IL DIVO (2008)

Maybe it was only because star Tony Servillo had appeared in Gomorra, but I had the impression that Paolo Sorrentino's political drama was being promoted in the U.S. as a kind of follow-up to Matteo Garrone's chronicle of modern Italian crime. There's definitely a crime angle here, as Giulio Andreotti, the longtime power broker of Italy's Christian Democratic party, has been alleged to have had strong Mafia ties during his long career. But this is not a crime film, though Sorrentino sort of gives us a square-up reel right at the start, a montage of infamous assassinations of politicians, journalists and other notable men. The main action of the film isn't nearly so sensational.

Nor is Il Divo a biopic about Andreotti, who remains in politics today at age 90, having withstood all the charges against him. A major stumbling block for non-Italian audiences is that Andreotti and his cronies are pretty much taken for granted. We don't see where they came from, and we have only the vaguest idea what they stand for, despite a helpful introductory text in the American edition. The movie is really just an extended episode in Andreotti's life, starting with the formation of his unprecedented seventh government as prime minister in 1989 but flashing back occasionally to earlier events, most notably the politician's questionable role during the Aldo Moro kidnapping of 1978. Il Divo takes him from arguably the peak of his prestige to a slow-motion humiliation as his system of "perpetuating evil to guarantee good" falls apart in the face of growing public outrage over corruption and mafia violence and he's finally forced to answer charges of "mandating" assassinations himself.

Giulio Andreotti (Tony Servillo, center) is the toast of Italy at the start of Il Divo.

The blurbs on the new DVD invite comparisons to Coppola and Scorsese's films, but it mainly reminded me of the movies Peter Morgan has written about Tony Blair. It's an attempt to probe for the essence of a personality everyone thinks they know to some extent, and a better American analogy would be with Oliver Stone's presidential pictures, Nixon and W. Il Divo portrays Andreotti as a figure of Nixonian awkwardness, but without Nixon's motivating anger and anxiety. Non-Italian audiences are left wondering what makes him tick.

Il Divo doesn't really try to see things through Andreotti's eyes, but there are exceptions.

We get few clues, one being that Andreotti rose from a humble background. The big revelation is meant to come in a scene in which Andreotti rehearses a confession speech that he'll never actually give. In this speech (which strangely reminded me of Jean-Claude Van Damme's cri de coeur in JCVD), Servillo raises his voice for the only time in the picture to defend his accommodation of corruption, telling the audience that "We can't allow the end of the world in the name of what's right...We have a divine mandate to understand how necessary evil is for good." But we get little sense of what "good" means for Andreotti. He has no big dreams or schemes that we know of on the evidence of this film. The one issue he seems insistent on is making sure that Tedax, a favorite drug of his, isn't removed from the pharmaceutical codex. Does he use it and benefit? Does he hold stock in the manufacturer? Italians may know, but global audiences won't.

In a way, comparing Il Divo with Scorsese's work is fair. Sorrentino's film is like Goodfellas and Casino, not in its violence, but in its portrayal of a corrupt empire as a system that worked for those who worked it. But Il Divo lacks the tragic power of those American films because it doesn't show the system crumbling from within, but buckling under assault from without, from an outraged populace whose story isn't told here. The Italian film is more like Scorsese's The Aviator in its attempt to punch up a dry succession of episodes with cinematic pyrotechnics, not to mention semi-surreal incidents like the rolling of a rogue skateboard through the literal corridors of power. It's also Scorsesean in its reliance on a soundtrack rather than a full score. Teho Teardo contributes some original music, but the most memorable musical moments of Il Divo mostly come from other sources. I found that a disappointing betrayal of the great tradition of Italian movie music, but why should the Italians be different from filmmakers of other lands in this regard?

Now that I've suggested that Paolo Sorrentino indulges in visual gimmickry, I should say that Il Divo is a lavish looking movie. Sorrentino had the run of all the halls of government, it seems, and he makes the most of them to give the film an effortlessly epic appearance. The DVD includes an "FX Reel," but the biggest special effect in the film is Toni Servillo and his make-up job. Sorrentino apparently aimed for a total transformation of actor into politician, instead of Stone's middle-way approach with Anthony Hopkins as Nixon. Servillo gives a very stylized performance in presumably exact imitation of Andreotti's mannerisms, but I feel as if I can't judge his work until I see more of the real Andreotti. There's something mysterious about his performance, but because I don't know the real man, I'm not sure what mystery he's trying to solve.

Il Divo functions on the realistically bloated scale of modern politics, from the massive Italian legislature (above) to the heavy escort Andreotti (center background, below) needs when he goes out for nocturnal walks.

Il Divo simply isn't as accessible as Gomorra, and sending it out into the world in Gomorra's wake may have been a mistake. I don't mean to say that a political biopic is automatically unfit for foreign consumption, but remember, Il Divo isn't a biopic. Had Sorrentino really sought a global audience, he might have made one. As it is, his movie is one that people will probably appreciate better the more they know about Italian politics, or it might well improve on subsequent viewings once global audiences overcome their "Huh?" reflex. Does imposing preconditions on appreciation make this a lesser film? Not for Italians, obviously, but that still leaves us asking whether a truly great film would be accessible to moviegoers everywhere without preconditions. It's a question worth pondering for all citizens of the wild world of cinema.

