Night of the Remakes

Do you have an idea of how many adaptations of Hamlet or The Taming of the Shrew there have been made? And whereas some may indeed mutter: “Just what we were craving for, another Shakespeare version!” resistance is futile: restaging a play is not an uncommon or ungodly thing. Remaking a film seems like a tougher job, though people like Steven Soderbergh (Underneath and Ocean’s Eleven) and David Cronenberg (The Fly) got away with it, not in the least because their adaptations were personal. And yes, it’s always easier to direct a remake of a lesser known film like The Fly or Gone in 60 Seconds. It seems like the only thing you shouldn’t attempt is to offer the remake of a cult classic. Arguably the worst example is Psycho, Gus van Sant‘s scene by scene remake of Hitchcock’s classic (Gus defended himself by shooting almost exactly the same picture because the original couldn’t be improved). Some things, apparently, just shouldn’t be remade. Just ask Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman who managed to make themselves truly hated by millions of fans for attempting to make a movie version of The Avengers. (Uma even tried to make it worse by posing herself not only as Emma Peel of The Avengers but also Meiko Kaji of Lady Snowblood.) Today we take a closer look at two remakes possibly nobody was waiting for: The Wicker Man and The Prisoner.

First up, The Wicker Man. A British cult classic starring Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland and Christopher Lee. The maypole dances, the veiled eroticism, the wicker man… one would have to be mad to attempt a remake of such a film. Enter Neil LaBute, director of a handful of movies best described as “not the ideal first date movie”. LaBute, it seems, avidly studies misogyny and makes uncomfortable films about the subject. Sounds like the ideal man for the remake then.
Well, in all fairness, The Wicker Man could’ve been a lot worse. It’s hard to care for Nicolas Cage, but LaBute does manage to compare the human world to the bee world without looking too much like a pompous ass. What a shame then that someone felt the need to include supernatural elements (or maybe it’s all a dream – sigh… bored): Cage as an officer you don’t really like forcing a mother to stop her car and being forced to watch how the car, the mother and her daughter are suddenly devoured by flames. Was there really a need for such a scene? No, there wasn’t.
In fact, The Wicker Man seems to have more of such scenes and fast forwarding seemed the easy way out. Still, after arriving at the end credits I felt like I’d skipped some vital elements, rewound the dvd and watched the film again, my hopes for a good film shattered. Funnily enough, the film seemed a lot better now and only Cage (surely a bit miscast) and the alleged supernatural elements bugged me this time. Was the film good? No, there were too many elements disturbing my enjoyment to classify this film as ‘good’, but by no means is it as bad as a lot of people say. At least, LaBute managed to adapt the film into a LaBute film, despite the hammy plotlines and Cage. Neither fish nor flesh then and so a five out of ten was awarded.

Next up, The Prisoner. I don’t think I’ve hated the announcement of a 60s series more since the news an Avengers movie would be made. Only the fact that Patrick McGoohan had an executive producer’s credit seemed like a bit of good news. So let’s start with the good news…
The new Prisoner‘s series didn’t feel the need to have an ocean around. When Jesus (sorry, Jim Caviezel a.k.a. Six) escapes, he finds himself in some sort of desert. Number 2 is also there, this time portrayed by Ian McKellan. He does a good job and the idea of summoning a couple to his place and demanding they’d bring a pie was a great touch. It was virtually pointless, but the shot of McKellan enjoying the cake gave him some sort of monarch status. The worse news is that the remake is more naturalistic when it comes to ‘numbers’ living together in a village: they breed and the result is a baby with a new name… sorry, number. The old series was more sexless and for some reason, that felt better: it gave The Village a more washed-out feeling. The remade Village more looks like a Stanford experiment gone wild.
The worst news is that the original series was almost impossible to remake: McGoohan wasn’t just Number 6, the show was his brainchild and he wrote and directed some of the episodes. Basically, Patrick McGoohan was The Prisoner.
Add to this frequent vapid flashbacks which annoy more than they intrigue and you’re stuck with the notion you’re watching a remake of a show that doesn’t have the personality of the original. After watching one episode, I couldn’t be bothered to make sure I’d watch all the other episodes. I may watch them when accidently stumbing upon them, but I won’t feel a nanosecond of loss if I’ve missed an episode. The photography is good and it’s decently made, but that’s about the nicest compliment I can think of. 3/10, if I’m being generous.

