Cult Classics Revisited: THE SQUEEZE (1978)

THE SQUEEZE
aka THE RIP-OFF
(Italy/West Germany - 1978; US release 1981)

Directed by Anthony M. Dawson (Antonio Margheriti). Written by Simon O'Neill (Giovanni Simonelli), Marc Princi, and Paul Costello. Cast: Lee Van Cleef, Karen Black, Edward Albert, Lionel Stander, Robert Alda, Angelo Infanti, Peter Carsten, Antonella Murgia, Dan Van Husen, Roy Brocksmith, Ron Van Clief, Steve Burche. (R, 99 mins)

Italian cult director Antonio Margheriti (1930-2002) was the consummate journeyman over the course of his career, dabbling in everything from muscleman epics, gothic horror, and 007 ripoffs in the '60s, spaghetti westerns and gialli in the '70s, and Namsploitation, commando, and INDIANA JONES-derived action films in the '80s.  He's perhaps best known today for his "Gamma 1" quadrilogy of goofy and practically interchangeable far-out space operas THE WILD, WILD PLANET (1965), WAR OF THE PLANETS (1966), WAR BETWEEN THE PLANETS (1966) and SNOW DEVILS (1967) as well as the immortal YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (1983) and his many actioners of the '80s, like THE LAST HUNTER (1980), HUNTERS OF THE GOLDEN COBRA (1982), CODENAME: WILDGEESE (1984), and INDIO (1989). Margheriti, aka "Anthony M. Dawson," dabbled in a little bit of everything and could stage an explosion with the panache of any Hollywood blockbuster.

With his 1975 spaghetti western/kung-fu hybrid THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER, Margheriti worked with legendary badass Lee Van Cleef for the first time and the pair became good friends who would team up for five more projects before Van Cleef's death in 1989.  After STRANGER, Margheriti cast Van Cleef as the bad guy squaring off against Jim Brown in the 20th Century Fox blaxploitation western TAKE A HARD RIDE, which would be Margheriti's only Hollywood studio gig. Van Cleef also turned up in Margheriti's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK knockoff JUNGLE RAIDERS (1985) and two of his WILD GEESE ripoffs with CODENAME: WILDGEESE (released in the US by New World in 1986), and the unreleased-in-the-US THE COMMANDER (1988). But the pinnacle of the Margheriti/Van Cleef alliance is 1978's THE SQUEEZE, a wonderfully grungy little heist flick that began production in December 1977, with extensive location work in the NYC metropolitan area in January and February 1978. According to Edoardo Margheriti, the director's son and regular production assistant, some of THE SQUEEZE's NYC shoot coincided with a major late January snowstorm that, given the time frame, would've been the tapered-off remnants of the Blizzard of '78 that hit Ohio during the last week of January.  By the time it hit the east coast, it wasn't quite the monster that incapacitated Ohio, but it managed to dump heavily on the city, which also got hit with its own separate blizzard during the first week of February and you can see some of both storms in THE SQUEEZE. The brutal cold, the unplowed streets, the wet slush, the visible breath on the actors, and cars getting stuck in the snow all add to the harshly gritty ambience that makes it an essential NYC movie of the era, playing more like a street-tough American crime thriller rather than the generously budgeted, Carlo Ponti-backed Italian/German co-production that it was.  Margheriti made a lot of films over his long career, but none boasted the bitterly cold and uniquely scuzzy verite atmosphere that he and cinematographer Sergio D'Offizi captured with THE SQUEEZE.  They secured an American production office and permits to shoot in certain areas, but there's an unmistakable handheld immediacy to scenes set in fleabag hotels, bars, tenements, a police precinct, filthy cabs, and a ride on the Roosevelt Island tram, and enough gawking onlookers throughout to suggest that Margheriti caught a lot of footage on the fly in the guerrilla-style of many Italian filmmakers shooting in the city without permits in the 1970s and 1980s.  The only mistake Margheriti makes in his depiction of the city's sublime grime of the time is not finding a reason to send any of the characters to Times Square.

