A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE (Italy - 1968) Directed by Franco Giraldi. Written by Louis Garfinkle, Ugo Liberatore and Albert Band. Cast: Alex Cord, Arthur Kennedy, Robert Ryan, Nicoletta Machiavelli, Mario Brega, Enzo Fiermonte, Renato Romano, Franco Lantieri, Giampiero Albertini, Spartaco Conversi, Rosita Palomar, Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, Aldo Sambrell, Daniel Martin, Antonio Molino Rojo, Lorenzo Robledo. (R, 99 mins) A minor spaghetti western that used to be a fixture on late-night TV back in the '70s and '80s, the memorably-titled A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE has yet to be seen in the US in its intended form, and that's still the case with Kino Lorber's new Blu-ray release. Shorn by 19 minutes for America, the film has an understandably choppy feel, especially early on, but the biggest change can now be seen in the Blu-ray's bonus features, which include a blurry but watchable snippet of the extended international ending from an overseas TV broadcast. It completely changes the movie and strongly suggests something much more substantive and cynical than the happy ending that the film's American fans have always seen. Produced with the input of Selmur Pictures, a short-lived feature film division of ABC, A MINUTE TO PRAY was possibly intended to go straight to network TV in the US, which would explain trimming the 118-minute European version down to just about 100 minutes, the perfect run time for a two-hour time slot with commercials.
But it ended up playing in theaters and drive-ins over the summer and fall of 1968, which is right around the time Hollywood was really trying to make Alex Cord happen. Best known these days as the eye-patched Archangel on the hit 1980s CBS series AIRWOLF, Cord was being groomed for stardom in the late 1960s. Born in 1933, the actor had numerous TV guest spots going back to 1961, and was tapped to play John Wayne's "The Ringo Kid" character opposite Ann-Margret in the 1966 remake of STAGECOACH, but the movie bombed with critics and audiences. After A MINUTE TO PRAY, Cord starred in three high-profile flops--as Mafioso Kirk Douglas' kid brother in Paramount's pre-GODFATHER mob drama THE BROTHERHOOD (1968); the steamy Harold Robbins adaptation STILETTO (1969); and the British mercenary actioner THE LAST GRENADE (1970), with Richard Attenborough and ZULU's Stanley Baker--that more or less ended his big-screen aspirations. He starred in the 1972 Italian horror film THE DEAD ARE ALIVE and was part of the ensemble of the 1974 bats-in-a-bomb shelter cult favorite CHOSEN SURVIVORS among a scattered few theatrical films, but he concentrated on guest spots on pretty much every TV show in the 1970s and 1980s, including obligatory stops on POLICE STORY, THE LOVE BOAT, FANTASY ISLAND, and MURDER, SHE WROTE before co-starring with Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine as eye-patched covert ops chief "Archangel" on AIRWOLF gave his career a bit of a small screen resurgence in the mid '80s. Now 85 and an occasional guest on the convention circuit, Cord seems to be retired from acting, with his last credit being the 2009 DTV Kevin Sorbo actioner FIRE FROM BELOW.
A serviceable journeyman ideal for one-off TV guest spots (how was he never on a LAW & ORDER?), Cord wasn't the most magnetic big screen leading man, which is apparent throughout A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE. Cord stars as Clay McCord, an epileptic outlaw with a $10,000 bounty on his head. He's on the run with his significantly less-wanted partner Fred Duskin (Giampiero Albertini) when they get word that the small New Mexico town of Tuscosa is offering amnesty to any wanted criminal wishing to renounce their evil ways and start a new life and make an honest living in an expanding territory. The edict is handed down from New Mexico governor Lem Carter (Robert Ryan), but is pretty much ignored by Tuscosa marshal Roy Colby (Arthur Kennedy), who has his deputies setting traps outside of town to keep any undesirables out and stop bottom-feeding bounty hunters also waiting to ambush any amnesty-seeking criminals in the vicinity for some easy reward money that Colby doesn't feel like paying. Increasingly frail and with his seizures increasing, McCord hopes to get medical help in Tuscosa but first has to get through Escondido, a haven for outlaws ruled by the ruthless Kraut (spaghetti stalwart Mario Brega). McCord snaps and kills one of Kraut's men after seeing him gun down a grieving widow in cold blood after she blames Kraut for the death of her husband and son (they were seeking amnesty and were killed by bounty hunters), which sends McCord fleeing from Escondido and trying to get past the bounty hunters and Colby's deputies to find safe passage into Tuscosa, where Carter himself has arrived to kick ass when word gets to him that Colby is being derelict in his duty.
