Recon: Warfighting in Cassino, with Franco Nero

During WWII, the Italian campaign had its own special challenges. It was hard to tell friendlies from enemies, because Italy changed sides in 1943, but not every Fascist was on-board. That risk of ambushes was a constant fact of life for reconnaissance patrols. One sneak attack precipitates a tragic cycle of retribution, guilt, and angst in Robert Port’s adaptation of Richard Bausch’s novel Peace, retitled Recon, which has a special Fathom Events screening today, ahead of its theatrical release this Friday.

When a fanatical officer ambushes the unit, their sergeant remorselessly guns down his unarmed lover as well. The incident obviously bothers Corporal Marson, as well as the street-smart Private Asch. In contrast, country-poor Pvt. Joyner is more troubled by the extent Marson is troubled. Shortly thereafter, in what might be an act of reprisal, the Sergeant dispatches them on a dangerous recon mission, up the mountain in search of the hiding German army.

They have either a stroke of good or bad luck when they encounter Angelo, a grizzled old villager, who agrees to lead them to the Germans. However, none of the GIs trusts the Italian, including Marson, but he insists they follow him anyway.

Recon is definitely a revisionist World War II film, which makes its release timed around Veteran’s Day a little awkward. Nevertheless, it is an earnest film of decent quality that should never seriously disparage anyone’s opinion of WWII-era veterans. Both intellectually and emotionally, we should all accept the fact war forces people to do terrible things. The fact that the “Greatest Generation” survived the sort of circumstances depicted in Recon to become productive citizens is one of the reasons they were so great.

Arguably, the Chris Brochu and Sam Keeley, as Asch and Joyner, make that point quite dramatically with their memorable performances. The ill-will between the two enlisted men runs so strong, they are often on the brink of fisticuffs, yet when tragedy strikes, their antagonism is jettisoned. Consequently, their late scenes together are indeed quite poignant.

Frameline 39: Love Island

It’s like the Love Boat or Fantasy Island, except this Adriatic resort caters to a dumber, hornier clientele. Naturally, it is the perfect spot for a precariously pregnant woman to chill out for a week or two, until she runs into her former lesbian lover. Things get very triangular in Jasmila Žbanić’s Love Island (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Frameline in San Francisco.

Island is your basic shticky LGBTQ-friendly farce, but it is notable for the people involved. Believe it or not, it was directed by Žbanić, whose last film was the dramatized documentary For Those Who Can Tell No Tales, about an Australian performance artist’s investigation of the war crimes that were perpetrated at a hotel she unwittingly stayed  in. It stars Ermin Bravo, who previously appeared in Angelina Jolie’s In the Land of Blood and Honey as well as Danis Tanović’s short film Baggage and his feature Cirkus Columbia, alongside Ariane Labed (best known for demanding Greek films like Alps and The Capsule) and Ada Condeescu (who didn’t get much opportunity for comedy in Romanian New Wave films, such as Loverboy and If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle). Yet here they all are, determined to distract us with sweet nothings.

In a way, it is a rather happy development to see a Bosnian film going for crowd-pleasing laughs rather than cathartically analyzing the war’s lingering wounds once more. Perhaps it represents a healthy corner turned, but there is still the film to deal with and it’s a mugging, shameless parade of clichés.

Poor Grebo is an amiable working class buffoon who is indeed taking his mega-preggers French wife Liliane on their long planned Croatian vacation, even though we can tell from one look she will be delivering late in the third act. The schlubby former rocker still fancies himself a ladies man, so he briefly entertains thoughts of some side action with Flora, the scuba instructor with the hot bod. Turns out Flora has different ideas. She wants to win back her former lover, Liliane. Grebo will need some help to stay in contention, finding an ally in the resort’s cover band vocalist, Stipica, who inexplicably fancies the lug himself. Oh, the complications. Where’s Gopher and Isaac when we need them?

Love Island was a crowd pleaser at this year’s Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival. Perhaps it is gratifying for its domestic audience to see Balkan characters making love rather than war. If they enjoy it, more power to them, but for regular festival-going cineastes, it is kind of embarrassing. For cult film fans, it is particularly painful to see Franco Nero ham it up as the island’s old Casanova (Django, No!). Those looking for a sugary, fun-in-the-sun rom-com will get more entertainment out of the admittedly shallow Walking on Sunshine, now available on VOD. For patrons of Bosnian and Croatian cinema who want to see it for themselves, Love Island screens this Tuesday (6/23) and Thursday (6/25) as part of Frameline 39 in San Francisco.

