The Best Laid Titles
Most of my Romance language skills are all about snuffin' people...I wonder why?

Now, I made a decision I may live to regret, and put my e-mail up in my profile for this thing, but I guess if you wanna talk shop about the stuff I write on here (when I write on here), then be my guest. If you wanna pay me to write the kind of stuff I write on here...well, even better. (I'm sure the letters are gonna come pourin' in on that one.) Just make sure it don't look like...oh, I don't know...ads for Viagra or cheap Rolexs or mortgages or...you know...Spam.

Moving on.

You guessed it. If I've surfaced for however long it takes me to pound one of these out on the old keyboard, it has to be a Spaghetti Western.

So let's get to it...shall we?

MATALO! (1970, Cesare Caneveri)

The Plot: Nasty bandits settle into a ghost town where they torture some young people and an old woman while deciding how to double cross each other and make off with the gold they stole. (Don't get much thicker than that does it? In this case, it doesn't need do.)

The Review: I'm not going to lie to you, this movie doesn't fit into the standard definition of what you would call good or bad. Take anything at the local cineplex today and each one of those features is probably either good, bad or somewhere in between in very simple standard terms. Matalo!? Well, it's just something else. Most would call it bad, but I thought it was nearly genius (for the first half anyway).

Much of my love for Spaghetti Westerns stems from the fact that I consider them pure cinema. (I'm bound to have mentioned this before). Primarily, they use the iconography and plot of American Westerns with little of the cultural or historical ties. In Matalo!'s case, as with others, they also don't make much use of dialogue: the movie is told in moving pictures. Although...

Yes, if you find mention of this movie anywhere, the number one aspect of it that comes up is Mario Migliardi's blistering Jimi Hendrix's death rattle style guitar score. If it were more well known, this movie could be pointed to again as one of the precursors to music videos. The score ties the movie together more than the scant dialogue. It sets the mood. It explains what we're seeing which is often as brutal and mean as the music is ear peircing. (Now I watched a DVD dub from an old VHS...It would now be a wet dream for me to get a nice print of this film and do it up in 5.1. THX style.)

This isn't much of a review is it? That's the trouble with this movie...I can't only give it to you in impressions and broad strokes.

For instance, the acting. Well, since everyone is dubbed (and not a top notch job), that's always tough to say. The bad guys are repulsively bad, so that's good. The bad girl is hot enough, vampish enough, and slut enough for her part. The old lady is visibly disturbed. The good guy does a good job of getting his @$$ handed to him for 2/3's of the movie, but is believable when he finally comes around. Nonetheless, they're simply icons plugged into the whirlwind. Lemme try to explain:

The movie's is well photographed. Whether it's the usual Spanish vistas, the dilapidated town, or our nasty unshaven villains, the camera captures it well. The camera moves with a sweep and a distance. Like the music, it's another character of sorts. Sometimes, it just stands back and watches. Sometimes, it joins in the action. Sometimes it jumps behind one of the character's eyes. Mostly the characters are just out in front of it, moving and dancing to the score and what there is of a plot.

In between, there are jarring cuts and flashes of images. Artsy stuff, which again only works because of how everything else works. The editing in some sense seems almost out of control, but in that good way that could only come from good editing.

For about an hour, it was perfect in a way. (I actually had to turn it off at one point about twenty minutes in because I was too much in love.) So here's the part, where I sort of review it a little more critically.

Everything was beautiful and maniacal until the boomerangs showed up. Boomerangs. In a western. Hmmm. Now I risk being hypocritical, because glancing above to my line about 'pure cinema', it doesn't appear as though I have room to complain. Not to mention that I already said the movie was full of artsy stuff. However, I counter that there's a thing called unity of vision. For instance: If Eraserhead had had go-go dancers show up in it, it wouldn't have worked. Some could argue that anything could've gone in that movie. I disagree, it had a singular vision and even it could've gotten too weird. Even in the strangest world, you can't have a free-for-all.

Of course the boomerangs go to work in the final shootout, where a lot of it fell apart for me. At this point, there were a few weak attempts at humor. One character reappears out of nowhere, and for no good reason. Oh, and when they use the boomerangs, they don't quite get it right. As I understand, the ones aboriginies use for hunting don't come back, they're meant to go in one direction. Anyhow, the final shootout, though way over-the-top, wasn't nearly as fulfilling as I was hoping based on the first twenty minutes. (C'mon, it's a spaghetti, of course there's gonna be a final shootout.)

All in all, I have to say that this movie gets a new warm place in my heart. You'd certainly never get it made in today's film market. Even if you could, it wouldn't come out the same. The few crazed genre flicks that do come out are either too low budget, too pretentious, or lack any real artistic vision or merit. It takes a really ripe and industrious movie market to end up with these flicks (which the Italian's had for a good long time).

Maybe a Matalo! style video game might be the way to go?

Cheers.