A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE was directed by Franco Giraldi, a veteran assistant and second unit director on films like Sergio Corbucci's 1962 SPARTACUS knockoff THE SLAVE and, more importantly, Sergio Leone's 1964 game-changer A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS. Giraldi soon graduated to directing second-tier spaghetti oaters like SEVEN GUNS FOR THE MACGREGORS and its sequel UP THE MACGREGORS, though they were released in the US in reverse order. Like his star, Giraldi brings a workmanlike efficiency to the table and gets the job done, but there's very little in the way of the style and artistry that guys like Leone and Corbucci displayed in their landmark contributions to the genre. Likewise, Carlo Rustichelli's score is largely by the numbers and lacks the rousing and instantly iconic feel of Ennio Morricone's compositions for Leone. If the additional sequence in the Blu-ray bonus features are any indication, it would be interesting to see if Giraldi's extended European version perhaps has more going on than the US cut would indicate. In its 99-minute incarnation, A MINUTE TO PRAY feels more like a Hollywood western, with only the supporting cast (including stalwarts like Aldo Sambrell and the perpetually doomed Lorenzo Robledo who, predictably, shows up long enough to get immediately killed), some familiar dubbing voices (Ed Mannix and Tony La Penna can be heard) and McCord being haunted by a past trauma (think Col. Mortimer's raped and murdered sister in FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE or Harmonica's older brother in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST) to really contribute to the expected Italian aura. That's likely due to the involvement of ABC as well as the script contributions of Americans Albert Band (father of Empire Pictures and Full Moon honcho Charles Band), who was doing a lot of work in Italy at the time, like writing Sergio Corbucci's underrated THE HELLBENDERS , and Louis Garfinkle, whose writing credits include Band's 1959 cult film FACE OF FIRE, 1972's THE DOBERMAN GANG, the 1973 little person gangster oddity LITTLE CIGARS, and, of all things, 1978's Oscar-winning THE DEER HUNTER.
Of course, the film gets a huge boost from the presence of Kennedy and especially the great Ryan (the same year that both also appeared in the big-budget Italian WWII epic ANZIO), the latter appearing about an hour in, immediately kicking ass, and more or less taking over the film over the film once Cord's McCord is sidelined with an emergency surgery. This leads to a strangely maudlin plot twist that feels more like a spaghetti western AFTERSCHOOL SPECIAL. It's in no way as overtly political as the "Zapata" spaghettis of Corbucci and Damiano Damiani that were just around the corner, but A MINUTE TO PRAY has a very bleeding heart figure in Ryan's Carter, whose plan to forgive almost all outlaws is never really explained. It could be what drew Ryan, one of Hollywood's most outspoken liberal activists of his day, to the role or it could've been a paid vacation to Almeria. Still, the film really comes alive when Carter, Colby, McCord, and Tuscosa town doc Chase (Enzo Fiermonte) are holed up in a small ranch RIO BRAVO-style as Kraut and his Escondido bad guys close in on them. There's even a visibly dangerous bit where the ranch is set ablaze and Kennedy is on the roof surrounded by flames. A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE is far from an essential spaghetti western, but it's worth seeing for fans of the genre and Ryan, who takes what could be a check-cashing walk-through in a B-movie and busts his ass like he's on a big-budget Hollywood epic. The Blu-ray looks terrific (there's also a commentary by REPO MAN director and spaghetti western junkie Alex Cox) and the inclusion of that extended ending as a bonus--even in a less than pristine form--is enough to at least consider that Europe has gotten a much more complex and interesting film than America's been able to see. Hopefully we'll get a restored version of it someday.