Here's the deceptively action-packed official American trailer, uploaded by MPIHomeVideo:

And for the sake of comparison, here's a brief clip of Andreotti himself, uploaded to YouTube by EXTRAVAGLIOO999:

SPIRITED KILLER (1994)

Mill Creek Entertainment continues to expand into the licensed property racket after a long sojourn in the public domain by picking up a trilogy of three Thai supernatural martial-arts comedy horror films, more or less, featuring Panna Rittikrai, the fight choreographer and mentor of Tony Jaa, who appears briefly in the first film in the set. Of course, if you want to believe there's more of Jaa in this set, Mill Creek isn't going to go out of its way to disabuse you, but I kind of figured it out from their own synopses. Not that the box copy exactly inspires confidence. Mill Creek proudly proclaims that the other two films in the set are in the original "Taiwanese" with English subtitles. After sitting through Spirited Killer itself, which is dubbed into English, you might cheer news of subtitles, but this extraordinary dialogue track, which makes the Italian or Chinese exploitation films of sainted memory sound like they were dubbed by the Mercury Theater, makes the film a must-see for all lovers of international film trash.

Speaking of not exactly inspiring confidence, how do you think I felt when Spirited Killer opened with untranslated Thai credits which nevertheless prominently featured the number 4? What the hell? It turns out that the "first" Spirited Killer is the fourth in the Plook Mun Kuen Ma Kah series. That title apparently means "Wake Up to Kill," but the films are also known as the "Forest Man" series. No doubt being set in forests has something to do with that.

The credits roll over someone preparing a potion. He proves to be some sort of snake-oil salesman with a flair for presentation. His concoction explodes like a cartoon version of Dr. Jekyll's potion, the better to impress the rubes. And here's the pitch: this stuff will make you immortal and restore the old to youth. It's good karma to drink it, the pitchman claims. One crone is eager to pay up so she can attract a new husband, and another idiot follows her. But before the third sucker can take his dose someone notices that the first two are dead. "You murdered them!" young Pyak protests, "You bastard!" Yes, the dubbing is like that, rendering Thailand a land of Bills and Teds. And yet I get the feeling from the action on screen and the work of the actors that this is a spiritually faithful translation of the original script. But more on that later. For now, Pyak is going to tell on the mean old patent-medicine man, which means that the poor doctor is going to have to kill them. He takes down two out of three before Pyak flees across a river, moons the villain, calls him an asshole, and makes good his escape. Pyak was lucky, because the doctor can run at superhuman speed. Who is this guy? I wasn't sure, didn't want to believe at first, because I was certain that a victim referred to him as "Doctor Dong." That would have been too good, but the rest of the cast refers to their enemy as "Doctor Duong." It's a moot point anyway, since Pyak and the chief put together a posse, chase down the dude who can run superhumanly fast (but apparently forgot to), hack him to within an inch of his life with machetes, and dump him into the river. End of Act One.

Some time passes, though my ignorance of Thai prevents me from telling you how much. A group of twenty farmers are transporting some goods when they find their path blocked by some guy in a Member's Only jacket with his back to them. When he won't get out of the way they insult him more vigorously. "What the hell do you want, freak?" one asks as the stranger turns to face him. The director probably thinks this moment is on the level of James Whale's reveal of Karloff in Frankenstein, but we just see a surly looking little guy. Then he attacks. He disarms men and kills them with their machetes. This guy is a wrecking machine.

Only two of the original group manage to escape to the same village from Act One, where the same guy is still chief. Pyak is still around, also, trying to impress the chief's daughter Faa.

Pyak: I don't want to brag, but when it comes to fishing in Sidong village, everyone hails me as the master.
Faa: Oh yeah? So I guess that makes you the master baiter.

Be honest, readers: didn't the same joke occur to you sometime, back when you were twelve? But before this banter can go further, the two survivors of the attack, Boomay and Maha (all names approximate; IMDB doesn't help much here) meet them with their awful news, which they all take to the chief. I don't think I'll have to cite anymore dubbing samples after this extended exchange, which sets the tone for the whole film:

Boomay: I'm sorry to tell you this but a bunch of our people got killed. Me and Maha were the only ones to get away.
Faa: Wow...That's pretty impressive for just one guy! What does he look like? Is he handsome?
Chief: Hey, Faa, this is life and death, here. Don't joke around.
Maha: Chief, I'm scared! What should we do? I think that that thief is still out there in the forest. Our villagers must be in trouble.
Pyak: Bullshit! You guys can't take care of one lousy thief? You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. It's pathetic!
Boomay: Hey, man! This guy is really a monster. You didn't even see him.
Pyak: Well, he better hope I don't see him, 'cause I'll kick his ass for sure.
Chief: C'mon, guys! No more bickering. Things are bad enough as it is. We need to stick together....

Again, this seems to be a thematically accurate rendering of the actual Thai performances, and it may only be because the filmmakers have portrayed their own people as a pack of imbeciles that China did not declare war on Thailand when this film came out. It so happens that Sidong village is hosting two expeditions, one Japanese and one Chinese, who are looking for some legendary local "holy metal." The Japanese come off relatively well. One of their group, a kid named Shiba (or is that "Chiba" by way of homage to the master?) is actually the nearest thing to a pure hero the film has. But from this film's evidence the Thai people have a pretty poor estimate of their Chinese neighbors. The Chinese expedition includes two stunningly obnoxious comedy relief characters, one a dude in a safari suit who carries a battery-operated fan, the other a mute respectfully known as "Mute" who gibbers and gesticulates quite vocally through the rest of the picture. Why is Mute traveling with the expedition. As another Chinese explains, everybody wants to get rich, even a mute. And you thought they were unworldly saints! I guess you've learned an important lesson in humanity from this film.