THE SQUEEZE was written by veteran Italian screenwriter and frequent Margheriti collaborator Giovanni Simonelli (SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE), Marc Princi (GREAT WHITE), and voice/dubbing actor Paul Costello, who was probably in charge of the English translation.  The script is essentially another in the One Last Job heist subgenre, with legendary safecracker Chris Gretchko (Van Cleef) in self-imposed exile on a Mexican ranch under the name "Ray Sloan."  He's tracked down by Jeff Olafson (Edward Albert), the son of an old criminal associate who told his son to find Chris if he ever got into a jam.  Jeff is involved with some German mobsters led by Van Stratten (Peter Carsten), and he needs Chris to open a safe filled with diamonds or Van Stratten's goons will whack him.  Chris is reluctant ("The last door I opened cost me eight years!"), but out of loyalty to Jeff's late father, agrees to help the kid out and heads back to NYC and secures the assistance of his old fence, grumpy pawn shop owner Sam (Lionel Stander).  When Van Stratten tries to cut Jeff out of the deal, Jeff tells Chris that Van Stratten's going to kill him as soon as he opens the safe, prompting Chris to hatch a scheme to keep the diamonds for themselves and split the take.  To do so requires Jeff being out of the picture so nobody knows about his involvement, so he gets himself arrested on a minor charge so he can spend a month in jail while Chris plans to wait it out at a safe house rented by Jeff. Chris gets the stones, but takes a bullet in the leg in the process, and is tended to at the safe house by ditzy, new age neighbor Clarisse (Karen Black), while Van Stratten's guys and the muscle for the safe owner (Roy Brocksmith) try to track down Jeff, figuring there's some kind of con game going on.  All the while, irate police captain Donati (Robert Alda) is perpetually one step behind but closing in.

As the double and triple crosses ensue, Chris takes too long to realize that he's being played, and the script could do a better job of exploring that storyline. Once he knows Chris has the diamonds, Jeff is already figuring out a way to get rid of him. Chris is a smart enough guy that he should see this, but time and again, he lets his loyalty to Jeff's father blind him to what should be right in front of his face. These are interesting ideas that are never fully fleshed out, as Margheriti gets sidetracked with an extended action sequence and a series of explosions that were impressive enough for Ponti to have him recycle the footage for his 1979 PIRANHA ripoff KILLER FISH.  THE SQUEEZE is one of the rare Margheriti films where dialogue scenes really come alive, and it's likely due in part to the abundance of American actors working together instead of European actors being post-synched later on. For instance, here's a very loose and improvisational feel to some of Van Cleef's and Stander's scenes together, with Stander even making fun of Van Cleef's earring at one point.

There's that same familiar feel in the conversations between Chris and Jeff.  Albert was a promising actor in the early '70s, winning a Golden Globe for his breakout performance as a young blind man who falls in love with Goldie Hawn in BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE (1972), but while he remained busy until his death in 2006 at just 55, stardom eluded the son of GREEN ACRES star Eddie Albert. He turns in one of his best performances in THE SQUEEZE, but not long after, he was mainly doing TV guest spots and B-movies like GALAXY OF TERROR (1981) and THE HOUSE WHERE EVIL DWELLS (1982).  His most high-profile gig after that was a recurring role as Linda Hamilton's love interest on the CBS series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.  But Albert was still getting major Hollywood work when he made THE SQUEEZE, which features an unusually strong cast for a Margheriti film--probably because Ponti could afford them--the most notable being the participation of Black. Black was nominated for an Oscar for 1970's FIVE EASY PIECES and was only a couple of years removed from films like THE GREAT GATSBY (1974), NASHVILLE, THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, the legendary TV-movie TRILOGY OF TERROR (all 1975), BURNT OFFERINGS, and Alfred Hitchcock's swan song FAMILY PLOT (both 1976). Black's fall from the A-list was alarmingly rapid--she worked for Margheriti again on KILLER FISH--though she remained a beloved B-movie figure until her death in 2013, her late-career cult status due in large part to shock rockers The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, and for her role as Mother Firefly in Rob Zombie's HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES (2003), which she apparently disliked so much that she refused to do the 2005 sequel THE DEVIL'S REJECTS and was replaced by Leslie Easterbrook.