At times looking like what might happen if Costa-Gavras made a Eurocrime movie, Luciano Ercoli's KILLER COP is one of the more politically-charged poliziotteschi to come out of Italy in the 1970s. Inspired by the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, the film centers on eccentric narcotics commissioner Rolandi (Claudio Cassinelli), who always carries a copy of Melville's Moby Dick for symbolism at its most cumbersome, being in the wrong place at the wrong time when he stumbles into the bombing while working another case. He subsequently butts heads with Armando "Minty" DiFederico (Arthur Kennedy)--so nicknamed for his Tic Tac habit--the hardass judge assigned to oversee the investigation. Both set aside their differences and work together--but not exactly in an if they don't kill each other first! buddy-movie capacity--when they eventually realize the bombings and the subsequent trail of bodies, starting with likable but mistake-prone detective Balsamo (Franco Fabrizi), point to police and judicial corruption and a cover-up from inside the department. Ercoli (1929-2015) was best known for gialli like THE FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION, DEATH WALKS AT MIDNIGHT, and DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS, but KILLER COP is a thoughtful and thoroughly engrossing snapshot of the Red Brigades domestic terrorism affecting Italy at the time and influencing the country's wildly popular polizia genre in particular. Cassinelli has one of his best roles and the great five-time Oscar-nominee Kennedy, in prime "grumpy Arthur Kennedy" mode, is terrific in one of his standout performances from the often-dubious Eurocult phase of his career. The supporting cast includes familiar Eurotrash faces like Sara Sperati (SALON KITTY), Valeria D'Obici (ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX), Enzo Fisichella (THE GREAT ALLIGATOR), Ugo Bologna (NIGHTMARE CITY), and Enzo G. Castellari regular Giovanni Cianfriglia. Stelvio Cipriani's score is one of his greatest. According to IMDb, Jack Lemmon recorded an introductory voiceover narration for the film's US release, but there's nothing on YouTube, Google, or in the liner notes of Raro's 2015 Blu-ray release of the film, to corroborate this highly suspect claim.
KILLER COP was released in the US in 1976 by grindhouse outfit Joseph Green Pictures. It was in regular late-night rotation on Detroit's WGPR Channel 62, which went on the air in 1975 and was the first African-American-owned TV station in the US. It focused on religious programming (the call letters stood for "Where God's Presence Radiates") and niche fare like the talk/variety show ARAB VOICE OF DETROIT, but after hours, the station would air "All Night at the Movies." These were mostly old movies and serials, but at some point in the late '70s, WGPR must've acquired the admittedly limited Joseph Green library, showing their sometimes racy titles uncut in prime 2:00-6:00 am insomniac hours (I can personally attest to the stories in this link: 62 came in fairly clear in the Toledo area and in the early '80s, I caught Jose Gutierrez Maesso's 1975 actioner ORDER TO KILL, which proved to be a watershed moment in my grindhouse education as I witnessed nude Sydne Rome on broadcast TV). WGPR struggled as Detroit's least-watched station until it was purchased by CBS in 1994 and the call letters were eventually changed to WWJ. (R, 97 mins)
THE ANTICHRIST aka THE TEMPTER (Italy - 1974; US release 1978) Directed by Alberto De Martino. Written by Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, and Alberto De Martino. Cast: Carla Gravina, Mel Ferrer, Arthur Kennedy, George Coulouris, Alida Valli, Umberto Orsini, Mario Scaccia, Anita Strindberg, Remo Girone, Ernesto Colli, Lea Lander. (Unrated, 112 mins; R-rated US theatrical cut, 96 mins) When THE EXORCIST opened in December 1973 and became a worldwide phenomenon well into the next year, it gave birth to a seemingly endless parade of imitations and blatant ripoffs, some from the US, but mostly from Europe, and Italy in particular. As they would later demonstrate with