Mister 8

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

My top 10 non-Leone westerns, presented with trailer (in English where available) and, as before a brief, list-style summary. Comments encouraged!

1. The Great Silence (Corbucci 1968)

A bit cliche, but true. Klaus Kinski. I’m tempted to leave the period there, but that would also leave out Frank Wolff, who is wonderful and tragic here. The subversion of the hero into the fallible, the woundable, the killable. The cold, bleak landscape. The cold, bleak ending.

2. Vamos A Matar Companeros (Corbucci 1970)

Corbucci will pop up a lot on this list. Spaghetti fans fall into two camps: Milan lovers and Milan haters. I am a fan of Tomas Milan! Nero is also brilliant here. Some prefer the earlier version, The Mercenary, but I like the pitch perfect mix of comedy and drama found in the duo of Nero and Milan. Palance is reminiscent of El Indio, stoned and cool. And the final charge into battle — how to read it? Heroic? Bleak? Courageous? Fatalistic? Love the urgency of the title track by Morricone.

3. A Bullet For the General (Damiani 1966)

As Companeros above, a Zapata western. As with Companeros and Fistful of Dynamite, we watch a Mexican revolutionary grow to realize the value of human life under the tutelage of a gringo. There’s got to be some post-colonial sub-text there, and also some strong commentary on then-contemporary American involvement in matters south of the border.

4. Light the Fuse, Sartana is Coming

The best of the Sartana series. Carmineo was better than Parolini. Sartana was better than Sabata, because he typifies everything of the spaghetti western. The gold-hunting trickster that is The Man With No Name. The brutality of Django. The over-the-top comic action of Trinity. And Sartana is insanely cool because he mixes all of the above with the gadgets of James Bond, the costume of the Shadow, and the awesomeness of Gianni Garko. This one wins just for the pipe organ.

5. Day of Anger (Valerii 1967)

If you made a list of the biggest spaghetti stars, Lee Van Cleef and Giuliano Gemma  would have to be somewhere near the top. They both shine in this film, Van Cleef as his character transforms as the picture progresses, and Gemma as his character grows. Has the student become the master?

6. Death Rides a Horse (Petroni 1968)

Van Cleef teaches another youngster, Diabolik star John Phillip Law, who is looking for revenge after the brutal rape and murder of his family. Van Cleef is looking for the same men, who double crossed him and left him to do their time in prison. As the two vengeance plots progress, the movie only gets better until the two men find themselves at odds….

7. Django (Corbucci 1966)

If there’s one non-Leone spaghetti you’ve probably heard of, it’s this one, which set in motion hundreds of other pictures with lead characters named Django. Nero,  caked in mud and dragging his coffin around is amazing in this understated performance. So are Eduardo Fajardo and Jose Bodalo. A cornerstone of the spaghetti western, perhaps more so than the Dollars Trilogy.

8. Death Sentence (Lanfranchi 1968)

This one, and perhaps the next, are sort of the dark horses of my list. This one wins out because of the narrative structure, which I feel that Tarantino must have swiped for the Kill Bill films, and for a number of fantastic portrayals, including Tomas Milian as a gold-crazed albino, which I feel that Myers swiped for the third Austin Powers film. Cash tracks down each of the men responsible for killing his brother, a bunch of strange bedfellows. Each segment is as unique as the villains that populate them. “And better luck next time, except there’ll never be another time for you!”

9. Ace High (Colizzi 1968)

Another weird one, the middle of a trilogy that began with God Forgives, I Don’t, and concludes with Boot Hill. This one is like a tough Trinity film, or perhaps an endearing The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Bud Spencer and Terence Hill are outstanding as usual, but the show is stolen by Eli Wallach as the playful Cacapolous. Don’t believe me? See the scene where he’s in the room where babies are sleeping, suspended in baskets.

10. My Name is Nobody (Valerii 1973)

Some say that Keoma was the end of the spaghetti western cycle. Some say it was the Trinity films. But for me, this one really seals off the genre and the time period well, as a sort of meta-movie that comments on the idea of fame, the western, Peckinpah, and filmmaking and  storytelling in general. Terence Hill does some Trinityesque gunplay, and Henry Fonda is perfect as the tired old gunfighter. I prefer to think of Hill as some sort of supernatural character here…an angel of sorts? Leone allegedly directed the opening sequence, but allegedly is not good enough to disqualify the film for this list or qualify it for the other.

I hope you all have enjoyed Halloween week here at Mister 8. I’ve been checking in periodically from the Mid-West Pop Culture Association Conference in Detroit this weekend, where I heard, among other things, an interesting paper on The Manchurian Candidate and the brainwashed 007 from the beginning of The Man With a Golden Gun (novel).

