“I think I’m progressive in a sense.”
The
tale of two men who profess to hold opposing moral codes and the gunmen employed
by one to kill the other, only to discover the motive behind their assignment
is murkier than they initially thought, Fredianelli’s micro-budget western is
more radical in its conception than its ultimate execution. Were it to be released
today, however, it could be posited as a damning allegory of these rancorous
political times, a scathing depiction of the major players; this would place it
firmly in a respectable lineage of revisionist westerns. As it stands, it’s a respectable
homage to spaghetti and B-westerns, an ambitious, eccentric film with a sanguinary,
earthy approach that is required viewing for the more open-minded genre fan.
Hired
gunman Print is paid by the serpentine cattle baron Mr. Paul to cut down
cowboys working for the Love Ranch, who are in the habit of rebranding his herd.
Mr. Paul asks Print to train an upstart crack shot, Lee, in the art of
assassination, and to do away with brothel owner Henrich Kley, who performs crude
abortions on his girls. As Mr. Paul proclaims, “This place is in line for some
hard judgment.” Print and Lee infiltrate Kley’s brothel where Print, a
self-proclaimed artist, plots an aesthetically perfect killing.
The
artful opening titles – a remarkable image sees shifting sands reveal a skull –
segue into an introduction to the effusive Print that plunges the viewer into
Fredianelli’s leftfield vision. Print is well conceived by writer Lambert. The
hired gun is fond of the Impressionists and likes to create works of art with
his killings; he strips a cattle thief naked before stuffing his body into a
cow’s carcass to deliver it to the victim’s cohorts, and later perversely
arranges two victims into a lovers’ tableau. These are the types of action that
strike fear into his enemies and cement his reputation as a deadly but bizarre antagonist.
He
lives quite a prosaic life aside from his vocation, however; he owns the town’s
barbershop, which by all accounts is not particularly lucrative. Stielstra,
with his hawkish, angular features, is a good fit for a western; he carries the
grittiness intrinsic to the genre with a confident strut. Print’s confidant and
mentor, Hank, is a veteran gunslinger who has replaced fidelity to Mr. Paul
with contempt. The student/teacher relationship between Print and Hank is mirrored
in the bond between Lee and Print. It’s not abundantly clear why Mr. Paul would
want Print to initiate the rookie into an assassin’s life, although Halsey does
great work in conveying an off-colour aura; he seems the type of man who would enjoy
training a fledgling employee to kill.
The
lengthy scenes of Print and Lee preparing to enter the shrouded world of Kley
threaten to stymie the narrative. The interactions between Kley and Mr. Paul’s
undercover gunmen are among the highlights of the film. Introduced performing a
grisly abortion, Kley is one of van Husen’s weightiest roles and he revels in enunciating
the frontier pimp’s scripture-based philosophies; he opines to Print that he
regards his establishment as “an incision to bleed out man’s aggression”.[i]
The frank nudity presented in the brothel scenes echoes the depiction of the
‘chippies’ in McCabe and Mrs Miller. The
prostitutes are deglamourised, dirt-smeared and bruised; while not exactly a
feminist project, it’s clear the film’s sympathies lie with these mistreated
women. The bond between an older mentor and his protégé also threads into
Kley’s world – his timid son Gus (Eric Zaldivar) seeks solace from Kley’s
horrors in his rosary and Bible.
Zaldivar’s
taciturn performance is typical of the film’s critique of the pious and is one
of its many beguiling idiosyncrasies. The Love cowboys, headed by Mathis Reed (co-producer
Malloy) are in turns hostile or bungling and inject a dose of black humour;
actress Rita Rey gives a fascinating performance as Annabelle, the prostitute
Lee is smitten with; Giffen paints Hank as an affable old-timer, guided by his
conscience. The Scarlet Worm may be a
youthful enterprise, but key to absorbing the viewer into Lambert’s often
inspired writing and Martinez’s handsome compositions is the inclusion of experienced
hands van Husen and Halsey, as well as cameos by veterans of Italian genre film
Mike Forest and Ted Rusoff.[ii]
Clark Hodgkiss
[i] Kley also provides a clue to the film’s enigmatic
title. Cermes vermilio is an insect from which a red dye is obtained and is
mentioned in Exodus. In other books of the bible the Hebrew word for scarlet,
tola’ath, is also used to denote worms which occur in decaying matter – the
title can therefore be seen as symbolic of the social aberration that is Kley’s
rancid establishment or generally of the evil men so prominent in the film.
According to Mike Malloy, “Almost every distributor who courted us wanted to
change it.”
[ii] This review was originally scheduled to coincide with
the release of a limited edition Blu-Ray. This has, thus far, not materialised.
There is however a multi-region Blu-Ray on the market which demonstrates what a
fine looking film it is. The screen grabs included here, however, are from a
DVD version.
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