zombies, CONAN, and RAMBO ripoffs, the Italians latched on to the EXORCIST formula and beat it to death with films like 1974's BEYOND THE DOOR, 1974's THE TORMENTED (also released as THE SEXORCIST but best known under its 1978 ROCKY HORROR-inspired US release title THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW), and the subgenre's absolute nadir, 1975's pathetic NAKED EXORCISM, aka THE RETURN OF THE EXORCIST (it was later shamelessly retitled THE EXORCIST III: CRIES AND SHADOWS for its UK video release), which showcased a possessed teenage boy howling "I've had it up to here with your mumbo-jumbo!" to an exorcist played by visibly embarrassed GODFATHER co-star Richard Conte, looking very frail in his final screen appearance (he was dead for two years when the film was released in the US in 1977 as THE POSSESSOR). Even the legendary Mario Bava's then-shelved 1973 pet project LISA AND THE DEVIL was infamously retooled with new footage featuring Robert Alda as an exorcist for its 1976 release as THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM. BEYOND THE DOOR was a surprise box office hit when it was released in the US in 1975, and even prompted an unsuccessful lawsuit from Warner Bros., though they did manage to get AIP's 1974 blaxorcist take ABBY (with BLACULA's great William Marshall as the exorcist) yanked from screens. The ripoffs weren't limited to Italy: Spain got into the game with the Paul Naschy-starring EXORCISM (1975) and BLIND DEAD mastermind Amando de Ossorio's DEMON WITCH CHILD (1975), released in the US in 1976 as THE POSSESSED. And Walter Boos took a break from SCHOOLGIRL REPORT installments to direct the West German MAGDALENA: POSSESSED BY THE DEVIL (1974), released in the US in 1976 as BEYOND THE DARKNESS and featuring THE EXORCIST's Rudolf Schundler (who played the servant Karl) as--go figure--the exorcist.
Where THE EXORCIST dealt with evil reaffirming the faith of troubled Father Damien Karras, THE ANTICHRIST is much more fervently Catholic in its presentation and its faith never in doubt, which makes its many transgressions all the more shocking. Wheelchair-bound Ippolita Oderisi (Carla Gravina) has been unable to walk since a childhood car accident that claimed the life of her mother. Around 30 years of age, Ippolita still lives in the family home with her father, Prince Massimo (Mel Ferrer), and seems well on her way to spinsterdom, telling her high-ranking Bishop uncle Ascanio (Arthur Kennedy) that no man has ever taken an interest in her and that a part of her would sell her soul to the devil just for the experience of intimacy. She's furiously possessive of her father and insanely jealous over his relationship with his secretary Gretel (Anita Strindberg). Offering to say a mass for her, Bishop Ascanio tells Ippolita that her jealousy is "absurd" and that she needs to realize that her widower father needs to move on with his life as well. He also hyperbolically expresses his concern to his brother Massimo that Ippolita may have fallen in with a sect of devil worshippers. Oh, it's way worse than that: thanks to some hypnosis sessions with parapsychologist Dr. Sinibaldi (Umberto Orsini), who believes her disability to be psychosomatic, horny Ippolita has been possessed by a spirit that has been lying dormant in her subconscious, an Inquisition-era Oderisi ancestor, also named Ippolita, who ran off with a Satanic cult the night before she was to be sent to a convent. She was branded a witch and burned, though she renounced Satan and pledged herself to God at the last moment. The demon that possessed the past Ippolita has taken over the present-day Ippolita, taking advantage of her secret feelings for her father (she writhes around on her bed, rubbing a photo of her father over her crotch) and her intense sexual frustration. Ippolita has an out-of-body experience where she goes through the same ritual as her ancestor, which involves a black mass/orgy where, among countless copulating Satanists, she eats the severed head of a toad, drinks toad's blood, and performs analingus on a goat before being sexually violated by the devil himself.
