RED COAT (Coralta Cinematografica, 1975)

Giubbe rosse

D: Joe D’Amato. P: Alfonso Donati. W: Joe D’Amato (as Aristide Massaccesi), Claudio Bernabei, George Eastman. Ph: Joe D’Amato (as Aristide Massaccesi). M: Carlo Rustichelli. St: Fabio Testi (Corporal Bill Cormack), Guido Mannari (Cariboo), Lynne Frederick (Elizabeth), Renato Cestie (Jimmy), Lionel Stander (Doctor Higgins)

 

 

"The hunter is very strong, but the wolf can go crazy if there is danger to its cub"

As the tawdry cousin of the ‘twilight’ westerns that saw out the end of the spaghetti western cycle, Red Coat pits its characters against the elements as well as each other. Despite being set in the frozen norths of Canada, the motifs of the western are all here with the genre’s ubiquitous implacable lawman substituted for Fabio Testi’s mounted policeman. Massaccesi took a break from sex and horror cinema to direct this meditative action film, but he was no stranger to the western. Grounded in the genre as D.O.P on a number of eccentric Z-grade offerings directed by Demofilo Fidani, he achieved more assured results with Red Coat.

 

Cormack’s predicament comes in the shape of the roughneck Cariboo, his former friend. Although relations between them initially seem warm, Cormack grows weary of Cariboo’s gambling – which evolves into cheating and murder – as well as his mistreatment of the fragile saloon singer, Elizabeth. Cormack’s innate sense of justice rescues Cariboo from a lynching, but that doesn’t stop the latter from issuing a threat against the lawman, who is now courting Elizabeth himself. Years later, escaping from prison, Cariboo kidnaps Jimmy, Elizabeth and Cormack’s son, before embarking into the wilderness pursued by the Mountie and his men – as well as the outlaws from whom he stole a stash of gold.

Massaccessi’s approach to the material is less bombastic than that of his genre forefathers. Controlling both the actors and the photography, he paints in a raw, earthy palette that augments the harshness of the drama, the elegant fluidity of the camera belying the meagre budget. The sets are sparse, rustic and grungy, a stripped-down aesthetic that creates an otherworldly, timeless dimension.

Unfortunately, Testi’s character is less interesting than that of the villain, imbued with malevolent charisma by Mannari. Testi, who shone in a handful of westerns and excelled as the star of many poliziotteschi, is something of an unworked blank canvas here. Far more engrossing is the relationship between Cariboo and Jimmy, from whom the former learns that Elizabeth has died. Cariboo thinks nothing of slapping Jimmy to the ground, but eventually the child’s pluck – attempting an escape from being bound to a sled – turns to cautious kindness when he offers Cariboo a rope to help him climb out of a hidden crevasse. The changing dynamic, here, seems a case of a mutual need for survival.

 

 

As Elizabeth, Lynn Fredrick seems as porcelain brittle as she was in Lucio Fulci’s equally ‘elemental’ western Four of the Apocalypse, also produced by Coralta and starring Testi. The tall, bulky physique of Claudio Undari [Robert Hundar] imposes itself upon each frame in his scenes as Wolf, the de facto leader of the gang that Cariboo ripped off. However, the film is briefly hijacked by blacklisted wanderer Lionel Stander, who gives a zesty performance with his familiar thick, tarmac tones as the drunken Doctor Higgins – first seen chugging liquor and pulling buckshot out of the rear of a would-be chicken thief – whom Cariboo recruits to operate on a feverish Jimmy.

 

 While not especially to the foreground, Native Americans are given a better deal here than in many Euro or US westerns. Jimmy’s guardian, while Cormack is on assignment, is Shee-Noa, a Native woman, while Cariboo fetches up with an Indian family when Jimmy is sick. Remarkably, and perhaps as a cinematic first, the final scene features a troop of Mounties riding towards danger led by a Native American woman. The closing confrontation and its gunplay are well staged and rely on a revelation that is as old as Genesis and echoes the central obsession in Winchester 73.

 

Despite offering so much that is unique, it is the lack of bombast that quells the film’s impact. Compared with other Euro-westerns of the time that wallowed in the squalor and cold of a dying west – Keoma, Four of the Apocalypse, A Man Called Blade, California – and with the canon of the man who went on to direct Super Hard Love and Porno Holocaust, Red Coat remains an anomalous, but diverting, footnote.

Clark Hodgkiss