Western

Sabata (1969)

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sabataIn Daugherty City, Texas, the U.S. Army has stored $100,000 in the bank overnight — a record amount for the institution. In an ingenious heist, Old West-style, the 2-ton safe is swiped. The next day, it’s returned — along with the dead bodies of the men who stole it — by sharpshooter Sabata (Lee Van Cleef, Escape from New York), who rode into town just before the theft.

Accepting $5,000 as a reward, Sabata believes the Virginian Brothers acrobatic act, also in town, were in on it. He uses this knowledge against the crime’s mastermind, the wealthy land owner Stengel (Franco Ressel, Blood and Black Lace). Rounds of blackmailing, double-crossing and dynamite-blasting ensue.

sabata1The first of three Italian films on the can’t-miss gunslinger, Sabata is a winning one, not just for showcasing Van Cleef at his bad-ass best, but for having so many tricks up its sleeve. For example, Sabata has another gun concealed within the pop-open butt of his pistol, while his on-again/off-again ally Banjo (William Berger, Keoma) has a rifle hidden inside the ever-present musical instrument that has earned him his nickname.

Directed by Frank Kramer (an Americanized pseudonym for Gianfranco Parolini, God’s Gun), Sabata brushes a slight 007-ish marinade atop an already above-average spaghetti Western that, like its lead character of “the man with gunsight eyes,” has perfect aim. The stunts — particularly those of the bouncing, leaping acrobats — are amazing. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968)

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gokeBirds committing suicide by smashing into a Japanese airliner doesn’t bode well for its passengers. Shortly thereafter, a glowing UFO appears and forces the plane to crash-land in a remote area not only without water, but an almost equal hope of rescue.

Among the survivors is a white-gloved, would-be terrorist (Hideo Ko, Horrors of Malformed Men) who wanders into a cave where a blue blob of space Jell-O throbs and telepathically splits his forehead vertically, from hairline to nose tip – or, as a fellow passenger puts it, “like a pomegranate.” Now under the control of an unseen alien force, he becomes the host for its bidding.

The aliens’ objective: Exterminate the human race. They do it via body snatching. You know how to snatch a body, don’t you? You just press your lips together and suck a neck.

goke1In Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, there exists a surfeit of survivors arguing over who will leave the confines of the downed jet and when. Pacing and padding issues, however, are made up for in the vibrant visuals. Impressive miniatures in the plane crash and rockslides (both of them) are one thing; the use of saturated color is another — even the plane’s pilots make note of it in the opening scene.

While the title links itself to the classic pod-people Invasion of 1956, Goke appears to hold influence itself, most notably on 1987’s The Hidden. More than just sci-fi shocks, the film is a pointed commentary on the nuclear age from Hajime Sato, the director of Terror Beneath the Sea, with the most memorable moments arriving in the final minutes. —Rod Lott

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Horror

The Night of the Devils (1972)

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nightdevilsRight from the start, The Night of the Devils is a room-clearer, announcing its intentions to the audience with a nightmarish montage of full-frontal nudity and graphic violence, complete with an exploding head and a ripped-out beating heart. “Don’t like it?” the film seems to say. “It’s best you leave now.”

Indeed, the Italian Gothic horror film from director Giorgio Ferroni (Mill of the Stone Women) is envelope-pushing for its time, rubbing your face in close-ups of unflinching gore and pressed flesh.

nightdevils1Gianni Garko (Devil Fish) literally stumbles into the story as Nicola, an amnesiac brought to a mental institution. Taking up most of the running time, a flashback reveals how he got there: Swerving to miss a woman in the woods, he experiences car trouble, and ventures to a nearby, rundown village for help. There, they keep the windows barred as protection against what plagues the night.

The Night of the Devils draws inspiration from Aleksei Tolstoy’s “The Wurdulak,” a story that also informed the Boris Karloff-starring segment of Mario Bava’s 1963 anthology film, Black Sabbath. The similarity isn’t readily apparent until the flashback begins. Whereas the Bava adaptation feels a little long in the tooth, this feature-length version ironically is the more successful telling. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Gutter Auteur: The Films of Andy Milligan

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gutterauteurHad I not just read Jimmy McDonough’s acclaimed 2001 bad-moviemaker bio, The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan, I would have found Rob Craig’s new book on the same subject much more enlightening.

Don’t get me wrong: Gutter Auteur is recommended to fans of grindhouse flicks; I just feel like much of the über-eccentric filmmaker’s story read as repetitive. (Craig cites McDonough’s book throughout as a source.)

However, I’m guessing many film fanatics haven’t read The Ghastly One. After all, it’s now a dozen years old, out-of-print and, therefore, insanely expensive; Andy Milligan is far from a household name à la Ed Wood; and the only reason I read it is because, having devoured McDonough’s bio on Russ Meyer, Big Bosoms and Square Jaws, a year earlier, I simply wanted more words from him, no matter the subject.

The big question is whether room exists for two books on such a niche personality. Of course! It helps greatly that Craig is not interested in retelling Milligan’s life story beyond a 20-page summation. Instead, he aims his critical eye at examining the man’s movies closely.

Admittedly, it takes a little time to get there — about 120 pages — because preceding the meat are chapters that set up the pervading culture of the late-’60s era in which Milligan began to toil, particularly as the times related to homosexuality (Milligan was gay, to an unnatural degree of hate for heteros) and the sexploitation film. While doing so is necessary, one could argue against the inclusion of two of these chapters: one explaining the Times Square grindhouse, which is the equivalent of choir-preaching here, and the other a biographical sketch of Milligan’s regular producer/distributor, William Mishkin. Whose bio is it anyway?

When we do arrive at the Milligan filmography, rife with underfunded weird-horror efforts that include 1970’s Guru, the Mad Monk and 1972’s The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!, Craig’s book comes alive, ably conveying the seediness and sleaziness of their content.

I should note that I’ve never seen a Milligan movie, and yet, as with McDonough’s Ghastly book, Gutter Auteur hooked me. From all accounts, however, I sense Craig may be ascribing a tad more depth to Milligan’s work than is there. (We soon shall see, as finishing Gutter Auteur prompted me to place an immediate order of Something Weird’s double-feature DVD of 1968’s The Ghastly Ones and Seeds of Sin.)

Of course, it should be considered praise that I found the study so compelling, given my utter lack of exposure to the films delved into so thoroughly. Poster art and stills sprinkled throughout complement Craig’s descriptions and deconstructions of Milligan’s wicked little morality matinees of malfeasance and madness. —Rod Lott

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