Things go from bad to worse as the demonic Ippolita now takes over as De Martino (HOLOCAUST 2000, THE PUMAMAN) and the screenwriters bring things more in line with the usual EXORCIST shenanigans: there's the requisite projectile green vomit, both in the face of family caregiver Irene (Alida Valli) and a handful that she force-feeds a bogus faith healer (Mario Scaccia). Ippolita goes an astonishingly profane tirade at dinner, seduces her playboy brother Filippo (Remo Girone), and tries to strangle her father. She taunts Ascanio, croaking "She's a big whore, your Ippolita...she'd lay you as well! She'd pluck gladly from under your tunic that innocent little nestling that never has flown," before exposing herself and bellowing "Dip your limp bird in holy water and bless me!" After all that, authorization is finally given for a formal exorcism, and, arriving out of the shadows Father Merrin-style is Austrian monk Father Mittner (George Coulouris), who has popped up on the fringes throughout, usually shaking a can for change, and is also seen in the Inquisition flashbacks and may be the reincarnation of the priest who saved the older Ippolita's soul.
THE ANTICHRIST is much more devout in its religious aspects than THE EXORCIST. There's much debate over theology vs. science, and though he considers Sinibaldi a fine doctor, Ascanio dismisses him as a "skeptic and a non-believer." Eventually, Prince Massimo relieves Sinibaldi of his duties, more or less admitting that only the power of Christ can compel Ippolita. The bluntly religious messages throughout are a bizarre mix with some of the blasphemous imagery and graphic sexuality, not to mention the unexplored plot point that Ippolita and Filippo clearly did some messing around together when they were teenagers (Ippolita: "Remember when we were children...how you made me feel special?"). The possessed Ippolita spills the beans to Massimo ("My brother and I fucked!") and Irene has witnessed it (she also deliberately doesn't tell Ippolita about Massimo and Gretel, so she's good at keeping secrets), but it's never again addressed, unless Massimo gives them a "devil made them do it" pass. And what about Ippolita's obvious designs on her father? Here lies the difference in the culture that produced THE EXORCIST and the one to which THE ANTICHRIST was born: the Oderisi family is one that's been waiting to have its ass handed to it by a scandalous past long buried. The past Ippolita has come to collect payment for generations of Oderisi hypocrisy and bourgeois decadence, not to mention weakness, represented by Ascanio' procrastination and cowardice in addressing his niece's ordeal. But it sort-of lets them all off the hook by the end--all sins forgiven--and emerging through the plethora of perversion on display throughout THE ANTICHRIST is a film that's perhaps too rooted in centuries-old reverence and tradition when it comes to its kid-gloves treatment of both the Catholic church and Italian nobility. Improbably enough, De Martino made a film that includes a scene of a goat having its ass eaten out, yet somehow still finds a way to pull its punches.
The production design in THE ANTICHRIST is spectacular and the ornate interiors (Bishop Ascanio's office is a sight to behold) beautifully shot by Aristide Massaccesi/Joe D'Amato. The score by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai is a piercing cacophony of screeching violins and organ music, augmented by eerie hisses, whispers, and deep gasps. It's a cut above the usual slapdash, exploitative EXORCIST ripoff, with a committed, vanity-free performance by Gravina, whose intensity comes through even though she's dubbed even prior to the possession scenes (SPEED RACER completists will be interested to know that the English dub was supervised by Peter Fernandez, who also voiced the possessed Ippolita; Ferrer, Kennedy, and Coulouris dub themselves) and would likely be taken a lot more seriously if the special effects weren't so terrible. The levitation scenes and the visual effects involving the moving furniture and Ippolita's disembodied hand strangling the faith healer are some of the most bush-league traveling mattes ever committed to celluloid. As an aside, I wonder if some of the more tawdry elements of THE ANTICHRIST were kept from the old pros in the cast (it's doubtful Ferrer and Kennedy ever envisioned reuniting on this after Fritz Lang's 1952 classic RANCHO NOTORIOUS). I can't imagine George Coulouris--the same year he co-starred in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS--getting the script for this and thinking "OK, possession, levitation, green vomit, and uh, what? Rimjob on a goat? Well, I was in CITIZEN KANE...why not?"
