so easily swayed, and needs a bit more "proof" that God truly exists. Well he gets that proof at the films climax, which is a real stunner. Watching this film I had to wonder what directors Martin Scorsese and Abel Ferrara thought of it. I imagine they both hold "Gone With the Pope" in high regard, especially the intense religious imagery contained throughout, and of course the strong Italian influence that saturates every frame of this lost, priceless time capsule. Comments that this movie is somehow "boring" are truly mind boggling, as there is so much going on, so much eye popping imagery to behold, so much fascinating dialogue and such a collection of eclectic songs of the era, and of course, the mid 70's fashions and decor are sometimes hypnotic in their own right. Anyone who finds this movie "boring" must have the attention span of a mosquito. The footage of vintage Las Vegas, as well as the gorgeous scenes on the yacht, and of Rome are stunning as well. Filled with memorable and quotable lines and bizarre, hilarious characters. Fans of gangster and mafia movies should seek out this iconic film; it is a true masterpiece of the genre.

Gone with the Pope (2010)

** (out of 4)

Wiseguy Paul (Duke Mitchell) agrees to kill seven people so that his friends can live a better life with the money once they're released from prison. Once out, Paul and his friends take a cruise around the world when he gets an idea to kidnap the Pope and request a dollar from every Catholic in the world for his return.

GONE WITH THE POPE was produced, written and directed by Mitchell but the film was never complete and after Mitchell's death in 1981, the film pretty much remained unseen until the folks at Grindhouse Releasing discovered a print and took the next fifteen years trying to piece it together. It's clear that there's stuff missing but I'm not sure if this is due to a few reels being missing or the fact that it seems Mitchell was just filming stuff for the sake of filming and in the end none of it added up to much. This film is no where near as entertaining as MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE but fans of the (now) cult filmmaker will still want to check it out.

If you're expecting the over-the-top craziness of MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE then you're probably going to be disappointed. This movie here is pretty laid back in its approach and there's really nothing too crazy outside the entire kidnapping of the Pope storyline. Even that there is somewhat deceptive considering that plot point only takes about thirty-minutes worth of running time if that. There are a few Mafia hits throughout the picture that contain some blood but nothing too graphic. There's some bizarre humor scattered throughout aimed at women, which is certainly something you'd only see from a movie in the 1970s. This includes a black woman who gets some racist jokes thrown her way and then there's a really bizarre sequence dealing with an obese woman.

The film certainly isn't what you'd call well-made but there's no doubt Mitchell had something that is..... Well, I'm not sure what it is but there's no doubt that his two films as writer-director have given him some fame that sadly he never saw in his lifetime. GONE WITH THE POPE is going to be hated by most people and you know who you are. Fans of cult movies will find some mild entertainment here thanks mainly to Mitchell. Even his performance as his plays this tough guy is charming to say the least. This certainly isn't a masterpiece but it's got a certain Mitchell charm. Not to mention, the actor manages to turn in a good performance and especially during a more dramatic moment where he breaks down speaking with the Pope.