Many American actors did these sort of Eurotrash movies for quick paychecks and free vacations, but the ensemble of THE SQUEEZE brings their A-game. At the heart is a top-notch Van Cleef, who does everything he can to add deeper dimensions to the character. Chris is a guy who made his money and enjoyed the life, but he knew when to get out, especially now that the game is run by greedy bastards like Van Stratten and amoral shitbags like Jeff.  It's only through his loyalty to Jeff's father that he inadvertantly allows himself to be manipulated by the young man. It almost takes too long for Chris to realize that Jeff isn't like his father (or Chris or Sam, for that matter), and Van Cleef's weary yet stone-cold Angel Eyes demeanor in the climax is some terrific acting. When he's forced to shoot Jeff and tells Sam with a resigned sadness "I had to kill the kid," both old men lament not just the loss of someone they trusted and that Chris came to regard like his own son, but the loss of another era when a man's word and his honor meant something.  Chris doesn't even care about the diamonds at that point.  He's already lost too much for the stones to even matter. As Sam's car drives down the unplowed, snowy, slushy streets with the NYC skyline in the background, there's an overwhelming sense of melancholy artistry that Margheriti rarely attempted. Throughout its duration, THE SQUEEZE, while containing some weak writing, some typically dubious Margheriti miniatures in the explosion sequence and boasting a cheesy yet oddly effective and infectiously catchy score by Paolo Vasile (Italian pop group I Nuovi Angeli performs the opening credits tune "Now"), comes dangerously close to being a genuine auteur statement by the guy who would go on to make YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE.  It's almost a legitimately great movie.

On-set wardrobe malfunction or Lee Van Cleef
making unreasonable demands of Antonio
Margheriti? (photo from antoniomargheriti.com)

Even with its NYC shooting and the cast of American headliners, THE SQUEEZE wasn't released in the US until 1981, when it was acquired by the short-lived exploitation outfit Maverick Pictures International, whose distribution slate consisted of a whopping five films over 1980-81 before they threw in the towel.  THE SQUEEZE was also released as THE RIP-OFF, and that was the title used when it aired on CBS in 1986 and on cable and in late-night syndication after that.  The film fell into the public domain and is available on any number of budget DVD labels under those titles as well as the less common DIAMOND THIEVES. You could probably walk into any Wal-Mart and find it on one of those VHS-transfer multi-film DVD sets in the $5 bin. It's a film long overdue for a proper widescreen presentation and critical re-evaluation.  THE SQUEEZE is a buried treasure of sorts--a solid thriller, a cinematic snapshot of a harsh 1978 winter in NYC, and an essential film for Lee Van Cleef fans--and it may be Margheriti's masterpiece.

Cult Classics Revisited: YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (1983)

YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE
(Italy/Turkey, 1983)

Directed by Anthony M. Dawson (Antonio Margheriti).  Written by Robert Bailey and Anthony M. Dawson.  Cast: Reb Brown, Corinne Clery, John Steiner, Carole Andre, Alan Collins (Luciano Pigozzi), Ayshe Gul, Marina Rocchi, Sergio Nicolai, Paul Costello, Nello Pazzafini. (PG, 88 mins)

In a summer movie season ruled by RETURN OF THE JEDI, it's hard to believe that Columbia Pictures put YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE on 1400 screens nationwide on August 19, 1983. Much like THE ROAD WARRIOR gave birth to an endless parade of Italian post-nuke ripoffs,  CONAN THE BARBARIAN was a huge hit in 1982 and kickstarted a string of muscleman and musclewoman barbarian movies (a few came from Roger Corman, but most came from Italy), each new one cheaper than the last, that flooded theaters, drive-ins, and video stores for the next couple of years.  Likely a relatively inexpensive bid by Columbia to beat the highly-publicized Lou Ferrigno take on HERCULES, which opened a week later, YOR began life as IL MONDO DI YOR (THE WORLD OF YOR), a four-part, four-hour miniseries for Italian TV, directed by veteran journeyman Antonio Margheriti under his "Anthony M. Dawson" pseudonym.  Originally running 200 minutes, the miniseries was re-edited into an 88-minute feature and an English dub was prepared for US export.  Normally, this kind of venture would be picked up by an indie or grindhouse outfit and dumped in drive-ins, but for some reason--maybe a lack of their own in-house barbarian movie--Columbia thought this had potential, picked it up, and decided to make it a major theatrical release in late summer.  It opened in 7th place at the box office but disappeared quickly once HERCULES opened a week later, and by that point, audiences got wise to the fact that these were cheesy, low-budget, badly-dubbed affairs, and by the time big-budget, major-studio Hollywood offerings like CONAN THE DESTROYER (1984) and RED SONJA (1985) rolled around, interest had waned and most of the Italian knockoffs either got very small releases or went straight to video.  But YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE has held on to become an endearingly bad, undeniably entertaining cult film over the years, even airing once at 2:00 am ET on Turner Classic Movies (!).  YOR!  On TCM!  I'm not making that up.