I’ll post more about that later, and will also revert the site back to its usual visual state tomorrow, but first, one last bit of spaghetti western candy in honor of Halloween, a desktop background that I drew for another blog a while back:

If you’re interested in learning more about spaghettis, check out the following websites!:

Shobary’s Spaghetti Westerns

Dollari Rosso

Spaghetti Western Database

Fistful of Leone

A Fistful of Westerns

McGoohan as Number Six

…But Moor Larkin at the blog Number Six Was Innocent seeks to answer them anyway. He’s been slowly putting together quite the oeuvre on Patrick McGoohan and The Prisoner, starting a series of “polemic” essays in May that cover “arcane matters of Prisoner Lore and Fandom.” I personally think it looks like a book in the making.

In any case, the posts are rational, researched, well-composed, thought-provoking and potentially controversial. Of the essays posted so far, subject matter includes:

• Why Six was not John Drake
• Proofs that Six liked women
• How The Prisoner was actually derived from Danger Man
• Where the concept of The Village came from

And if you like those essays, you’ll likely also enjoy Larkin’s reviews of McGoohan roles at the IMDB.

The Eurospy Guide

As you saw over the last week, I’m a big fan of the Italian, so-called “spaghetti” westerns of the 60s and 70s. It’s somewhat surprising, given my love of spies, but I know next to nothing about the Eurospy genre that was booming co-temporaneously. I’ve got a copy of Matt Blake and David Deal’s Eurospy Guide ordered and on the way, but I’m looking for suggestions on which films I should start seeking.

Here are some films that I’ve seen / gotten / are on the way as well:

• The two recent OSS 117 comedies from France, Cairo Nest of Spies and Rio Doesn’t Respond.
• Deadlier Than the Male & Some Girls Do, the British Bulldog Drummond films,
• The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World
• From the Orient With Fury
• Fury in Marrakesh
• Special Mission Lady Chaplin

What should be next on my list? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

…Well, not desperately. But definitely seeking information on these “Top Secret” magazines, of which I have three issues, soon to be four after this recent eBay purchase goes through:

Names included in the editorial page credits include (hoping for some self-Googling here):

• David Caruba, editor
• Brandon Twine, managing editor
• Paul Haber, assistant editor
• Harold Behar Jr., art and design
• Robert Caruba Jr., business manager
• Quentin Foote, publicity
• Scott Williamson, art coordinator

The magazine was published from August 1985-July 1986 out of Maplewood, NJ by Caruba Enterprises. They’re an interesting look at spy-fi fandom in the mid-80s, in between the heyday of the 60s and the revival of Bond popularity in the 90s, with a number of quality interviews, articles and appreciations.

North by Northwest

As a couple of my COBRAS compatriots have pointed out (Tanner, Jason), North by Northwest had its Blu-Ray debut (and a new DVD version) this week. It’s one of the all-time great spy (sort of) thrillers, and one of the best Hitchcock films as well.  Wes Britton ranks it among the best 30 spy films of all time, and the folks at HMSS say it wrote the blueprint for the 007 films.  I’ve been wanting to watch this one lately, but unfortunately lent my copy out to someone I’ve lost touch with, and who turned out to be a poor borrower!

Well, my situation has been fixed, because I’ve just won a copy of the new DVD from Orson DeWelles, who runs the website Classic Film Freak. And I wanted to  let you all know that a second copy is up for grabs tonight, as Orson posts a new trivia question.

If you’ve never seen the film, you should do your best to get a copy, and if you already have one, this is a good chance to upgrade! While you’re there, look around Orson’s site, which contains a bevy of posts on classic cinema, including an extensive review of the first James Bond film, Dr. No.

Which reminds me that I owe you guys some additional posts about Dr. No in comics….

Tanner @ Double O Section recently celebrated three years of blogging! Congratulations, Tanner, and thanks for all of the hard work you put into your site!

Spy Wise’s Wes Britton alerted us to a broadcast of a new version of an old Saint radio play.  WBAI-NY will be airing a performance by The Gotham Radio Players on both their station and their website. For more details, see their Facebook event page.

James Bond Jr. Episode 6

Today’s piece is subtitled, “Is it just me, or is this kind of racist?”

In 1967, a still unidentified author going by the name R.D. Mascott wrote a successful book called 003½: The Adventures of James Bond Junior. A quarter century later, Murakami-Wolf-Swenson resurrected the concept of James Bond Junior…though for some reason, in this incarnation, he’s 007’s nephew…for an animated show that I rushed home to see every day after school.

A few of the Bond villains crossed over into the cartoon, including Jaws, Odd Job (who dressed like a member of Run DMC), and Dr. No, who looked not like the Joseph Wiseman portrayal, but yellow-skinned with a long Fun Manchu mustache that apparently grew from his nostrils.

This version of No also appeared in the Marvel Comics adaptation of the series, serving as the star villain of issue #9. Story is by Dan Abnett, art by Mario Capaldi.

James Bond Argentine Comic from Illustrated 007

I’m pleased to announce that Peter of the blog Illustrated 007 has accepted membership into the COBRAS (would Coalition of Bloggers Ruminating About Spies make you happier?). Peter is a sort of curator of Bond imagery, amassing a collection both varied and expansive. A look at the categories on his site will give you an idea about the amazing sorts of things that he’s gathered.

So head on over to Illustrated 007…but maybe set aside a few hours first!