Banliu Srisaeng as Mute (above) proves that the art of pantomime is not dead.

"Why does this feel like it hurts?" Actual dubbed dialogue from Thailand's notion of a comical Chinese person.

Once the two expeditions reach Sidong, the film becomes a series of skirmishes between the international idiot force and the individual whom we must apparently call the Spirited Killer. They attack and he kicks their asses, repeatedly. At times he seems to have iron skin, as machetes clang harmlessly on contact with his body. After several rounds of this you really have to ask yourself what the Spirited Killer has to do with the first part of the movie with Dr. Dong -- I mean Duong. I went back and checked and he was not one of the victims of the doctor's potion. But eventually the Doc himself reappears, all better from his early misadventure, to claim the Spirited Killer as "my immortal warrior." Since the doctor is now as invulnerable as the SK, Sidong village is seriously f*cked unless some hitherto unseen holy man should happen to show up with a sword made of holy metal for our heroes to use. And what are the chances of that happening?

I haven't laughed at a movie so hard in some time, and it has some halfway decent martial arts, too. This is definitely an early effort from the unit that now sets the standard for wireless fight scenes, but everyone performs enthusiastically, taking great bumps and happily slashing one another's shirts with their machetes. Spirited Killer, or whatever you want to call it, is exactly what I'm looking for a lot of the time from the wild world of cinema. It's a genuinely popular, unpretentious film from another part of the world, not aimed at art-house critics (Thailand has stuff for them as well) but for the native rabble who apparently like to see obnoxious young people get killed as much as the rabble of any nation. The only difference is that these kids fight back a lot. Imagine a Friday the 13th film in which everyone knows kung fu and you still root for the mindless killer and you get close to the essence of Spirited Killer. Add to that the utterly brain-dead dubbing and this first film alone justifies the bargain-basement $5 I paid for the entire trilogy. I think I can confidently commend the entire set to connoisseurs of cinematic garbage.

Here's a video trailer for the film under yet another title, desperately trying to hype Tony Jaa's brief appearance. It was uploaded to YouTube by abbottwhite

And here's a clip from the third film in the set, Spirited Killer: Ghost Wars. Such a parade of awesomeness cannot be missed.

Wendigo Meets THE VAMPIRE'S NIGHT ORGY (1973)

My friend Wendigo is often puzzled by European horror films, so naturally to start what I hope will be a regular series of collaborative vampire movie reviews I set him up with a typical European product of the Seventies: Leon Klimovsky's La Orgia Nocturna de los Vampiros, on a murky Mill Creek DVD, albeit a widescreen edition. So what's his beef with the Europeans? He doesn't want to overstate it, but he feels that he's never quite figured them out. Euro-horror's "dream logic" often serves only to leave him unengaged. To him, they often seem to be collections of vignettes united by theme or mood but without real narrative. He understands that he should probably just go with the flow, but for reasons he concedes to be his own he finds that he can't. There has to be more narrative structure to keep him interested. Still, he was game when I invited him to watch the Spanish film for the first time, it being my first try at it as well.

This film opens with a funeral that breaks down in panic when the coffin bursts open to reveal a heap of rich, maggoty corruption. It then takes a group of people who've all been hired to work for the same rich employer on a chartered bus trip that comes to an abrupt halt when their driver drops dead. One of them can drive and takes the bus into a seemingly deserted town where they can stay overnight before deciding what to do with the driver's body. The only person they encounter between the time the driver dies and the time they reach the town is a little boy who plays briefly with Violet, the daughter of one of the employees, but disappears in mid-conversation.

The town of Tonio is identified by a signpost but isn't to be found on maps. It's located in a fog-enshrouded valley where the sun never really comes out. Our characters make themselves at home in an inn overnight, but when one goes out exploring he discovers some of the inhabitants, who have a bad habit of swarming on strangers zombie-style. But the people who work at the inn are on their best behavior when they wake up the remaining visitors for breakfast. They're very hospitable, but their bill of fare leaves something to be desired. They've plenty of baked goods, but "meat's what they need," as a cook says of their guests. Well, meat can be arranged, though the town lacks livestock. All you need is to send Gigante on behalf of "the Countess" to take a spare limb from one of the citizenry, and our diners have meat of an extraordinary quality that Major Boris, a big man in town, assures them can't be found anywhere else. Since there seems to be something wrong with both the bus and another tourist's car, they and the tourist, Luis (Jack Taylor), have little choice but to accept the Countess's hospitality and the run of the town -- and that running gets pretty literal at times.

The Countess (Helga Line) is a benevolent ruler. She provides for her people, dropping the bounty from her window for them to enjoy.

It sank in as we watched that Vampire's Night Orgy is a kind of European version of Herschel Gordon Lewis's 2,000 Maniacs, from the one-by-one picking off of the visitors to the where-did-the-town-go finale. Compared to the American gorefest, however, Klimovsky's film goes fairly easy on the blood, at least in the possibly-edited version we saw. At the same time, the mass swarming attacks that occur throughout the picture may reflect the influence of Night of the Living Dead (Wendigo also suggests The Last Man on Earth) and definitely anticipate the zombie films that would dominate Euro-horror a decade later. The climactic mass attack on the escaping car, with vampires clinging to the speeding vehicle or trying to tip it over, especially impressed Wendigo as the bravura finish the movie needed. Also reminiscent of zombie films for Wendigo was the heroes' utter helplessness. They have no crucifixes of other holy fixes to help them once the vampires close in. Their only real defense, as noted already, is kick-ass modern technology on four wheels.