Eurocrime!: the Cool Part of the 1970s You Probably Missed

Do you want a congressman who can wage a one-man war against the mob? If so, Chris Mitchum is definitely your candidate in California’s 24^th district. While not as famous as his father, Mitchum still had quite a career overseas that included the Italian cops-and-mobsters genre known as “poliziotteschi.” Originally inspired by American films like The Godfather, they were popular domestically, throughout Europe, and even in Asia, but never found a fraction of the spaghetti westerns’ success in the American market. Yet, the genre has developed a cult following among hip cineastes in recent years, which gratifies and/or amuses the poliziotteschi veterans in Mike Malloy’s documentary Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films that Ruled the ‘70s (trailer here), now available on DVD from Cinema Epoch.

The poliziotteschi were actually meant to be dubbed. It was faster and cheaper to drop the sound in later than to record it live. As a result, the average poliziotteschi shoot was considerably louder and more chaotic than American actors were accustomed to. The dubbing was obviously not a hindrance for Italian audiences, who ate up poliziotteschi on a weekly basis, but it never worked over here. Of course, the spaghettis had been dubbed as well, but they used dialogue rather sparingly. Not so the poliziotteschi.

Nonetheless, they sure cranked out a lot of them. It all started with Franco Nero in Enzo Castellari’s High Crime, but when he passed on the follow-up, the similar looking Maurizio Merli was hired—and a star was born. Quite a few Americans found  regularly work in poliziotteschi, including Mitchum, John Saxon, Henry Silva, Fred Williamson, and Joe Dallesandro, all of whom remember the chaos quite fondly for Malloy. Except for Mitchum, whose heart belongs to the 24^th District, they all say they would love to go back and start doing them again.

Their stories are about as crazy as you would expect, involving real life mafia encounters, dodgy safety precautions, and general run-and-gun filmmaking madness, sans permits. However, Malloy also explores the ironic cultural and political context of these films, largely focused on cops and vigilantes, but often produced by avowed Communists, during a period of violent leftwing terrorism conducted by the Red Brigades.

Throughout the film, Malloy hits the right notes, celebrating the good things about poliziotteschi (cars driving on stairs), while admitting their faults (frequent scenes of violence against women). Although Eurocrime! is considerably longer than you would expect, clocking in just over two hours, it moves along at breakneck speed. Malloy channels the poliziotteschi spirit quite cleverly, reusing an exploding car to introduce each segment, much like the waste-not-want-not films with their well-earned reputation for recycling action scenes.

Who knew Henry Silva was this funny? It’s true, Malloy has the proof in his interview segments. The DVD also features two deleted scenes that have great material, but maybe do not exactly match the tone of the rest of the film. The whole package is thoroughly entertaining, especially for cult film fans who will see the poliziotteschi as the forefathers of the 1980s Cannon action B-movies. Highly recommended, Eurocrime! is now available on DVD from Cinema Epoch, right in time for holiday shopping.

The Visitor, Because Life Wasn’t Weird Enough Without It

Atlanta is a sinful city, where every damn street is called Peachtree.  A cosmic warrior has come to straighten things out here.  He will do battle with the pre-pubescent girl who has made the world such a crummy place in the ever-so strange 1979 Italian-produced sci-fi knock-off, The Visitor (trailer here), directed by Giulio Paradisi as Michael J. Paradise, which has been re-mastered and re-released by Drafthouse Films.

In a dimension “beyond imagination,” a mysterious old man seeks out the remnants of the evil Sateen, a demonic entity he vanquished eons ago.  Evidently, some of his old foe’s essence ended up on earth, specifically within Barbara Collins’s ancestors.  She is one of the rare carriers who can give birth to his malevolent offspring.  Unfortunately, she already has one child, the dreadful little Katy.  Her boyfriend Raymond Armstead is pressuring her to get married and have more children, because he is part of an apocalyptic secret society that frequently holds awkward board meetings devoted to promoting evil.  Collins resists, ostensibly for the sake of her freedom.  However, she is also instinctively against anything Katy is for.

You might think the bad guys would do anything to protect the birthing abilities of the only woman who can deliver Sateen’s bad seeds.  Well, obviously you are not part of an international satanic cult.  Poor Collins is shot, partially paralyzed, run off the road, and attacked by a falcon.  Yet, despite all the stress, her skin remains remarkably clean and radiant.  As Armstead and Katy plot against her, the gaunt Jerzy Colsowicz arrives to do battle with Sateen’s spawn.  That’s right, it’s a frail septuagenarian versus an eight year-old, so get ready to rumble.

