| MISTER TRASH PRESENTS - October 1, 2008 |
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MISTER TRASH PRESENTS...
MISTER TRASH PRESENTS...
KILL THEM ALL AND COME BACK ALONE I may not be the world's biggest fan of Eurowesterns, but I sure do love the insane titles they came up with for them. The great and incredibly prolific Enzo Castellari's 1968 shoot/blow 'em up features the Rifleman himself, Chuck Connors, as Clyde MacKay, the leader of a group of seven thugs who raid a Confederate fort at the end of the Civil War. After roundly kicking the crap out of almost every man in the fort, MacKay rounds up the General and his top intelligence agent Captain Lynch (Frank Wolff), introduces the surly, murderous gang and then absconds into the General's office for a private talk. Turns out that this was all merely an exercise to test the gang's abilities before the Confederates dispatch them to rob the Yankees of a shitload of cash hidden in an enormous store of dynamite. As for the badmen themselves once the mission is done, Captain Lynch is clear in his instructions to MacKay - "Kill them all and come back alone."
So begins one of the rootin'est tootin'est Eurotrash westerns you could ever hope to see, executed as no one but Italian action maestro Castellari could. (This is the cat who made The Inglorious Bastards, after all.) Indeed, the plot is pretty thin from here on out, but who gives a damn? It's pretty much non-stop ass-kicking until the credits roll, so this one is A-OK in Mr. Trash's book. After a punch-out with the Captain for spying on them, MacKay leads his group across the river to Union territory where a whole damn squad of blue-coated Yankees meet their grisly fates at the hands of these ruthless mercenaries. This is followed by a bar brawl so massive that it literally caves in the roof of the place (!!), the boys taking out some Yankee sentries, and the daring heist itself – wherein the Union soldiers (largely inebriated Irishmen!) are smoked out by a brush fire and rapidly murdered by throwing knives to the neck, cannon fire, bazooka (!!), dynamite, and the requisite gun fighting. It is a lengthy and ultraviolent sequence almost entirely devoid of any music but the sweet melody of explosions and the screams of the dying. Once the bread is in the wagon and ready to go, MacKay takes off, ditching the rest of the gang. He’s got the “come back alone” part covered, but has somehow managed to completely overlook the “kill them all” portion of the plan. He makes it all the way back to the river, but is immediately met by the betrayed thugs, as well as the remainder of the Union soldiers who promptly capture the lot of them. Luckily, Captain Lynch appears as the commanding officer of the fort replete with a blue uniform. Not so luckily, it does not appear to be a ruse – Lynch really is Yankee scum. Another colossal brawl ensues, leaving many men dead in the dust, some changing sides, further double-crossing, and the ultimate showdown between MacKay and Lynch (I’ll let you guess who wins). So what if dynamite wasn’t invented until after the Civil War, and the bazooka more than half a century later? With grand cinematography of the Spanish countryside where it was filmed and beautifully accented by Francesco de Masi’s very good score, Kill Them All And Come Back Alone might very well be Castellari’s best western. (Absorbing performances by Connors and Wolff don’t hurt, either.) In any event, it’s among the best I’ve yet seen, and very highly recommended.
Highlight of the Film: Upon realizing that Lynch had set him up from the get go in order to collect all the dough and lay the blame on Southern crooks, MacKay – now handcuffed in Lynch’s office – hisses, “Y’know Captain, as a Southerner you made me sick. As a Northerner, you make me vomit.” MacKay then proceeds to beat the living shit out of the turncoat, hands still cuffed, with little resistance from the lesser man. The moral of the story? Chuck Connors was so friggin’ cool.
THE MAD BOMBER (aka THE POLICE CONNECTION) - Drive-In god Bert I. Gordon helmed this tale of revenge and psychosis in 1973, starring the great Chuck Connors as the titular bomber. William Dorn (Connors) is one pissed off dude. In fact, the picture opens with Dorn assaulting some guy on the street for littering and forcing him to admit what a pig he is - that's how angry this guy is. Really angry. Angry enough to drop a homemade bomb off inside a high school and blow it to smithereens, leaving only a pile of smoking rubble and the maimed corpses of several unfortunate teenagers in his wake. See what I mean? Not a happy-go-lucky fellow. More of a "mad bomber" type. Hence the title. Anyway, Dorn's next stop is a psychiatric hospital. While he plants the bomb, a rape is being committed against a mute patient just as the bomb explodes. The next morning, crack detective Geronimo Minelli (Vince Edwards) is on the case and assuming that the bomber and the rapist are one and the same. After a little sleuthing, Minelli determines that not only were there two criminals that night, but that the rapist is his best shot at a witness to catch the bomber. Meanwhile, Dorn confronts an inconsiderate driver, takes his keys, and drops them into a post box. Seriously, this guy is my favorite murderer. Unfortunately for him, however, Minelli is getting closer to tracking down the rapist, who he is certain can ID the bomber. Soon enough, the rapist (Neville Brand) not only strikes again, but kills his victim as well. Los Angeles is a swell old town, ain’t it?
Ultimately, they get the rapist they’re looking for, so that all of the other hundreds of sexual predators on the streets of L.A. can breathe a collective sigh of relief. After a considerable amount of harassment, Minelli finally gets the rapist to ID the bomber, who turns out to be a bitter divorcee whose wife ditched him after his daughter overdosed on drugs. Too bad for the rapist that Dorn finds out he squealed, because our not-so-friendly neighborhood bomber blows the perv sky high while he’s punishing the monkey to some homemade porn. The fuzz are now hot on his tail, but since he’s cruising around L.A. in a van loaded to the ceiling with dynamite, that’s not really such a boon. Minelli is able to get to him when Dorn leaves the van, having had a hallucination of his dead daughter. A shot is fired, and Dorn explodes himself in the most spectacular exploding body scene ever filmed (remember, Scanners just had the head, this has the whole body). The end. Connors may have been the ultimate antihero in his younger days on such shows as “The Rifleman” and “Branded,” but the older and leatherier he got, the more he turned to villainous roles. With all due respect to Tourist Trap, The Mad Bomber is far and away the best of these.
Highlight of the Film: Maybe it’s not so hard to understand why Dorn is writing letters to the media to explain that the public must be punished. Case in point – a feminist meeting in a downtown hotel, going on and on about how much men suck because they can’t give birth. Kaboom! Consider yourself punished, feminists! Now cook me dinner…oh wait, you can’t. You’re a bloody mass of exploded entrails. But the cops can’t worry themselves about that – they’ve got to catch that rapist so they can catch the bomber!! (??) Now, the LAPD is cracking down on rapists everywhere, who didn’t really bother them all that much prior to the bombings. Something else for those whiny feminists to complain about, I suppose. But seriously, who’s making dinner?
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