Wendigo was impressed by the vampires of Tonio, who he claims are more folkloric than cinematic bloodsuckers. Most of them are far from suave, and only the Countess can get away with seducing people with her looks. They don't seem to have any superpowers, and apart from the Countess depend on gang attacks to bring down their prey. There's a definite hierarchy with the Countess as the master vampire and Major Boris as her head minion, the rest being thralls. We actually weren't sure whether the entire population were vampires, as the jacket copy claims. If so, some of them are pretty abject creatures, subject to painful mutilation as it suits the Countess's needs. You wouldn't set a role-playing game in this town, and while Wendigo is a gamer he rather liked this unromantic presentation of a society of vampires. One thing he didn't like about them, however, was their tendency, when killed, to disintegrate into a pile of maggots. The maggot thing is just a pet peeve of his.

The most perplexing thing about the movie is the little boy who befriends Violet. We first suspected him of being a sort of scout vampire, but once he reappeared in town we began to think he was something different, something distinct from the vampire populace of Tonio. This becomes clear when he tries to protect Violet, after allowing her to be trapped in a cemetery, from a host of vampires. But he botches his benevolent mission by smothering the girl in an attempt to stop her from screaming. His remorse is real when he buries her, and we never see him again.

Violet and friend (above). The boy leads the girl into peril but regrets it afterward. Does he even know what he's doing? Does he even know what he is?

For Wendigo, it's typically European that we get no explanation of what the boy is: a ghost, a noble vampire, or who knows? He has a theory that he may be some kind of harbinger or angel of death. He first appears after the bus driver dies. He later leads Violet on a chase that leads her to witness Gigante chopping off a man's arm. His last appearance is a harbinger of Violet's own demise, down to his prefiguring burial of Violet's doll, -- a death which will not turn her into a vampire, which makes her vampirized mom's exhumation of the little body all the more sad. Destroying a child is something American horror doesn't do so often, and Violet's storyline is probably the most effectively creepy part of this movie -- apart from the fact that our eventual hero is a peeping tom. A lesser perplexity is what happens to the town at the end, but that may be because the murky print made us uncertain whether the vampire killed in the escaping car was the Countess or Violet's mom. If it was the Countess, than the town may have disappeared as the breaking of a spell. If not, then it's simply a repetition of the Brigadoon/2000 Maniacs scenario. Wendigo is also still pondering what that opening with the broken coffin has to do with the rest of the movie....

My friend would like to reserve final judgment on this movie until he can get hands on a better copy. But he will say that, despite what he takes to be padding of a pretty thin plot, Vampire's Night Orgy mostly succeeds at what it tries to do -- though it is inexcusable that there isn't really an orgy in the film. And no, an "orgy of killing" doesn't cut it. The story still leaves him asking more questions than he likes, but he found it more coherent than some Euro-horrors he's seen. The happy-sounding Euro-pop that takes up most of the soundtrack still throws him, but it's admittedly an acquired taste. The movie isn't exactly outstanding, but it isn't bad either, and it pulls together enough effectively spooky moments to make it worth a horror fan or vampire buff's while. The latter should find it of interest as a showcase of old-school vampires who wouldn't be the objects of anyone's fantasies. They're simply the hungry dead, and Klimovsky's insistence on this point is a redeeming grace.

The English-language trailer, uploaded to YouTube by DIOTD2008, asks, "Were They Vampires?" Well, duh!

YOUTH OF THE BEAST (1963)

Seijun Suzuki's color noir for Nikkatsu studio is stuck with an inexplicable title in its present day English edition. Most of the cast isn't especially young, and many of them are beastly enough to force the question of which beast and what youth we're talking about. It's also been called Wild Youth but that gets even further away from the real thing, making it sound like a juvenile delinquent film when it really is a film noir, albeit in vibrant color, with a story that could easily be transplanted into an American setting, if the vice versa hasn't already happened.

It's about a guy named Jo (Jo Shishido) who we meet while he's muscling in on the local vice operations. His appearance follow a black-and-white intro in which detectives discover an apparent double suicide: a prostitute and her john. The john proves to be a police detective himself. The film shifts to color to tell Jo's story, and at first I thought that the color stuff would all be flashbacks. Not so, for in the course of establishing himself with the local underworld and proving himself such a tough guy that the mob would rather hire him than punish him, he pays his respects at the home of the late detective's wife. The widow asks him to tell her a story, any story, about her husband, but there isn't time for that now. As it happens, Jo does have a kind of story about the guy; he thinks the man was murdered. And what's that to him? Well, the detective took care of Jo's wife while Jo did time in jail, so Jo feels that he owes the detective, and now his widow, a moral debt. Jo himself is an ex-cop. The ex part has to do with his jail time; he was framed for malfeasance by the mob. Now he's going on a private undercover vendetta, determined to find out who killed the detective if he has to take the yakuza apart in the process. But his hunt will end up taking him back virtually to where he started.

