The Great Silence

1968 Spaghetti Western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: In blizzardy Utah in the late 1800s, bounty hunters run amok, bringing in loads of dead outlaws for financial gain. The titular mute doesn't like them very much and finds ways of getting them mad enough to draw their guns so that he can shoot them in self defense. One widow tries to get Silence to kill a bounty hunter named Loco who shot her husband.

The Great Silence is one of those westerns where the setting is almost more important than the characters. The hills these hills inhabit are drowned in snow, and watching these horses trudge through the mounds of white is impressive. The mute good guy played by Jean-Louis Trintignant is fine as a sort of Eastwood Man-With-No-Name-But-With-a-Nickname. Apparently he was a mute because the actor would only take the role if he didn't have any lines to learn. But he's a cool character with a cool gun. Klaus Kinski dominates as Loco, however, stealing each scene with his eyes. What a great villain! The dubbing in this isn't great although I wonder if Kinski actually did the dubbing for Loco. It sort of sounded like him. I did enjoy the exaggerated dubbed chewing sounds because there's nothing like hearing a guy slurp a chicken. My favorite scene that is not at the end of the movie: a tossed match into a glass of whiskey during a poker game. Nice tension. But the end of this movie? That's what pushes it a notch higher than its Italian Western peers. It's an ending that'll leave your jaw dropping. Great Morricone score, too, if you're into that sort of thing.

Cobra Verde

1987 crazy man movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Notorious outlaw Francisco Manoel de Silva takes a job overseeing slaves on a sugar plantation. After he knocks up the plantation owner's three daughters, he's sent to Africa to get the slave trade rolling again. The plantation owner and de Silva both know the job will likely end in death, but de Silva decides to go anyway.

"Herzog does not know that I give life to the dead scenery." --Klaus Kinski

You can see the production problems soak through the lush scenery and chaotic and intense scenes that take place in that scenery. The narrative's unbalanced, almost like the story had to pieced together from hours of messy footage. I had trouble following what was going on some of the time. And Kinski's character is wildly uneven. Sure, the titular chap was a crazy bandit, but I'm not even sure Kinski's performance makes much sense in that context. Still, Kinski's his usual electric self, and watching him on the screen is always an experience. In Cobra Verde, the goings-on around hiim are anarchic. Herzog fills the screen with extras and constant movement in a lot of the scenes. Yet Kinski always manages to stand out, like a deranged Where's Waldo? where Waldo jumps up and down and wildly waves his arms and then tries to stab you in the eye with a comically-large pencil. That performance, along with Herzog's eye for filming in exotic and often dangerous locales as well as the inhabitants of those locales, make this an intriguing movie experience despite its imperfections. And Herzog's run of brilliant movie endings continues with a jaw-dropping scene in this involving a boat and a deformed man. Add the Krautrock Popol Vuh soundtrack and you've got yourself another Werner Herzog narrative that is definitely worth watching.

"Arrgh! You don't understand my genius, Werner!"

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

1972 movie

Rating: 19/20

Plot: Mr. Aguirre leads an expedition with his pals to find gold. It's an almost identical plot to Disney's The Huffalump Movie except it takes place in South America in the 16th Century. And Tigger has been replaced with a crazy man.

Cinematic poetry! My favorite movies are those that are uncategorizable, and although Aguirre, the Wrath of God is very clearly a movie, it's just not a movie that is like a lot of other movies. Werner Herzog's penchant for filming in impossible locales and his eye for filming those locales very well makes the Peruvian rain forest just as important as any character in this thing. In fact, since you don't really get to see much of the natives who attack Aguirre and his posse, at times it almost seems like the conflict is with the setting. The location is hauntingly beautiful, violent, and lawless and adds to this mysterious feel that pervades the film. The wonderful Popol Vuh score also contributes to that feel. Herzog not only has an eye for filming on location, he's got a willingness to allow his camera to film happy accidents, to deviate from the script and allow some of the fringe details to evolve spontaneously. One of my favorite of these moments is an extended--and seemingly pointless--scene with a guy jamming on a pan flute thing while Aguirre stands next to him. He allows the story to meander, and the story, I think, is more mythic and more mysterious because of it. Klaus Kinski's performance is a scary one even though this isn't anything like a horror movie. He's the perfect picture of madness, delusional and paranoid and megalomaniacal. As I've probably typed in these pages before, it all starts with Kinski's eyes. But as Aguirre, he's required to do so much physically, like Nic Cage in the Bad Lieutenant movie. Aguirre often seems more insect than human, walking with an awkward limp and a hunched back and with an expression on his countenance that makes it look like his mind hurts. I love his performance here, and knowing a little of the legends behind the filming of it (see: My Best Fiend or watch Aguirre with Herzog's commentary) adds a new dimension. Herzog is always good with endings, and the denouement of Aguirre is memorable and moving, definitely one of my favorite movie endings ever. It's one of those cases where you think, "How was this even filmed?" but then you just stop thinking about it and decide to just be glad it was.


I don't want to alienate my four and a half readers, but I've thought about making a rule that there are certain movies you just have to watch if you want to read my blog. This would definitely be one of those movies. I've decided not to make that rule, by the way, but you should see this movie anyway so that you can see Klaus Kinski pick up a monkey. That's something that every cinemaphile needs to see.