And so, the night of remakes has come to an end and one conclusion stares us directly in the eye: originality can’t be overrated.

Looking For Eric

Looking for Eric is Ken Loach‘s latest effort. In an opening scene that didn’t really work for me (mainly cause I didn’t see what was happening) Eric drives rounds on a roundabout until someone crashes into his car. Eric is a postman and his colleagues are worried about him. Eric (played by Steve Evets) has to raise two teenage boys by himself, ever since his second wife left him. He’s not on speaking terms with his first wife either, even though they have a daughter. Their daughter is studying and a young mother. With her final exams due, the daughter asks for her parents’ help: if her dad couldn’t bring the little one to her at the end of the afternoon but to his ex-wife, she’d have some extra time to work for school. And this is what freaks Eric out, so much so that he steps into his car and starts driving… until someone, eventually, crashes into him.

But there’s more to the film. Eric’s colleague Meatballs (you may remember John Henshaw from the shows The Cops and Early Doors) has an obsession with self-help books and one of them includes an exercise where you imagine yourself being looked at by your idol. Eric takes this a bit too literally and suddenly starts imagining Eric Cantona is actually in the room. Cantona, the ex-footballer, advises Eric and Eric needs a lot of advice. Not only because he doesn’t dare speaking to his first wife anymore (for reasons we’ll learn later in the film) but because his older sons is hanging out with bad boys. Eric’s meddling doesn’t really help, in fact it only makes things worse for the family.

You may ask yourself during and after the film how real Eric Cantona is to Eric the postman. There are scenes where he’s having conversations with him that make it look as if Eric has a hard time distinguishing between fact and fiction. However, when Eric and Cantona are working out in the fields, Eric’s colleagues spot him and Eric stops imagining Cantona’s presence immediately.

Cantona, it must be mentioned, is having the time of his life here: he can act as well as be himself and revel in his former football glory. It’s not the first time Cantona has acted (in fact it’s his 15th film) and it shows. In typical Loach style there’s also one major role for a debut actor/actress and here it’s Stephanie Bishop (as ex-wife Lily). Credit where it’s due: you can’t really spot it’s her first film.

It’s also not the first film by Loach, which brings me to my dislikes about the movie. I know why the gangster kids are around Eric’s older son and I know it all needs to build to the climax scene (which, pardon my language, is fucking great – there is quite some swearing in the film), but the police invasion happening on exactly the moment it shouldn’t arrive (a family reunion) … come on, that’s just an attempt by Loach or Paul Laverty (the writer) to get to the next part of the film. All this could’ve been presented in a much more subtle way: the unnecessary arrests are either Loach’s way of showing the British police suck or it’s a movie trick to maximize stirring up the viewer’s emotion. I found it severely exaggerated and it put me off the film for quite a while.

Nevertheless, the climax of the film is great and helps the film overcome its weaker points. It’s not the best Ken Loach, but if you liked Raining Stones, you should also check out this one.

6/10
(thanks to cinebel.be for the images)

Superhero Schlock

Superhero Schlock is a series I’ve been covering on DV itself for quite a while now. After ten episodes it seemed like the right time to post the series on my Avenue as well. Plus, it’s become a category, so if you’ve missed an episode, all you need to do is click the category and find all the updates.

Superhero Schlock dedicates itself to schlocky remakes of superhero movies as well as taking an irregular look at other schlocky remakes made mostly in Turkey or India.

The series kicks off today with part one:  Indian Superman.

Shudder to think, but yes, India has made more than one Superman movie. The other will be mentioned later in the series, but today it’s all hands on deck for this South-Indian version. This film finally gives us a reason why Superman concealed his identity: “Because I promised my mother not to tell anyone.” Makes perfect sense that.

Complete with the obligatory fly’n'dance and an estimated $0.45 for special effects:

Virtually identical!

Regular updates of Avenue Kurtodrome are set to return… just wait till July 1.

In the meantime, I was watching a documentary on Turkish cinema and the director of Badi had the nerve to say his alien resembled Spielberg’s E.T. very much. Sure, it’s not a resemblance… they’re virtually identical!

Why don’t we put you to a test? I’ll post a minute of one of the movies and you have to guess whether it’s E.T. or Badi.