Jo has a way with the ladies (above) and a different way with the opposite sex (below).

This film has a more western feel than a lot of the Japanese crime films I've seen. It's detached from the usual yakuza genre trappings or any real social context in its focus on the lone-wolf antihero. Jo's surrounded by a variety of eccentrics, including his moronic sidekick Minami who abhors women and booze in favor of guns (we later learn that this was wise while it lasted) and a gang leader who hates being reminded that his mother was a whore. Bring that up and he acts like you'd said "Niagara Falls" and gets into a stabbing mood. This actually matters to the movie, since one of the ultimate villains is disposed of by being tricked into discussing this person's parentage in his presence. That was corny but overall Suzuki gives the film a hard-boiled quality that Shishido expresses quite effectively. The novelty of the Japanese setting and Suzuki's colorful style actually made what should have been a predictable noir plot twist more of a surprise for me.

If you think that Jo was mean to the people in the pictures above, consider these scenes his comeuppance.

Yaju no seishun is a sensory treat, from Kazue Nagatsuka's vivid cinematography to Hajime Okamura's brassy, jazzy score. Karyo Yokoo contributes one brilliant piece of production design: the panopticon nightclub whose glass walls and floors allow the gangsters to observe everything from their own drab lair while allowing Suzuki to shoot shots through the floors to get unique angles on the action. As a matter of all-around style the film has that distinctive Sixties feel you might associate with the early Bond films or a lot of Italian product. Noir fans who aren't dogmatic about black-and-white will get a kick out of this Japanese variation on some familiar themes, and fans of Sixties pop culture should dig it too.

Scenes from a nightclub, designed by Karyo Yokoo

Compared with his more kinky (Gate of Flesh) or just plain weird movies (Branded to Kill) this is probably the most accessible Suzuki film I've seen to date. The later, crazier stuff is probably more characteristic but taking a look at Youth of the Beast might make people more willing to give the rest a try.

The badass trailer (with English subtitles) was uploaded to YouTube by rodazi.

LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962)

During his long career, Kirk Douglas has often presented himself as a rebel against repressive authority, a persona that probably comes close to his own self-image. Spartacus may be his best-known rebel role, but the type turns up in his ill-fated Broadway version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and he came back to it decades later like a tongue to a loose tooth in his TV-movie Amos, which was Cuckoo's Nest set in an old-folks home. David Miller's modern-day Western, which Douglas produced, is said to be his own favorite of his movies, and may be the purest expression of his rebel persona.

Objects in the rear view mirror may appear larger than life later in the picture.

Douglas plays John W. "Jack" Burns, a cowboy somewhat in decline, reduced to sheep herding as the film opens. He lives off the grid, carrying no forms of i.d., claiming no permanent residence and asking the question "Occupation?" with "Yes." Riding his horse Whiskey through auto traffic into town, he learns that a friend of his has been jailed for assisting illegal immigrants. Deeming that unjust, Burns resolves to "break into jail" by getting arrested so he can break his friend out. He arranges this by visiting a bar on the wrong side of town and getting into a brawl with a one-armed man -- the one-armed man of Fugitive fame, in fact. When the police fail to consider that jail-worthy he picks a fight with them and is told that he can expect a year in jail for his trouble. In the lockup he learns that his friend is prepared to do his time (two years) and unwilling to risk more time by escaping. Burns asks him to think of his wife (Gena Rowlands) and kid, but the friend says he is, and that escaping and becoming a fugitive would ruin their lives as well as his. Burns takes this rebuff with his customary good grace and sets about escaping on his own. He stops back in town to tell Rowlands what's up, then heads into the mountains High Sierra style, expecting to thwart all pursuers and make it to Mexico. It begins to look like a good bet when he manages to shoot down an Army helicopter by blasting its tail rotor, but at the same time the film's been telling us all the way through that Burns's defeat is just a matter of time....

By 1962 the end of the West was becoming a more frequent theme in generic Westerns like Ride the High Country, but Lonely Are the Brave argues that the West was still ending in that very year. Something has changed (or definitively ended) since then, which may explain why Douglas's performance doesn't seem to ring true at first glance. John W. Burns seems too nice, too glib. A modern audience might expect such a character to be more alienated, more taciturn, possibly more ruthless. They might envision Tommy Lee Jones rather than Kirk Douglas, and they might be more inclined to believe that something must be wrong with Burns to explain his aversion to modernity. Some may see Lonely Are the Brave through the prism of First Blood, as the makers of that film may have when they invited Douglas to play Col. Trautmann -- a part he reportedly rejected when the writers changed the script from the novel's ending and spared Rambo's life. John W. Burns seems too good to be true in his apparent incapacity for anger and his unwillingness to kill his pursuers. We're told that he shoots the tail rotor exactly so the copter will have a soft landing that the pilots can survive. Given an opportunity for revenge against a guard who abused him (George Kennedy with a weird, half-Hispanic, half-Transylvanian accent), he does no more than the minimum necessary to subdue him, and doesn't even grab the guard's guns.

During his odyssey of escape, Kirk Douglas faces such epic adversaries as a helicopter (above) and George Kennedy (below), in no particular order of epic-ness.

