BY FRED BLOSSER
In
Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,†Rick Dalton (Leonardo
DiCaprio) accepts an offer to star in an Italian Western out of
desperation. His days of TV fame are
behind him, he needs a gig that will keep his name in lights, and no American
studios are beating down his door. In
real life, Chuck Connors’ lead role in Enzo G. Castellari’s 1968 Spaghetti
Western, “Kill Them All and Come Back Alone,†was less an existential crisis
like Rick’s than one more job in a long, busy career. If Connors was ever at risk of unemployment,
you wouldn’t know it from his resume. Across four decades, he starred in four television series, had recurring
parts in two others, and made prominent supporting appearances in more than a
hundred other movies, series, and made-for-TV films. He was a solid actor who could credibly
portray everything from tough but compassionate cops to the improbably tall,
blue-eyed Apache chief in Geronimo
(1962), to a backwoods yokel named “Superman†who’s comically mistaken for the
real deal in the old George Reeves TV show.
In
Castellari’s film, now available in a Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber, Connors
plays Clyde McKay, a master thief hired by the Confederate high command to
steal a million dollars in gold from a Union fort during the Civil War. In Mission: Impossible style, he’s told that
if he’s caught, he’s on his own. “The
Confederate Army didn’t hire you and knows nothing about you.†To carry out the job, McKay forms a team of
five outlaws with the usual specialties. Blade is a knife thrower. Dekker
is an explosives expert. Bogard is a
strong man. Hoagy is a crack shot. Kid is so boyish he makes today’s teen-fave
Timothee Chalomet look like Harry Dean Stanton -- but don’t let that fool you,
McKay advises; “he has one virtue -- he likes to kill and he’s good at it.†Captain Lynch (Frank Wolff), who devised the
big heist, tells McKay that when he finishes the job with his five men, “kill
them all and come back alone.†This
seems like an odd command, even given the famously unfathomable workings of the
military mind. If you have a crack team
that’s successfully executed one impossible mission, wouldn’t you rather keep
them around in case you need their skills again? But McKay accepts it with a cynical smile,
perhaps confident that he’s wise not to trust Lynch, or maybe he realizes he’s
simply a character in an Italian Western, a genre in which entire movies like
this one were based on everyone in the story double-crossing everyone
else. Anyway, logic probably wasn’t a
big consideration for Castellari’s core U.S. audience of sleepy, stoned
teenagers who would have caught “Kill Them All and Come Back Alone†as the
final feature in an all-night, up-till-dawn quadruple-bill at the local
drive-in in 1968.
For
the rest of us, Castellari keeps the action moving so briskly and flamboyantly
that we have little time to ponder fine questions of wartime ethics, even with
the luxury of pause and rewind on home video. Right out of the starting gate, McKay and his commandos wreak havoc at a
military base by pole-vaulting across roofs, jumping into wagons from second-story
balconies, blowing up supply sheds, knocking other guys through bannisters to
the floor below, and dropping a massive chandelier onto a bunch of troops who
have obligingly congregated underneath. This pre-credit sequence turns out to be the team’s audition for Captain
Lynch, and it’s followed by three other big, blow-em-up set pieces,
interspersed with more fistfights, shootouts, and acrobatics than I could
count. Where most American Westerns (and
their stars) had gotten old and creaky by 1968, “Kill Them All and Come Back
Alone†keeps its crew of stuntmen and stuntmen-turned-actors like Ken Wood
(Blade) and Alberto Dell’Acqua (Kid) on the move. It’s silly and almost as exhausting as an
hour on a Peleton, but not much more childish than the CGI fights in today’s
Marvel Comics movies, even when Castellari’s stunt doubles go flying back from
punches that clearly miss their chins by several inches.
The
new Kino Lorber Blu-ray presents the movie in a superlative 4K restoration at
the 2.35:1 Techniscope aspect ratio. Fans of escapist action movies will appreciate such care for an
unpretentious Italian Western that would have been ignored by most critics,
back in the day, as hardly a notch above a 42nd Street porno loop. The disc contains both the original,
100-minute Italian print (with English-language subtitles) and the dubbed,
99-minute version released to U.S. theaters. The loss of a minute doesn’t really compromise anything, and if you’re
not turned off by the dubbed dialogue for the European actors, you may prefer
the English-language track because there, Connors speaks in his own distinctive
voice. Director and Spaghetti Western
enthusiast Alex Cox contributes a feature-length audio commentary that’s
informative and amusing in equal proportion. Cox notes the cumulative daffiness of the running, jumping, and falling
stunts in the film, but he’s also appreciative of several technically
complicated shots that Castellari and his crew mount with all the skill of a
big-budget, A-list production. The Kino
Lorber Blu-ray can be ordered HERE.