Yor, Ka-Laa, and Pag!

Opening with the Razzie-nominated anthem "Yor's World" by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis (a duo that also went by "Oliver Onions," and were responsible for numerous catchy, English-as-second-language ditties in many Italian cult movies), YOR finds the affable barbarian hero (Reb Brown, formerly TV's CAPTAIN AMERICA in the late '70s) rescuing Ka-Laa (Corinne Clery) and Pag (Luciano Pigozzi/"Alan Collins") from a dinosaur attack.  A tribal elder (Nello Pazzafini) tells Yor that his medallion matches one worn by the "Daughter of the Gods," who lives among the desert people.  After battling some cavemen, Yor, Ka-Laa, and Pag go off in search of this Daughter of the Gods, much to the consternation of the catty Ka-Laa, who immediately gets all clingy like Yor's her man.  They run afoul of more cavemen, one of whom steals Yor's medallion, but Yor manages to rescue Ka-Laa by hang-gliding from the carcass of a giant bat. 

In a sign of continuity errors that are bound to happen when you cut a 200-minute miniseries down to an 88-minute feature, Yor is suddenly and without explanation sporting his medallion once more, and they finally meet the Daughter of the Gods, Roa (Ayshe Gul), when Yor rescues her from a pack of angry mummies.  Roa's presence, and Yor's clear attraction to her, as evidenced by one of Margheriti's many cuts to Reb Brown's stupid grin, immediately makes Ka-Laa jealous and she starts acting like a kid showing off to show Yor how hot she is.  The scowling Ka-Laa challenges Roa to a duel to the death, but then they're both attacked by (the same?) cavemen.  Roa dies as a result of her wounds, but more importantly, Ka-Laa now has Yor all to herself.

US opening credits

Italian opening credits

After burying Roa, the heroes are lounging on a beach when they rescue some children from another attacking dinosaur.  As a show of gratitude, the head of the village (Sergio Nicolai) announces "The women have prepared a feast in your honor!"  Really?  How?  They just got there.  How did the women know that their children would be saved by Yor?  Or do they usually just not pay attention to their children and prepare feasts for passing strangers who risk their lives to save them?  And how did Yor and his friends not see this village?  It's on the same beach!  This is also the kind of film where villages consistently appear out of nowhere and rampaging dinosaurs manage to sneak up on people.  The villagers keep watch on the skies because of a "god" that periodically appears.  This "god" is a spaceship, and soon, androids appear and take Yor to another dimension ruled by the maniacal Overlord (an expectedly hammy John Steiner), who wants to use Yor's genetic design to create a master race of super-intelligent androids to help him rule the world.  Some space rebels appear and take Ka-Laa and Pag to Overlord's realm to find Yor, and Yor leads the rebels in a battle to take down the malevolent Overlord, whose stronghold appears to be the same abandoned factory that's used in most Italian post-nuke films of the era.

John Steiner as Overlord

I can't imagine YOR making a whole lot of sense even in its IL MONDO DI YOR incarnation, but the nonsensical stupidity is indeed a lot of its charm.   In its quest to rip off everything, YOR is a standard barbarian adventure, a prehistoric monster movie, and an outer space sci-fi epic with spaceships, a Darth Vader-inspired villain and an army of androids.  Surprisingly, despite the choppy editing and some obviously mismatched, cobbled-together scenes in the theatrical YOR (when Ka-Laa and Pag are attacked by a dinosaur in a forest, Yor's reaction shot shows him standing in a desert, clearly taken from another, unrelated section of IL MONDO DI YOR), whoever put it together and dubbed it managed to keep (or perhaps instill) a vague sense of coherence.  It's a ridiculous story, but it makes some kind of sense as long as you don't examine it too closely.