THE NIGHT CHILD (Italy - 1975; US release 1976) Directed by Max Dallamano (Massimo Dallamano). Written by Max Dallamano (Massimo Dallamano) and Jan Hartman. Cast: Richard Johnson, Joanna Cassidy, Lila Kedrova, Evelyn Stuart (Ida Galli), Edmund Purdom, Nicole Elmi (Nicoletta Elmi), Richard Garrone, Dana Ghia, Tom Felleghy. (R, 89 mins)
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? director Massimo Dallamano's THE NIGHT CHILD is often lumped in with the string of Italian EXORCIST knockoffs, but it's more like a DON'T LOOK NOW ripoff with subtle EXORCIST elements. That didn't stop Edward L. Montoro and Film Ventures International from selling it as such for its 1976 US release, where they really played up the success of BEYOND THE DOOR ("Beyond the door of madness..."), emphasizing the presence of that film's star Richard Johnson and even using very similar font in the one-sheet design. In fact, THE NIGHT CHILD is rather low-key and surprisingly restrained as far as these things go--it's almost more of an art film than an outright horror film--and with no child turning monstrous and no levitation or any of the standard possession histrionics on display, it had to thoroughly bore grindhouse audiences expecting another barf-happy, "Let Jesus fuck you!" EXORCIST clone. Widower BBC documentary filmmaker Michael Williams (Richard Johnson) gets into all sorts of devilish trouble when he decides to take his daughter Emily (FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN and DEEP RED's Nicoletta Elmi, the marvelously expressive, red-haired child actress who had the Creepy Kid market cornered in '70s Italian horror) and her nanny Jill (Ida Galli) to Italy with him for his latest project, a documentary entitled "Diabolical Art." His focus is a mysterious painting depicting a young girl who died 200 years earlier, and it has a profound effect on Emily, who also wears an allegedly cursed medallion that once belonged to her late mother. A local psychic (ZORBA THE GREEK Oscar-winner Lila Kedrova), senses that Emily is the reincarnation of Emilia, the girl's whose death is depicted in the painting, and that Michael's wife was killed by a hateful supernatural force with a connection to the medallion.
Also complicating matters is Michael's romance with his production manager Joanna, played by Joanna Cassidy, pulling some surprise Eurotrash duty, taking this gig after she was fired from THE STEPFORD WIVES and replaced by Paula Prentiss. Like Ippolita's fixation on Massimo, Emily is overly possessive of her father, in ways that a doctor (Edmund Purdom, with about a minute and a half of screen time) says "has all the elements of a neurosis." Like Ippolita's rage at Gretel, Emily wants nothing to do with Joanna, but THE NIGHT CHILD adds some unrequited love with the unspoken feelings Jill has for Michael. While Johnson's O-face as Cassidy disappears out of frame to go down on him is arguably as disturbing as anything in THE ANTICHRIST, you can see some similar themes developing between it and THE NIGHT CHILD: widower father, jealous daughter, reawakening of a vengeful spirit from centuries past, and useless doctors unable to do anything helpful. Both films take place in lush palazzos (though THE NIGHT CHILD makes greater use of some natural lighting in Franco Delli Colli's cinematography), both films feature characters dying in falls against amateurishly-integrated rearscreen matte work, and both films climax with the possessed females being chased out of their residence and through the streets by their desperate fathers. It's interesting that THE ANTICHRIST ends on an uplifting note thanks to divine intervention, the acceptance of God, and letting the pillars of society off the hook while things take a more agnostic turn in THE NIGHT CHILD, which doesn't feature an exorcism or even a priest, and its conclusion is downbeat, depressing, and godless. You can fuck your brother, try to kill your father, regurgitate some devil-cum, and enthusiastically toss a goat's salad in THE ANTICHRIST, but all is forgiven if you just believe and accept. There is no such salvation for the doomed protagonists of THE NIGHT CHILD.