In
Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,†Rick Dalton (Leonardo
DiCaprio) accepts an offer to star in an Italian Western out of
desperation. His days of TV fame are
behind him, he needs a gig that will keep his name in lights, and no American
studios are beating down his door. In
real life, Chuck Connors’ lead role in Enzo G. Castellari’s 1968 Spaghetti
Western, “Kill Them All and Come Back Alone,†was less an existential crisis
like Rick’s than one more job in a long, busy career. If Connors was ever at risk of unemployment,
you wouldn’t know it from his resume. Across four decades, he starred in four television series, had recurring
parts in two others, and made prominent supporting appearances in more than a
hundred other movies, series, and made-for-TV films. He was a solid actor who could credibly
portray everything from tough but compassionate cops to the improbably tall,
blue-eyed Apache chief in Geronimo
(1962), to a backwoods yokel named “Superman†who’s comically mistaken for the
real deal in the old George Reeves TV show.
In
Castellari’s film, now available in a Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber, Connors
plays Clyde McKay, a master thief hired by the Confederate high command to
steal a million dollars in gold from a Union fort during the Civil War. In Mission: Impossible style, he’s told that
if he’s caught, he’s on his own. “The
Confederate Army didn’t hire you and knows nothing about you.†To carry out the job, McKay forms a team of
five outlaws with the usual specialties. Blade is a knife thrower. Dekker
is an explosives expert. Bogard is a
strong man. Hoagy is a crack shot. Kid is so boyish he makes today’s teen-fave
Timothee Chalomet look like Harry Dean Stanton -- but don’t let that fool you,
McKay advises; “he has one virtue -- he likes to kill and he’s good at it.†Captain Lynch (Frank Wolff), who devised the
big heist, tells McKay that when he finishes the job with his five men, “kill
them all and come back alone.†This
seems like an odd command, even given the famously unfathomable workings of the
military mind. If you have a crack team
that’s successfully executed one impossible mission, wouldn’t you rather keep
them around in case you need their skills again? But McKay accepts it with a cynical smile,
perhaps confident that he’s wise not to trust Lynch, or maybe he realizes he’s
simply a character in an Italian Western, a genre in which entire movies like
this one were based on everyone in the story double-crossing everyone
else. Anyway, logic probably wasn’t a
big consideration for Castellari’s core U.S. audience of sleepy, stoned
teenagers who would have caught “Kill Them All and Come Back Alone†as the
final feature in an all-night, up-till-dawn quadruple-bill at the local
drive-in in 1968.
For
the rest of us, Castellari keeps the action moving so briskly and flamboyantly
that we have little time to ponder fine questions of wartime ethics, even with
the luxury of pause and rewind on home video. Right out of the starting gate, McKay and his commandos wreak havoc at a
military base by pole-vaulting across roofs, jumping into wagons from second-story
balconies, blowing up supply sheds, knocking other guys through bannisters to
the floor below, and dropping a massive chandelier onto a bunch of troops who
have obligingly congregated underneath. This pre-credit sequence turns out to be the team’s audition for Captain
Lynch, and it’s followed by three other big, blow-em-up set pieces,
interspersed with more fistfights, shootouts, and acrobatics than I could
count. Where most American Westerns (and
their stars) had gotten old and creaky by 1968, “Kill Them All and Come Back
Alone†keeps its crew of stuntmen and stuntmen-turned-actors like Ken Wood
(Blade) and Alberto Dell’Acqua (Kid) on the move. It’s silly and almost as exhausting as an
hour on a Peleton, but not much more childish than the CGI fights in today’s
Marvel Comics movies, even when Castellari’s stunt doubles go flying back from
punches that clearly miss their chins by several inches.
The
new Kino Lorber Blu-ray presents the movie in a superlative 4K restoration at
the 2.35:1 Techniscope aspect ratio. Fans of escapist action movies will appreciate such care for an
unpretentious Italian Western that would have been ignored by most critics,
back in the day, as hardly a notch above a 42nd Street porno loop. The disc contains both the original,
100-minute Italian print (with English-language subtitles) and the dubbed,
99-minute version released to U.S. theaters. The loss of a minute doesn’t really compromise anything, and if you’re
not turned off by the dubbed dialogue for the European actors, you may prefer
the English-language track because there, Connors speaks in his own distinctive
voice. Director and Spaghetti Western
enthusiast Alex Cox contributes a feature-length audio commentary that’s
informative and amusing in equal proportion. Cox notes the cumulative daffiness of the running, jumping, and falling
stunts in the film, but he’s also appreciative of several technically
complicated shots that Castellari and his crew mount with all the skill of a
big-budget, A-list production.
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