If only we could hear Reb doing this "YAAAAAAH!!"

Reb Brown became a bit of a B-movie star in the '80s after his two-TV movie stint as Captain America ended.  He did some TV and co-starred in a couple of serious films (1983's UNCOMMON VALOR and 1986's DEATH OF A SOLDIER), but after YOR and 1985's disastrous HOWLING II, he found himself in another Italian actioner, Bruno Mattei's hilariously awful RAMBO ripoff STRIKE COMMANDO (1987) and the die was cast.  For the next several years, Brown bounced back and forth between straight-to-video Italian and South African action movies, and in them, patented his own hyper-macho persona where he was constantly barking orders or emitting some shrieking battle cry.  The cult of Brown didn't really happen until MST3K aired his 1988 sci-fi film SPACE MUTINY ("Crunch Buttsteak!"  "Big McLargeHuge!"), and then it took off.  Now there's a ton of fan-made Reb Brown highlight reels all over YouTube.  Now 64, Brown quit acting in the late '90s, but recently began appearing on the convention circuit, indicating that he seems to be a good sport about things.  He also just completed the low-budget DTV horror film NIGHT CLAWS, his first starring role in a film since 1994's CAGE II.   Brown fans who go back to YOR are invariably disappointed--not in the film, but in that Brown's performance is dubbed by Gregory Snegoff, so you don't get to hear his voice or the signature battle cry made famous in STRIKE COMMANDO and SPACE MUTINY.  The choice to dub YOR in English was probably made well after filming ended and the dubbed-in-Italian version aired on TV, and it's likely that they didn't want to pay Brown to fly back to Rome to record his dialogue, as Italian films were still being shot without direct sound, the intention always being to dub them later on. Judging from some of YOR's publicity shots, it certainly appears as if Columbia had Brown put his YOR loincloth back on, but on the US theatrical poster and in this shot below, it's Brown's own hair and not his YOR wig.

Margheriti was an endlessly busy genre-hopper and special effects craftsman with a career going back to the late 1950s.  He was best known in the 1960's for his sci-fi space operas, but he also made various peplum, 007 ripoffs, and gothic horrors, followed in the '70s by several westerns and crime thrillers, but it was in the '80s that he found a niche with a string of junglesploitation potboilers inspired by films as varied as THE WILD GEESE, APOCALYPSE NOW, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and the RAMBO films.  Margheriti died in 2002, and a few years before his death, he mentioned in an interview with Video Watchdog that he more or less felt YOR was junk and didn't really care for it.  But oddly, it's YOR that's become one of his most recognized films.  Known as much for his special effects and miniature construction as he was for directing, Margheriti uses his signature methods on YOR, often embarrassingly so as in this scene where a Yor action figure is clearly subbed in for Reb Brown during a stunt shot.  You can't really miss it.

Margheriti's use of miniatures worked in the '50s and '60s, but was getting pretty stale by the '70s (a badly-designed tornado destroying a miniature dam in 1979's KILLER FISH was particularly laughable).  While miniatures were still being used by the likes of George Lucas in the STAR WARS films and Ridley Scott in ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER, both took painstaking efforts to make them look as believable as possible.  I'm pretty sure Margheriti just used a Conan doll for the above clip.  Margheriti continued making films into the late 1990s, at which point Italian cinema was largely in decline and older, experienced directors were having a hard time finding work.  That may very well be the case, but with Margheriti, it's also possible that his (and other aged, old-school Italian directors who are still with us but haven't worked in years) was a situation of a set-in-his-ways craftsman who was unwilling--or unable--to change with the times.  Margheriti could stage a huge explosion as well as any director who ever stepped on a movie set, but even his most ardent supporters and/or CGI-haters would be hard-pressed to defend his use of toy cars and models on what looks like a Hot Wheels tabletop racetrack in his last film, 1997's VIRTUAL WEAPON.

YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE is a bad movie.  But it's a gloriously fun bad movie.  And for all his talk of not really caring for it, Margheriti's style is too apparent throughout for him to have not cared what was going on.  He loved his models and miniatures, and he stuck with them until the bitter end.  Margheriti didn't live long enough to see the rejuvenated interest in Italian cult cinema that started just a year or two after his passing (I'm glad guys like Enzo G. Castellari, Sergio Martino, Ruggero Deodato, and Umberto Lenzi, to name just a few, are still with us to see how revered their films have become to cult fans).  He'd probably be shocked to find that YOR aired on TCM.  The cult of YOR was strong enough to prompt Sony to release it as part of their "Columbia Classics" made-to-order DVD line, available online or from Warner Archive in a surprisingly pristine anamorphic widescreen transfer.

US theatrical trailer

Cult Movie Trash/Margheriti Madness: SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE (1973)

SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE
(Italy/France/Germany - 1973)

Directed by Anthony M. Dawson (Antonio Margheriti).  Written by Antonio Margheriti and Giovanni Simonelli.  Cast: Jane Birkin, Hiram Keller, Francoise Christophe, Serge Gainsbourg, Venantino Venantini, Doris Kunstmann, Anton Diffring, Dana Ghia, George Korrade, Alan Collins (Luciano Pigozzi).  (Unrated, 95 mins)

Cover art for 2005 DVD release

Often labeled a giallo, probably due to its very Dario Argento-inspired title, Antonio Margheriti's SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE is more in line with his gothic Euro-horrors of the 1960s, like THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG and CASTLE OF BLOOD.  There is a very giallo sense of sleazy perversity running through SEVEN DEATHS, but the film itself is ultimately a misfire that never gets out of first gear and is often too silly for its own good.  It is redeemed by a terrific twist ending that might have you thinking you just saw a better film than you did.  I remember thinking that after the first time I saw it six years ago, and I imagine in another half decade or so, I'll forget and once again think "Hey, I should revisit that one," and I can be disappointed all over again.

Jane Birkin and Hiram Keller

In a small Scottish village, Corringa (BLOW-UP's Jane Birkin) is visiting relatives at the Castle MacGrieff, overseen by her aunt Lady Mary MacGrieff (Francoise Christophe) and her eccentric, possibly insane son, Corringa's cousin Lord James (FELLINI SATYRICON's Hiram Keller).  Also hanging around the castle, for various reasons, are Corringa's mother (Dana Ghia);  bisexual tutor Suzanne (Doris Kunstmann), essentially hired by Lady Mary to seduce her son; groundskeeper Angus (Luciano Pigozzi); family advisor Father Robertson (Venantino Venantini); and lecherous family doctor Franz (Anton Diffring, dubbed by Ted Rusoff, who supervised the English script translation and dubbing), who's sleeping with both Lady Mary and Suzanne.  Soon, someone starts offing the unlikable cast one by one, with all the murders witnessed by the ever-observant family cat who constantly roams the castle grounds.  Before long, an eccentric detective who may as well be named Almost Hercule Poirot (Birkin's then-husband, French singer Serge Gainsbourg), starts investigating.

A ghostly vision in one of Corringa's nightmares.

It's a very Agatha Christie set-up, complete with a mysterious location, secret passageways, creepy crypts, sidelong glances, and scheming assholes, plus rats, bats, cobwebs, vampire superstitions, and Lord James' secret pet gorilla (!), who periodically frees himself from his cage and wanders the castle or peeps out of windows only to disappear a moment later.

Lord James MacGrieff's secret pet gorilla.  Whatever.

Margheriti and "director of photographye" (as the credits label him) Carlo Carlini establish a admirably creepy and very colorful atmosphere, but SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE is pretty dull stuff.  There's a lot of padding and boring talk of inheritances and what not, with an occasional gory murder or sex scene to liven things up (Kunstmann supplies most of the nudity, but Margheriti gets dangerously close to showing Anton's Diffring at one point), plus an almost comical over-reliance of "DUN, DUN, DUNNNN!"  at even the most insignificant plot development.

Eurocult regular Venantino Venantini and some of the film's garishly colorful lighting.

