One Name: Miles Deem, (Ok, Two) aka. Demofilo Fidani
Just when you thought the budget couldn't get any lower... (yeah, it's spaghetti stuff...but it's gonna get artsy)

I was going to save this up, having just come back to my li'l corner of heaven here, but I then I couldn't think of what I was saving it up for.

Oh that's right, it's because it wasn't how I wanted to introduce him.

See I ordered a movie with the unbelievable title of Quel maledetto giorno d'inverno...Django e Sartana all'ultimo. (I'll let that sink in...and if you really wanna know what it means...you're gonna have to go translate it yourself.) Unfortunately, though the box had that title and the disc inside had that title, when I popped it into the old DVD player what I got was Arrivano Django e Sartana...è la fine. An honest mistake. Could've happened to anyone.

Thing is, it all works out in the end, as both of these movies were created by the highly questionable and oddly fascinating Demofilo Fidani who, though he had many aliases, is somewhat more commonly known as Miles Deem. At least that was how I met him...well, met...in the video store kind of way.

Back in the day when I couldn't find any known spaghetti westerns in a video store (beyond Leone) to save my life, I discovered that those cheap cheap cheap video companies would occasionally release them under a veritable tableaux of titles. Part of the trick was knowing the anglicized pseudonyms for the Italian directors and international stars. One of the first I found, which I never watched, was a Fistful of Death (aka. Giù la testa... hombre, 1971). Despite the listing of director 'Miles Deem' I never doubted for a moment what it was.

Thing was, in those days, though the internet existed, many specialty sites for movies were still often fledgling at best. Yes kids, once upon a time, the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) was not the massive digital tome it is today. (Then again, they still don't have all my credits listed.) Nor was there the plethora of B-movie review sites that dot the digital landscape. Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure where I did eventually find "Miles'" real name (it might have been in Thomas Weisser's The Good, The Bad, and The Violent: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Filmography of 558 Eurowesterns and Their Personnel a book I could only find at the University of Texas Grad Library).

In any event, when I finally did come across the information I had so desperately been searching for (that's what we call poetic license, I probably periodically forgot while I was searching for those last couple of Jodorowsky's I hadn't seen or something like 'em), I found out that Fidani could be my kind of guy. Spaghetti Westerns were often anything but big budget. Most of that came from the creative instincts of the director, and an art department that could make a whole lot out of nothing. Add to that meager amount a sweeping Morricone or Bacalov score, and you started to have something. Fidani, however, was amazingly enough was a low budget filmmaker in a largely low budget genre. Well, let's just say....maybe....he got creative.

Unfortunately, so far, Sartana and Django's Showdown in the West (1970. Ok, I translated one for you) is the only Fidani I've gotten to see, but I have the feeling...I'm gonna watch 'em all. Now if any of you have seen one of his movies you may be asking yourself, "Good God man! Why?!" Well, I'll tell you.

First of all, it isn't just some geeked out obsession to see every Spaghetti Western, no matter how much I give that appearance. No, from everything I've read, Fidani seems to have one of those elusive "bad" movie qualities that I'm drawn to like a moth to flames. Lemme explain:

Now when you watch a Hitchcock or a Fellini or a Bergman, etc., you know who you're watching without fail. It's a stamp. When it's really great, you can make no mistake about the author and often anyone else is merely doing something "in the style of..." (but you'll never mistake it for the real thing). Style, setting, genre, certain actors all point to who it is. Sometimes it's more artsy, like a David Lynch, and sometimes it's more or a feeling or atmosphere, like a Stanley Kubrick.

Am I saying that Fidani belongs on this pantheon? No. But lemme continue:

On the flipside from the classic directors listed above are the low budget, from B to Z movies. There are generally three things that distinguish these movies or give them life beyond what you would think. The first is a well-crafted or memorable story told on a shoestring, and sometimes memorable because it had no money. The second are the movies that are just so far out there that they can be ahead of their time, drug-addled, extra creepy, have giant rubber monsters, or all of the above it. Even years later, people still tel you that they have to be seen to be believed. The third is the directorial stamp...but not in the good way necessarily above. I call it the Ed Wood effect (not because Ed is a favorite of mine, just that he's one of the better known).

There's no way not to know an Ed Wood movie when you see it. It isn't just that it's bad, or even that it's so bad. There's just something to it that screams "Ed!" Similarily, you know a Russ Meyer movie when you see one, and it isn't just that all the actresses have big boobs either. Russ's movies have a style and a feel to them. It's unmistakable (but the boobs are certainly a clue). Just like Doris Wishman: It's not all the naked girls that give it away as much as Doris's odd affection for jumpcuts and pointless shots of people's feet.

Are these movies bad? Well, yeah. Most are terrible. (Russ is probably the best as a director, and of course being a cameraman, his movies are well shot.) Nevertheless, they often feature such a signature style and often creative zeal for filmmaking that they can't merely be brushed aside.

From what little I've seen and most of what I've read, Fidani fits that description. They're terrible Spaghetti Westerns, but that doesn't mean there isn't something to them. For instance, in Showdown in the West, why does one gang consisting of all joe average white guy cowboys all go after Sartana and a gang consisting of all Mexican bandidos go after Django (I might have that backwards), even though they're all in the same gang. Then they recruit more gangs to help them: the white guys get more white guys, and the bandidos get more bandidos. Why the even split? It's just weird. Then the final showdown between Sartana and Black Burt Keller is a pretty well shot and choreographed fight scene...until you realize, where the hell is Django? He was fighting alongside Sartana all the way in....until he disappears just before the shootout.

That was the funny thing about it: a scene would go by and you don't think anything...then it ends, and you can't help but go, "Huh?"

Part of it seemed haphazard. Some of it seemed unintentional (unintentional in the sense of having no idea what he was doing). Then some of it seemed intentional, but was completely inexplicable.

Now, I've come across some material on Fidani on-line that the browser translated really badly, but it mentioned something about his being a medium and involved in some otherworldly studies. Assuming I'm reading that right, it would explain the somewhat oddly mystical quality of the piece. In some ways you could see these movies (or at least Showdown) as a poor man's El Topo...umm...with little or none of the depth. Better yet, it's like someone was filming a sort of dream sequence and a western was happening in front of it.

I'm still trying to figure out the weird but pointless Peckinpah-like scenes of people dying violent deaths in slow motion. It's not a stylistic choice throughout the film, it just happens a lot at the end...with faceless characters...It's like a high school level painting where a kid seems to have promise and good ideas but just doesn't have the conceptual or technical facilities to carry it off. And I guess he never did exactly cultivate those skills, but that didn't stop him from making quite a few more films.

The point ultimately is that I'll have to at least see the rest of his westerns to put a complete image together. This is just one I pulled off of one. Imagine the kind of goofy garbage I can generate if I've seen them all. Ultimately the allure is: what made these guys work? why did they do what they did? why was it so bad? could it have been better? is it at leas interesting?

Tough to tell. Tough to tell.

Spooky. Very spooky.

Ok. I've dilly-dallied for way too long. I'm out.

Cheers.