The Same Sands in Different Lands

Spaghetti Westerns were typically Italian productions shot in Spain standing in for the old American West. But why shouldn't one have also been set in Spain? At least one was--1967's Man, Pride and Vengeance (L'uomo, l'orgoglio, la vendetta). That's not the only atypical thing about it, though. The story centres on a torrid romance between Franco Nero and Tina Aumont--it feels much more like a film noir or psychological tragedy than a Spaghetti Western until two thirds of the way through when Klaus Kinski shows up. It's a decent enough film about poisonous love, though it works mainly on the strength of its visuals, particularly in terms of how gorgeous Nero and Aumont were.

The film's German title is Mit Django kam der Tod. I can just imagine how many Django fans were thoroughly disappointed by this film with which the only thing it has in common with Django is Franco Nero. And his lovesick, earnest Spanish officer has very little in common with the character he played in that influential 1966 film.

Handsome young Jose (Nero) meets Carmen (Aumont), a beautiful young gypsy, when she starts a fight in a barracks' workshop. Escorting her to prison, he allows her to walk ahead after she begs him not to allow her to be shamed in front of her neighbours. Of course, she gives him the slip and he's put in detention.

But it's not the last he sees of her nor the last time she takes advantage of him. But they both seem to have a fabulous time rolling in bed and it's not really clear how much of what she does is manipulation or how much is genuine affection for Jose. Or maybe it's both, as she tries to explain to him later.

When he's heartbroken over an Englishman she starts living with, she tells him, yes, she loves the Englishman now. But only for now. Why can't Jose understand that? Maybe he's sore because he had to skip town after murdering a superior officer he found in bed with her.

Then things really do start to look like a Spaghetti Western. Jose gets a really nice but totally impractical sable corduroy jacket and big turquoise scarf. And suddenly Carmen has a husband who's just been released from prison. And it's just poor Jose's luck that it happens to be Klaus Kinski.

Not that Kinski seems to be the jealous type here, just generally ruthless and sadistic. When Jose's young friend is shot during a botched robbery, he tries to carry him to safety but Kinski saves everyone the trouble and executes the lad.

There are some pretty good fight scenes though the climactic tussle between Nero and Kinski is kind of ruined by it being muddy blue day for night shots. The main story stays between Jose and Carmen, though. She remains slightly mysterious but credible and Jose is prevented from coming off as just a pathetic load because Nero is so devastatingly handsome. There was definitely something between these two. Just what it was is the kind of tormenting question that ends in graves.

Movies Combine for Maximum Stuff

So the Alien frightened you, so the Terminator thrilled you. Now get ready for the Alien Terminator (aka Top Line), a 1988 action/adventure/Sci-Fi film starring Franco Nero, Deborah Moore, and with the friendly participation of George Kennedy. There's a goofy grace in this casually ridiculous mess.

Every big idea the movie delivers seems like it was coaxed out of a reluctant, inebriated old man who just wanted to be left alone. Most of the movie consists of a moustachioed Nero running around Columbia being chased by anonymous guys with guns who may be KGB, mafia, or Nazis. Director Nello Rossati seems to have no idea or interest in how audiences form attachments to characters and events.

One moment, Ted (Nero) is having lunch with a friend--then an abrupt jump cut immediately has Ted identifying the same friend's corpse in the morgue. Deborah Moore (daughter of Roger Moore) is introduced as an assister to that same friend and she starts following Ted around for no apparent reason. She trusts him without question when he tells her he's not guilty of the murders the government pins on him, and doesn't even blink when he tells her there's an alien spacecraft with what he identifies as a "16th century carrack" in the mountains.

Looks more like a 19th century balcony if you ask me. There's business about how alien technology is being kept hidden from the public but it's all very vague, mostly everything is just an excuse for guys to shoot at Franco Nero so he can narrowly escape in various ways. My favourite is when he hops into the back of a truck being driven by a middle aged man and woman, apparently chicken farmers, who are so drunk they just constantly laugh while the vehicle weaves about alarmingly on the road.

They're not even laughing at anything, for five or so minutes of film they're just aimlessly laughing.

Finally, June (Moore) joins Ted on the run and they at last witness the strange, expressionless, apparently invulnerable man. "Russian?" June speculates, maybe wondering if he's related to Dolph Lundgren's character from Rocky IV. But, no--he really is a machine!

So now there's a killer robot for some reason. He's good for another couple chase scenes, anyway, before Ted's icy ex-wife (Mary Stavin, Jerry's Icelandic girlfriend from Twin Peaks) travels from a New York high rise, in person, for some reason, to handle matters. Events occur, occasionally they bear some tentative relationship to each other.

There was always a smile on my face watching the movie, it was like watching a dream someone had while Raiders of the Lost Ark, Alien, and Terminator played on television. Alien Terminator is available on Amazon Prime under the title Top Line.

Twitter Sonnet #1243

The floating gloves suggest a finger mind.
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Projector wheels would turn another kind.
The future's built in rusty pots and tins.
A podgy lizard fell across the street.
Detectives turned the scales to see the sum.
A giant foot can cover any beat.
A roiling Coke disturbed the rubber tum.
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An Unlikely Smell

I was in the mood for a Spaghetti Western last night and didn't quite get what I wanted with 1975's Cry, Onion! (Cipolla Colt, "Onion Colt"). But that wasn't such a bad thing. A parody of Spaghetti Westerns that shows an intimate knowledge of the genre it also has a really delightful absurd streak.

The normally stoic leading man Franco Nero--the original Django himself--stars as Onion, a crazed onion farmer who comes to an oil town looking to buy land. But in doing so he stands in the way of a tycoon's ambition, the ruthless Petrus Lamb (Martin Balsam), who, when he lifted his golden clockwork prosthetic hand into frame, tipped me off as to exactly what kind of movie this was going to be.

Already there are shades of various Westerns and Spaghetti Westerns, particularly Once Upon a Time in the West where it's a railroad tycoon with MS who's trying to push out landowners. Cry, Onion! is also peppered with famous historical names in ridiculous places, including Al and his brother Dutch Capone as little kids using homemade grenades to defend the land Onion purchased. Waging a print war against Lamb is an elderly town resident, none other than Joseph Pulitzer.

Who's played by none other than Sterling Hayden, sadly dubbed over by another actor. This was three years after he was in The Godfather. I imagine by this point in his career he had his pick of roles; he is one I've always admired for a willingness to do something strange and off-beat, apparently not nursing a chip on his shoulder that no-one saw him as a handsome leading man anymore.

The Spanish actress Emma Cohen--who played the version of Big Bird on the Spanish Sesame Street--plays Pulitzer's daughter, Mary Ann, who falls in love with Onion at first sight, despite having trouble tolerating his stench. In a gratuitous parody of Spaghetti Western stylistic flourishes, the frame freezes on her face and his when they first see each other and cartoon hearts appear around their faces before their images are put together into a silly Valentine's card.

There are also jokes that are just plain absurd, as when Onion's chasing evil gunfighters in a granary, brushing aside grain to see the faces of the men to find the one he wants. He doesn't make any headway until he brushes away the grain on one man to encounter his own face. It doesn't make any sense at all, it's great.

Nero gives a zany performance oddly complemented by an English dub actor doing a Jimmy Stewart impression. Cry, Onion! is available on Amazon Prime.