It becomes apparent that Douglas and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo have conceived Burns as a Romantic version of the cowboy. As Douglas himself says on the new DVD, Burns is a "good guy," and that's probably what distinguishes him from the Burns we might envision in a theoretical remake. He isn't about alienation or anti-sociability or any other hangup. For Douglas, Trumbo and Miller Burns embodies nothing but freedom. Douglas says that he wanted to call the movie The Last Cowboy (the source novel by Edward Abbey is called The Lonely Cowboy), but you could just as easily have called it The Noble Savage. Burns is a natural man and naturally good, one for whom the modern world's regulations are superfluous. This understanding of the character explains why the movie starts out far more light-hearted than I expected. The comedy persists as Walter Matthau's sheriff copes sardonically with his idiot deputies and the oppressive assistance of the military. But the comedy only sets us up for an ending out of a Seventies movie in its sudden, crushing defeat.

Actually, it's not too sudden if by that you mean unanticipated. One major weakness of the screenplay is its introduction of Carroll O'Connor as a truck driver hauling a load of "privies." Trumbo strives briefly for satire in asking why someone needs to ship privies to New Mexico from hundreds of miles away, but beyond raising the question O'Connor has absolutely nothing else to do, yet Miller keeps cutting back to him. His activities advance the plot in no way whatsoever until it sinks in, probably well in advance of the actual event, that there's only one way he can intersect with the main action of the movie. His truck is like the proverbial gun on the theater stage; if you show it, it has to be used. It's a crude plot device that, were the film itself consistently crude, might make a perfect metaphor for anything as heavyhanded that so obviously telegraphs the finish of a film.

But as it turns out, the predictability of the climax doesn't dent its devastating power. A beautifully filmed finale on a rainy roadside transforms a gently satirical comedy-drama into a kind of tragedy. O'Connor justifies the film's attention to him with his horrified reaction to the disaster he creates, while the once-glib Douglas is reduced to ruined muteness. Lonely Are the Brave leaves it open whether John W. Burns lives or dies from his adventure, but he experiences an indisputable symbolic death that marks the end of a kind of American dream or his own personal fantasy of the cowboy life. The ending transforms him from a fugitive noble savage to something more like Don Quixote, a knight out of time who almost won, but probably never could have. It darkens and elevates the entire film.

A movie like this is going to rise and fall on its location work, and Miller found a photogenic mountain to work on. He works on a scale that allows him to cut from the helicopter pilot observing Burns from high above to Matthau observing the helicopter from far away. Douglas, his stuntman and the horse do great physical work on the mountain and Miller captures it effectively. Douglas himself gives Trumbo more credit than Miller, suggesting that once the great script was written Miller had it kind of easy,but the director definitely deserves credit for his contribution to one of the great years for Hollywood. The actors, Kennedy excepted, are all good, with Matthau still biding his time waiting for the breakout role that would come a few years later and Rowlands probably overqualified for her relatively small role. I wouldn't rank Lonely Are the Brave too highly in the exalted class of 1962 but it's further proof of what a good year than was for American movies.

Somehow Universal couldn't include a trailer on its fancy Backlot Collection DVD, but here it is, taken from TCM and uploaded to YouTube by foxter65.

THE PRICE OF POWER (1969)

The President is coming to Dallas. He's going to promote his social agenda, including racial reconciliation and an agricultural reform program that'll be paid for "from the pockets of the rich," despite protests from reactionary elements. It's so bad in some quarters that they've put up posters claiming that the President is "Wanted for Treason." His Texan Vice-President is of little help, since he's believed to be in thrall to powerful local interests who have damning evidence against him from his early days. The year is... Actually, I don't know what year it is. They never say, but I guess it would be Eighteen Something. For that matter, they never say what the President's name is, either, but you can guess who he represents. That's because Tonino Valerii's political thriller retells the story of the Kennedy assassination in the form of a spaghetti western.

Van Johnson is The President, but he's just Mr. President to his friends.

The nameless President is played by Van Johnson (though some filmographers claim that he's playing James A. Garfield), who did not stick around to redub his English dialogue in the recording studio. It's always strange to see a familiar actor and not hear his familiar voice, but if anything the vocal stand-in sounds more presidential than Johnson might have. This President was a Union colonel during the Civil War, and in that capacity condemned a Texas Unionist, Bill Willer (Giuliano Gemma), and his black sidekick Jack Donovan to ten years in prison for refusing to fire on Bill's father, a Confederate general. The elder Willer in the present day stumbles onto knowledge of an assassination plot because his old cronies don't realize that he's loyal to the reunited nation. The conspirators bump off the old man, but not before Bill thwarts plot number one: a scheme to blow up a railroad bridge as the presidential train passes over.

Giuliano Gemma weighs the charges against the President.

Jack, still Bill's sidekick and a resourceful character in his own right, is wounded in the early action. He recuperates in a central-city doctor's office that gives him a perfect view of the President's coach as it rolls through town -- and a perfect view of two snipers on an overpass who plan to plug the chief executive. Jack tries to thwart plot number two, but in the confusion is arrested as the successful assassin, playing the Oswald patsy role of conspiracy myth. Bill struggles to win Jack's freedom, reveal the real killers and get to the bottom of the obvious conspiracy, but his efforts are complicated by the conspirators' collapse into separate cut-throat factions (including one led by Fernando Rey) and a Presidential security officer determined to cover up the truth in order to avert a second civil war while pursuing the conspirators himself.

Back and To the Left: The President has been shot in The Price of Power. Who benefits? Fernando Rey, for one.