The Palm Beach Story

I’d finally got round to writing my Eden Lake review (promised only eons ago) when I found the news on DV that someone else was going to put something on DV’s frontpage. So in order to give Neko’s Fritt Vilt the attention it deserves (by the way, you can find that review here), let’s go for a brand new review of an older movie. The Eden Lake review will appear on these pages this Tuesday.

In 1942 Preston Sturges released the screwball comedy The Palm Beach Story. I first learnt about the movie in 1995, the year cinema celebrated its first 100 years. The BBC had collected the BBC 100, a diverse selection of only the finest movies from that first century. It was broadcast on an early Saturday afternoon and I probably would’ve missed it had it not been for the director’s name. Director Hal Hartley had mentioned Sturges as one of his biggest influences and this made me quite curious.

The movie is quite something else: rather than boring you with what happened before, the credits tell the backstory while the actors’ names appear on the screen. Anyway, near the time the director’s name appears on the screen, we’ve seen Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert marry. What’d happened before isn’t exactly clear, but all that will be revealed before the end of the movie. McCrea and Colbert exchange rings and a title informs us “and they lived happily ever after”, interrupted only by the more ominous addition “or did they?”.
Well, did they? Not really. McCrea’s character may have had many ideas, but he was never able to get them sold. The couple is bitterly overdue with their rent and it doesn’t help much when their landlord  decides to show the flat to possible new tenants…

Colbert decides the only way out of this situation is to get a divorce. She hails a cab and is off to Palm Beach. Despite shaking McCrea off, he’s on her trail and is quite upset to hear how Colbert has managed to get to Palm Beach. I won’t spoil the fun for you by telling you how she got there, but it’s quite funny. Sturges had a wonderful talent for screwball comedy. The Palm Beach Story is one of his easiest comedies, some of his movies have more heart-breaking drama than comedic scenes. The man seemed to be the specialist of movies that made you cry rather than laugh. Which doesn’t mean they don’t make you laugh.

When McCrea tracks his wife down in Palm Beach, she’s courted by one of the richest men in the world. She’s partly there because of love and partly to get money for his soon-to-be-ex-husband’s ambitious plan. Earlier the movie, there is a wonderful dialogue between Colbert and McCrea about how important ‘looks’ are in the world (which you can watch below), but there’s also a wonderful moment just after the scene you’re about to watch where Colbert, unable to get out of dress, asks McCrea for assistance to unzip her. “It doesn’t mean anything to you anymore when I touch you, does it?” he asks. “No,” she lies. He kisses his back to prove her wrong. Like many of his other movies, The Palm Beach Story is comedy walking on the line between love and despair.

The Palm Beach Story is not a perfect movie, which – reluctantly – makes me rate it 9/10, but it’s one of those imperfect movies you’ll cherish more than some perfectly made movies which don’t have this much soul. Some of Sturges’ comedies (incl. Christmas in July and Sullivan’s Travels – starring Veronica Lake and the inspiration for O Brother Where Are Thou?) are now available on DVD in a boxset (both in the US and the UK). You’d be silly not to buy them.

(thanks to countrygirltori for the clips from the movie)

Eden Lake: pre-review

After the silent movies came the talkies. Contrary to common belief, this does not refer to the merger of visuals and sounds coming to you from the screen, it just meant that as of then the audience started talking throughout the picture. Eden Lake was a scientific experiment: it was tested whether ten people could make more noise than a movie which is blasted at them with speakers turned to 11. The answer is a surprising yes.

Highlights include a local version of a chav whose bling bling belt jingled every time he moved and the scene in the tent where Kelly Reilly is heard asking her on-screen partner what that noise was. Don’t know, dear, all I heard was the munching of popcorn.

And may I remind you the popcorn muncher had his feet on the seat in front of him and found that talking to his girlfriend was a good way of communicating with her, much better than turning his head towards her. No, if you keep your eyes peeled to the screen and talk loud enough, she’ll hear you alright.

I think I haven’t been this close to leaving a screening since Inland Empire (and before that: South Park – Better, Longer and Uncut, which was so awful I stopped going to the cinema for more than a year). Right now, with Uli Edel‘s The Baader Meinhof Complex only playing at the even more obnoxious multiplex and the arthouse theatre, I’m severely tempted to cancel my cinema club card and getting myself a discount card for the arthouse movies.