It goes without saying The Visitor is a strange film.  Everyone compares it to The Omen and Close Encounters, but Paradisi/Paradise probably rips-off The Birds more than anything else. For whatever reason, bird attacks seem to be the weapon of choice for good guys and bad guys alike. It is just plain baffling anyone thought this film could cash in on the late 1970’s sci-fi craze, but it boasts a truly once-in-a-lifetime cast, including John Huston (the John Huston), Lance Henriksen, Glenn Ford, Franco Nero (uncredited as the Christ-like figure), Shelley Winters, Switchblade Sisters’ Joanne Nail, Mel Ferrer, Sam Peckinpah (the Sam Peckinpah), and future Libertarian radio talk show host Neal Boortz.  Get your head around that ensemble.

Frankly, Huston looks rather bemused in each of his scenes as Colsowicz and it is a good bet he never saw bothered to watch the finished product.  Ford and Winters soldier through like the old pros they are, playing the cop and the nanny, respectively.  Eventual fan favorite Henriksen also shows an early affinity for scenery chewing as Armstead.  In truth, aside from maybe Huston and Nero, nobody really phoned The Visitor in, but it is anyone’s guess what they thought they were doing in this convoluted, New Agey plot.  There are times the film appears to be conceived as a showcase for Atlanta’s modernist architecture, which makes as much sense as any other explanation.

Visitor’s special effects are crude and confusing, even by 1970’s standards, but in its straight-forward dramatic scenes, the picture looks surprisingly slick.  Naturally, even the music “borrows” from another film, but it must be conceded Franco Micallizzi’s riff on Strauss’ “Zarathustra” is oddly catchy, in a funky (arranger) David Matthews-Kudu Records kind of way.

If you don’t get The Visitor by now, you’re on your own.  If you enjoy completely cracked cult cinema, this is your catnip.  Impressive in its way, it demands to be seen to be believed.  Recommended for those who can appreciate the sheer defiant spectacle of it all, The Visitor screens this weekend (11/8 & 11/9) at the IFC Center in New York.

The Original Django, Accept No Substitutes

Italian spaghetti western maestro Sergio Corbucci only helmed one official sequel to his classic 1966 western gundown Django, but scores of scruffy bootleg Django follow-ups were produced.  In fact, they keep on coming, don’t they?  None of them, including the recent homages from Takeshi Miike and Quentin Tarantino cannot hold a cigarillo to Corbucci’s original Django (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York at Film Forum.

A stone cold killer comes to town wearing Union Blue and dragging a coffin.  Much mayhem ensues.  Basically, that is what the film boils down to.  Like A Fistful of Dollars, there is an element of Yojimbo in Django, turning the title character loose in a town embroiled in a war between Maj. Jackson’s ex-Confederate white supremacists and a band of Mexican revolutionaries (who all look more or less the same), but attitude and action are more important than plot, per se.

Temporarily Django throws in his lot with his old associate, “General” Hugo Rodriguez, but that is only because he needs a few men to stage a daring gold heist from the Mexican army depot just across the border.  He also holds a mysterious grudge against Jackson, whom he saves killing for last.  Along the way, he rescues a fallen woman who duly falls for Django, but he is not really at a place in his life where he is looking for a serious relationship.

Notoriously violent in its day, Corbucci’s Django does not seem so shocking at a time when the Weinsteins will release Tarantino’s pseudo-reboot on Christmas Day (regardless of the unforeseeable national tragedy).  However, its body count is still impressive.  Django’s action scenes are not really shootouts, they are massacres.  After all, that casket holds a heck of an equalizer, courtesy of Mr. Richard Gatling.

In a career defining role, Franco Nero is all kinds of steely badness as Django.  There is something deeply existential about his presence, yet he is strictly business when it counts.  Eduardo Fajardo is also thoroughly despicable as Jackson, providing the anti-hero with a worthy antagonist. 

Frankly, some of the details do not make a lot of sense, like the racist Klansman Jackson being buddy-buddy with the Mexican army.  At times, extras literally walk into the line of Gatling gunfire, which is awfully convenient of them.  Yet, the metaphorically muddy environment and gritty action more than compensate for any pedantic grousing.  Plus, it is truly impossible to watch Django and not hum the iconic theme song in your head for several days afterward. 

Alex Cox suggests Django’s name is indeed a reference to the great Roma jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, in a way that would be spoilerish to explain.  If so, it adds another layer of cult weirdness to the film.  Regardless, Django delivers enough unrepentant action to satisfy any genre fan.  An essential Italian western, Corbucci’s 1966 original is the Django to see when it opens tomorrow (12/21) at Film Forum.