Il Prezzo del Potere is an act of cinematic audacity on a WTF level. Its generic cross of spaghetti action and conspiracy thriller is an unusual mix that gives the film a different feel from most Italian westerns. In the typical spaghetti the hero is always in control of the situation, or acts as if he is, apart from the requisite beatdown in the middle of the picture. Here Gemma must maneuver around forces that are clearly bigger and more powerful than he is, and the inevitability imposed by importing the JFK archetype gives the movie an atmosphere of inescapable doom, at least for the first two-thirds of it, that may be unique to the genre. The picture shakes loose of its pseudo-historical shackles late in the game, however, as Gemma gradually gains the upper hand and hunts down the conspirators who aren't busy destroying each other. Valerii doesn't do entirely without generic spaghetti shenanigans, introducing such details as a repeated guns-and-cigars game that requires antagonists to shoot at one another in the dark and a crippled journalist friend of Gemma who reveals his ownership of a crutch gun at a timely moment.

The corrupt sheriff (Benito Stefanelli) arranges for Jack Donovan's transfer to Fort Worth, with a posse of Jack Rubies lying in wait.

The film automatically raises the question of whether it reflects Valerii or screenwriter Massimo Patrizi's actual beliefs about the Kennedy assassination. Van Johnson embodies their idea of Kennedy when he speaks out in favor of racial equality and quotes lines associated with Robert Kennedy -- "I see things that could be and ask why not," etc. The Texan veep who's elevated into the Presidency by the assassination is aware of the conspiracy but torn by guilty feelings while wrestling with a determination to be his own man in Washington. His desire, shared by the security man MacDonald, to suppress any evidence of conspiracy for the sake of peace approximates what some people take to be Lyndon Johnson's own view, though in his case it's suspected that he didn't want to discover a Cuban connection to Kennedy's death because it might provoke World War III rather than an internal American conflict. The portrait as a whole of a relatively minor character is an ambivalent sketch of Johnson, who is more of an outright villain in some accounts. Jack Donovan's role as a patsy implies that the filmmakers believed that Oswald was one as well. While Oswald was seen as a leftist set up by rightists to take the blame, Jack, who is indisputably innocent, is blamed by the conspirator sheriff despite the exculpatory claim that Jack loved the President, "like all the poor and oppressed." The real enemy, the filmmakers insist, is a reactionary racist elite, some of whom are ready to risk renewed war to get their way, while others would be content to control the new men in power.

This, too, is America. Norma Jordan plays Annie, Jack Donovan's girlfriend who's willing to sell him out for a new wardrobe and the nearest thing to a femme fatale in The Price of Power.

Sometimes, though, the Kennedy conspiracy narrative and the spaghetti western genre don't fit well together. Consider the hero's determination that two men shot the President from the fatal overpass. Why two? Because no man can fire a gun twice in ten seconds. Leave aside the veracity of that claim and try to deal with the fact that this assertion is being made in a spaghetti western! Talk about what a motivated man can do with his rifle...

Oddly, The Price of Power ends up endorsing the idea of a cover-up for the good of the nation. In the penultimate act, an enraged Bill Willer forces MacDonald to turn over his documents proving a conspiracy so he can publicize the truth. He says he has two good reasons for taking the papers: he has a gun and he'll kill MacDonald if the security man doesn't turn them over. But in the last scene Willer returns the papers to MacDonald, saying, "You need them more than I do."

This is probably a spaghetti western that any genre buff should see, simply because there is and can be no other film like it. You may not agree with what it insinuates about the Kennedy assassination or about American politics in the 1960s, but the film is so uniquely and straightfacedly weird about its work that its worth a stop by any tourist in the wild world of cinema.

The Videoasia DVD of Price of Power, part of its new Spaghetti Western Bible Vol. 3 set, comes without a trailer or bonus materials, but does present a letterboxed copy of the film. The Italian trailer, uploaded to YouTube by mart85, shows off some of the impressive location work and some of the impressive score by Luis Enriquez Bacalov.

Bad Bloodsuckers: Wendigo's 10 Worst Vampire Movies

As an epilogue to Halloween and a follow-up to my vampire-connoisseur friend's ten-favorite list from last week, here is his possibly more controversial chronological list of his least favorite vampire flicks. As a reminder, Wendigo is an ecumenical vampire fan; he does not believe that certain presentations of vampires are "wrong." The films that make this list did not violate some set notion of what a vampire should or should not be, but are, in his view, badly performed or simply badly made.

On a personal note, since Wendigo submitted this list we sat down together to watch Al Adamson's Blood of Dracula's Castle. I'm ready to say that Alex D'Arcy's Count Townsend is easily one of the worst cinematic vampires ever, but Wendigo would rather not pick on easy targets.

1. House of Frankenstein (1944). Universal's monster-rally is a mess that fails to live up to its concept by never having the monsters interact with one another. Wendigo actually thinks that the Dracula episode featuring John Carradine is the best part of the film, but it irritated him to have the vampire out of the picture so quickly. He respects Carradine's interpretation of Dracula, but thinks Long John was better in House of Dracula and slips too often the first time out into "southern gentleman" territory. His part of House of Frankenstein seems too much like a throwaway that inevitably frustrates a vampire fan. The film as a whole is far less than the sum of its parts.