Old-school Prism VHS box

It's interesting to see Birkin and Gainsbourg acting together, and to see how much a 27-year-old Birkin reminds you of their daughter, actress Charlotte Gainsbourg.  The performances are a little hard to judge since even the English-speaking actors are dubbed.  Blue Underground's DVD, issued in 2005, has some rough spots but looks very nice overall, and at the proper 2.35:1 framing, is obviously a huge improvement over the reportedly hideous Prism Entertainment pan & scan VHS edition that used to be a video store mainstay back in the day.

Cult Movie Trash/Margheriti Madness: TAKE A HARD RIDE (1975)

TAKE A HARD RIDE
(US/Spain - 1975) 

Directed by Anthony M. Dawson (Antonio Margheriti).  Written by Eric Bercovici and Jerry Ludwig.  Cast: Jim Brown, Lee Van Cleef, Fred Williamson, Catherine Spaak, Jim Kelly, Barry Sullivan, Dana Andrews, Harry Carey Jr, Robert Donner, Ricardo Palacios, Buddy Joe Hooker, Paul Costello. (PG, 103 mins)

For this US/Spanish co-production, though for all intents and purposes a major studio American film, Italian journeyman Antonio Margheriti somehow found himself at the helm of a blaxploitation/spaghetti western hybrid that reunited the stars (Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, and Jim Kelly), screenwriters (Eric Bercovici and Jerry Ludwig) and producer (Harry Bernsen) of the 1974 hit THREE THE HARD WAY, which might be my all-time favorite blaxploitation flick.  TAKE A HARD RIDE is a more serious film, and as a result, it's not nearly as much fun, but it's not deserving of the harsh words it's gotten over the years.

Jim Brown as Pike

When his employer Morgan (Dana Andrews) drops dead from a heart attack, trail boss Pike (Brown) has to get Morgan's $86,000 fortune down to Mexico, where Morgan's wife and their new business await.  It doesn't take long for word to spread throughout the region that a black man is traveling with $86,000, and every gunslinger and bandit in the vicinity tries to ambush the honorable Pike.  Foremost among them is ruthless bounty hunter Kiefer (Lee Van Cleef), but Pike gets some help when he's joined by fast-talking card cheat Tyree (Williamson), and later, by widowed ex-prostitute Catherine (Catherine Spaak) and mute martial-arts zen dude Kashtok (Kelly).

Fred Williamson as Tyree

TAKE A HARD RIDE is entertaining but unexceptional.  It never really takes advantage of the blaxploitation element, and it never feels like a spaghetti western, despite being directed by an Italian.  Margheriti brought along Riccardo Pallotini, his favorite cinematographer, but even with beautiful locations in Spain and the Canary Islands, the film is made in the bland, TV-movie style that many 1970s American studio films exhibited.  That's not to say it's badly-directed.  There's some nicely-done action sequences, which were always a Margheriti specialty particularly in his later jungle action pictures of the 1980s, but the film just has the workmanlike, personality-free sense of clock-punching, hired-gun professionalism that an Andrew V. McLaglen or a Burt Kennedy would've brought to the table.  Take out the African-American stars, the PG-level profanity, and a thoroughly unnecessary Harry Carey, Jr. ass shot, and this could've been made 20 years earlier with Randolph Scott and Dan Duryea with no discernible difference.  In an era of blaxploitation, Sergio Leone, and Sam Peckinpah, TAKE A HARD RIDE probably seemed like a dated relic the moment it was released.  With the exception of an unsettlingly ominous, synthy Morricone-styled cue for Van Cleef, even Jerry Goldsmith's score sounds like it belongs in a 1950s western.

Lee Van Cleef as Lee Van Cleef

As a follow-up to the insane THREE THE HARD WAY, TAKE A HARD RIDE is a disappointment.  But taken on its own terms, it's a decent-enough western that could've been a lot better but is still enjoyable nonetheless.  Brown and Van Cleef would reunite in 1977 for KID VENGEANCE, which was also released as TAKE ANOTHER HARD RIDE.  Van Cleef had already worked with Margheriti on 1974's kung-fu/spaghetti hybrid THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER (released in the US in 1976), and would reteam on several European films throughout the rest of the 1970s and the 1980s, most notably the superb 1978 NYC-shot heist thriller THE SQUEEZE.