The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe

1972 martial arts spaghetti western

Rating: 12/20

Plot: It's the 1880's, and Joe decides to immigrate from China to San Francisco to look for a fresh start in America. He encounters racism immediately, and the prejudice and hatred continue as he travels by stagecoach to Texas and looks for work as a cowboy on a ranch. He finally lands a job, but aiding in the transport of Mexican slaves isn't exactly up his alley. He decides to help the Mexicans instead, so the owner puts a price on Shanghai Joe's head. The promise of 5,000 dollars sends bounty hunters named Pedro the Cannibal, Tricky the Gambler, and Scalper Jack after our hero and his fighting fists.

It's a martial arts spaghetti western with Klaus Kinski playing a guy named Scalper Jack. I don't see how anything else needs to be said. Joe's high-flying antics and groan (it's a groan that rivals Bruce's bird tweets) are fun to watch, more fun perhaps in the western setting. There's some incredibly violent scenes (impaling, eyes torn out, scalps) and a nice mix of the Asian philosophy with the rugged ideals of the American West. Pretty cool characters, too! This movie has an abundance of funk! I highly recommend this to anybody who likes this kind of crap.

Believe it or not, this was a gift from one of my students.

For a Few Dollars More

1965 spaghetti western

Rating: 17/20 (Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: The Man with No Name (not that man with no name but a different one) and Lee Van Cleef (not that Lee Van Cleef but a different one) are bounty hunters, wanted- poster chasers out for big paydays. When a very dangerous criminal and probable lunatic named Indio is busted out of prison by his gang, both bounty hunters decide to go after him.

How cool is Lee Van Cleef? And when you add a Clint Eastwood and a hunchbacked Klaus Kinski into the same movie, you've got an overwhelming amount of bad ass. This is arguably a cooler movie than The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and just as emotionally charged, but it probably isn't as poetic. Still, exquisitely directed with another Morricone over-the-top-but-still-about-perfect score. Abbey was a little confused about Van Cleef looking nearly the same but playing a different character. I was surprised at how she was able to follow this enough to enjoy it. She just loves seeing bad guys getting shot up, I guess. She claims that her favorite thing about the movies is the way they all talk.

Add these to my Christmas wishlist (with the Lone Wolf and Cub action figures in case you've forgotten):

The back of the head with no name:

Nosferatu the Vampyre

1979 horror remake

Rating: 16/20

Plot: It's Dracula. A really old pale guy laments the fact that he can't get a girl to like him on account of his silly looking ears. "Cursed! Cursed with these monstrostities [sic]! All the kids on the playground called me Batboy." He mopes around for a while and finally decides to go to the woodshed to fashion himself some wicked fangs with the use of an electric sander. He then falls in love with the sander and injures himself during attempted intercourse. Blaming his misfortune on Black and Decker (Franz Black and Hans Decker, the guys at the local hardware store who sold him the discount sander from the clearance aisle), he seeks revenge. Or a good manicurist. He ends up getting a haircut instead and regretting it instantly. He takes a trip on a boat to forget his troubles and befriends several rats. Together, they produce their own musical comedy--"The Frantic Athletic Cup". They're booed fiercely during the first show, tossed from the boat, and spend the rest of the movie regretting every decision they've ever made.

This is probably not as good as the original 20's Murnau version (I think...it's been a while) but it is infinitely better (well, twice better) than the Coppola thing, despite the substitution of Tom Waits for the annoying giggling Renfield in this one. The annoying giggling Renfield delivered one of the more laughable acting performances I've ever seen, and the acting was the biggest problem (only problem?) with the film. Werner Herzog produced two simultaneous versions--one in English and one in German--and the heavily-accented English combined with this oddly tired, confused acting really made the English version difficult to watch in parts. I watched snippets of the German version, and it didn't seem much better though. The movie was also a little choppy; you could tell scenes were hurried (one take only, probably due to a combination of budget, the need for two language versions, and time). The individual scenes themselves, however, were almost perfect. Kinski is as good as anybody who's seen Kinski would think he'd be in this role. He's got the eyes for the part, and his timing is so perfect in the elongated, tension-filled scenes. His presence completely overwhelms the scenes he's in. And with the imagery and set design, there's enough to look at to make up for the story we already know and the acting we wish we could ignore. The castle in this is perfect and haunting. Herzog paints with shadows and somber colors, and by slowing down scenes, he creates an almost hypnotic tension if not something completely terrifying. Almost every scene with Kinski is beautiful, but my favorite image is during the great "pestilence" chapter, a scene featuring a "last supper" with a family feasting while in the company of scuttling rats. There's also some really sexy mummies and a nicely choreographed pall bearer dance scene. Great rats though. It adds backbone to my theory that Werner Herzog (my favorite director) could direct animals as well as people. (See: the monkeys at the end of Aguirre, the defecating camel at the end of Dwarves, the dancing chicken at the end of Stroyzek.) This could have been the greatest horror movie ever made, and it is one of the best remakes of all time.

Look! I'm terrified!