2. Blood of Dracula (1957). A rare pre-Hammer female vampire film that completely fails to exploit any opportunity to emphasize the seductive succubus aspect of the menace, choosing instead to put a bug-eyed monster makeup on the vampire and burdening her with pseudo-science explanations that put it more in line with Poverty Row schlock from the 1940s while maintaining the slightest connection to Dracula. This may strike some as an easy target because it's a low-budget independent production, but it's such a wasted opportunity for its time that Wendigo thinks it belongs on the list.

3. Frankenstein's Bloody Terror (1968-72) -- by which Wendigo means not the original Paul Naschy film that introduces Waldemar Daninsky but the U.S. travesty that makes next to no sense. Naschy had better luck dealing with vampires in Werewolf Shadow and other films, and Wendigo is willing to grant that the film in its original unmangled form might not make this list. But the vampires he remembers from the American edition are weak and uninspired (Count Chocula is arguably more menacing), and the overall presentation of the story as something it isn't is infuriating. None of this is meant to reflect on Naschy, since Wendigo is if anything even more of a werewolf fan than a vampire fan, and therefore holds Naschy and Daninsky in high regard.

4. Count Dracula (1970). Jess Franco's version is one of the most overrated Dracula movies despite a new and admirable approach to the character by Christopher Lee. Unfortunately, no one else involved in the production lives up to his work. The hero (a vague amalgam of Stoker's male protagonists) is hopelessly dull, while Klaus Kinski gives an inexplicably acclaimed performance as a Renfield so understated that it borders on somnambulism. He is a vacuum on film that brings the story's momentum to a halt whenever he appears. This is a huge missed opportunity to do justice to Stoker's story. Lest you think Wendigo has it out for Franco, he notes that Vampyros Lesbos is one euro-vampire film that he likes.

5. Lust For A Vampire (1971). The third Karnstein film from Hammer falls on its face with an obvious drop in production values. The film has nothing new to say and the actress, though attractive, has no way to say it. By now, not even dropping her top can keep you interested in yet another do-over of standard tropes (not to mention a bald do-over of The Vampire Lovers) that shows no real effort on the studio's part to raise the stakes of transgression. A typical product of Hammer in its decline that fails on all levels.

6. Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971). We just let Al Adamson off the hook for Blood of Dracula's Castle, but despite what I said about Alex D'Arcy, echo-chambered Zandor Vorkov gives the worst vampire performance ever in a film that hurts even more by spotlighting the degradation of J. Carroll Naish and Lon Chaney Jr. The big vampire-vs-monster battle is really lame, as is Dracula's laser-beam ring and his disintegration into a pile of maggots.

7. Zoltan, Hound of Dracula (Dracula's Dog, 1978). A movie about a vampire dog. What more is there to say, other than that it's a depressingly silly concept. There are glimmers of worthy ideas from its source novel, but nowhere near enough to justify the inadequate adaptation. There's stuff you can do with infected animals, but this film tries too hard to force the canine into classical vampire mold, down to sleeping in a coffin and other foolishness.

8. The Lost Boys (1987). From the awful "Thou Shalt Not Kill" opening music on, this is a depressing experience, especially once you learn what it was meant to be rather than the quasi biker movie it ended up being. There might have been a unique horror fantasy film here, but Joel Schumacher never seems sure whether he's making an action film, a horror film or a comedy, and ends up doing none of the genres well. This film suffers in comparison with its contemporaries Fright Night and Near Dark, doing many of the same things those films do, but worse. Its only original contribution is not a good one, the idea that vampires in humanoid form can fly like Superman. Wendigo will give Kiefer Sutherland credit for bringing a charismatic menace to his role that the script doesn't provide, and the film has one strong horror moment in the vampires' attack on the beach party. But the inconsistency in tone is fatal, and Wendigo hates to see vampires killed by squirt guns. This is a landmark vampire film only in the eyes of people who don't see many vampire films or don't care about the genre.

9. From Dusk 'til Dawn (1995). This is a love-hate film for Wendigo, in that there are parts he loves, but more parts that he hates. It's a well-made thriller with interesting characters and relationships until the cast arrives at the Titty Twister. But after Selma Hayek does her sexy dance the movie grinds to a dead halt and never recovers. The film jumps the shark when her character turns into a fat rubber-suited critter and cavorts with her peers like something out of Octaman. Tom Savini and Fred Williamson as vampire hunters are wasted, all too quickly turned into special effects. The film is doomed by its mandate to show off special effects above all else. No matter who's backing the film, effects should service the story, not vice versa.

10. Dracula 2000 (2000). There's a temptation to give this film another chance now that Gerard Butler is a sort of star. He has done good work in his career, but not this time. He shows none of the charisma he will show later in the decade, and how can he in his silly costume and hairdo that force this mighty man into a Lestat mode which, given what the movie claims about Dracula's biblical origins, doesn't seem quite right? This film was probably doomed as soon as it received the deadly "Wes Craven Presents" stamp. The likes of Omar Epps, Jeri Ryan and Nathan Fillion are built up only to be wasted and disposed of in perfunctory fashion, while Butler participates in one of the lamest CGI-morphing scenes ever when he slowly lopes with widely swinging arms in the process of becoming a wolf. Other clunker moments are D2K's rave review of the Virgin Megastore ("Brilliant!") and the lamest debate with an inanimate Jesus since Sam Neill in The Final Conflict. If anything, it's more disappointing in retrospect considering all the talent involved.

As the cartoon Dracula of our collective unconsciousness says, "Blah, Blah!" to all involved.