Anyway, Eden Lake is a vicious horror movie and in a way thought-provoking. When the lights went on again, a couple of seats before me I noticed a couple. He was a macho in his fifties, she was an import bride from the Philippines. Being all macho-like, he led her the way outside of the room, so he never got to see her reaction to the movie. I did. The look on her face said it all: was this worth coming to Belgium for?

(top picture found on engrish.com – because a picture says more than a thousand words)

School for Unclaimed Girls

There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that The Smashing Bird I Used To Know is finally out on dvd. The bad news: it’s released under its alternative title School for Unclaimed Girls.

I also found an American poster with the alternative film title and it shows exactly why the movie only got a 3.9 rating on the IMDb site. Watch the poster (or the trailer) and you’ll expect a raunchy movie with jailbait girls fighting each other with pillow cases whenever they’re not making out with each other.

That’s not the sort of movie this is. The movie was directed by Robert Hartford-Davis, who – according to me and apparently only me – managed to make movies that were genuine dramas as much as they were sleaze. You’ll have to look hard to see a naked girl in this movie (but discerning voyeurs may be pleased to know that sometimes bras get unhooked too), but if you don’t mind a bit of story while you wait for the next sleazy scene, you won’t be disappointed. (Unless you’re American and watched the poster and/or trailer prior to watching the movie. By the way, don’t watch the trailer before the movie. Not only does it give you the wrong idea of the sort of movie you’re about to watch, you’ll also watch the final scene of the movie. Talk about an anti-climax! But don’t despair, the clip DV will show you is spoiler-free.)

Robert Hartford-Davis is the director of The Yellow Teddybears, a similar combination of sleaze and drama. I’ve always found it a highly underrated movie, even though I will confess it’s slightly dated. He also directed a.o. The Fiend, a horror movie about a mad cult. If you stay up late (we’re talking about 3am) you might just catch it on the BBC from time to time. Those two movies made me discover Hartford-Davis, a director unjustly forgotten in the annals of British cinema. The Smashing Bird I Used To Know and Corruption (a sleazy movie – “This is not a woman’s picture! No women will be allowed in alone!” the tagline boasted – where Peter Cushing is a doctor who doesn’t mind murdering women to restore the badly-burnt face of his fiancee) were the two Hartford-Davis movies people wanted to see but couldn’t. Well, for The Smashing Bird, things have changed: the dvd is out there.

As you can judge by yourself, the British dvd release has a much tamer feel to it than the American poster you can see on your left. Even though the tagline “Where the initiation rites are wrong… very wrong!” seems to have been lifted from another movie. That, or I must’ve fallen asleep during the initiation rite scenes, because I can’t remember that being part of the movie.
Speaking of which, the school isn’t really a “perfumed zoo for teenage she-cats” but a remand home Nicki (Madeline Hinde) is sent to after attacking her mother’s lover. Nicki is under the impression she murdered the man, but that’s not true: in her mind the images of the man and her dead father have mingled. Nicki’s father died seven years earlier on a merry-go-round. Nicki was unwilling to be on the ride, her father tried to ease her mind but made a nasty fall and died immediately. It was an accident, but the nine-year-old girl was under the impression she was responsible.

Now this may not seem like the sort of movie to get a tagline like “One step up from the gutter and one kiss away from jail!”, but don’t despair… we did find ourselves a lesbian girl, madly in love with Sarah (I didn’t expect to see Maureen Lipman in this movie) and extremely jealous of Nicki because Sarah doesn’t mind hanging out with her.

Anyway, back to the beginning of the story, why did Nicki attack her mother’s lover? Because this Harry Spenton (Patrick Mower) had come to take the place of her beloved father? No. You may be forgiven for thinking that as Nicki isn’t exactly portrayed as the most stable girl in the world at the beginning of the movie, but one day Nicki comes home after a fall from her horse and she’s all dirty and wounded. As she goes into the bathroom to take care of her body, Spenton follows her and tries to seduce her. When this doesn’t go exactly as planned, his next approach is a bit more violent.
That Nicki feels responsible for the attack is easily explained (according to the school’s psychiatrist): there’s nothing in that girl but guilt, she claims.

All of which makes the story somewhat believable, unlike most sleaze movies whose scripts seemed to have been written on Post-It notes. Actually, to coin the phrase “sleaze” to this movie seems as a bit of an insult, but at the time most of Hartford-Davis’s movies were regarded as exploitation films. Times have definitely changed.

Which is why I’m surprised the movie still has an 18+ certificate. I can only assume they kept the original rating for the movie. Either that or they were afraid all the girls who saw this movie wanted to get into a boarding school and become a lesbian, like the one girl in this movie.
Speaking of the girls from the movie… I must confess my first idea was that Hinde looked too old to play teenage Nicki but the IMDb confirmed the actress was only 19 when she played the role (two years older than Nicki).

As for the dvd release itself: the movie is shown in a neat updated version. The colours look good and so does the sound. Apart from the scenes that were dubbed in the studio afterwards (like the scene in the laundromat): those scenes – luckily, they’re a minority – sound flat and unconvincing sound and the dialogue doesn’t always match the mouth movements.
Extra-wise you’ll have to do with a trailer (which you best stay away from until you’ve seen the movie), a couple of stills and the highly informative “Also Available” section, which has the dvd poster and a short description of three movies (incl. The Honeymoon Killers). Yes, a description. They didn’t even put the trailers on the disc.

Not that it matters: the disc is quite cheap (you can get it for £3 or £4, quite a bargain for a movie that was nearly impossible to find. And though it may not be the director’s best movie (I would say those were The Black Torment, The Fiend andThe Yellow Teddybears), it’s still above average and proof sleaze and drama could marry.

By the way, trivia-lovers may want to watch the scene right after Spenton is released from the hospital. Behind him is a poster for a movie. It’s Corruption by one Robert Hartford-Davis. Now there’s a coincidence!

And now, as a treat, the first four minutes of The Smashing Bird I Used To Know, thanks to YouTube:

Teeth

Teeth may have been released in 2007 in the US, but Europe didn’t get to see this movie until 2008. And when I say Europe, I mean France and the UK. It had to do without a cinema release in Belgium or the Netherlands. Weirdly enough, the British censors stuck an 18 certificate to the movie and passed it uncut. The times have really changed, it appears, because the horror slash comedy Teeth contained some of the most twisted scenes of 2008.
Not that one should be surprised given the movie’s subject. Though the movie itself carefully beats around the bush for 37 minutes, by now most people will know – and even if you didn’t, it’s not much of a spoiler – about a quite peculiar girl with a vagina dentata.

Quite a number of horror movies comment on the times, in a way non-genre films cannot. The best known example is the “50s sci-fi” genre where atomic tests tended to result in abnormally large creatures. The result was that on the one hand you had a fun movie to watch, but on the other hand viewers got to think about those nuclear tests. Even if the message wasn’t as heavy-handed as in movies like Threads (a classic from the 80s), it was still there. Teeth visually refers to a couple of horror movies, the Hammer classic The Gorgon and the 50s horror The Black Scorpion (where sadly volcanic activity was the reason for these giant anomalies), but manages to include itself in the category of horror movies with a message.

The movie opens with adolescent Dawn (Jess Weixler) speaking to a group of teens about staying pure until you’re married. Sex is the main theme of the movie, whether it’s from people who plead for abstinence or people who’re extremely active sexually (e.g. Dawn’s stepbrother Brad, who refers to every girl as a ‘bitch’). At the same time these teenagers won’t get proper sex education in school. When the biology teacher goes from “the penis” to “erm… the… erm… female reproductive organs”, it’s not because of a sudden attack of shyness: as the kids turn the page, they see the entire page has a sticky star blocking the view of the vagina. Female sexuality has never been discussed so much and so little at the same time.

The movie opens with Dawn and Tobey as kids, playing in an inflated swimming pool. We cannot see it, but we hear Brad say that, because he’s shown her his, now she has to show him hers. The next thing we know Brad’s screaming like mad, allegedly because Dawn bit the top of his finger off.

Not much afterthought is spent on this (weirdly enough, one must remark) and it’s not until a highly abstinent Dawn is cornered by Tobey the dental problem pops up again. Tobey claimed to believe in abstinence and maybe part of him did, but when he and Dawn are making out he wants to take it to the next level. Well, levels. During a fight (in which he shouts “I haven’t even jerked off since Easter!” – which sounds slightly more impressive now than when I watched in film this summer) Dawn knocks her head and is semi-unconscious. Time for Tobey to stick ‘it’ in… and lose a lot of ‘it’.

Tobey disappears and Dawn is left confused as to what really happened. She decides to go to a gynaecologist, which sparks off a scene that clearly depicts the tone of the movie. The scene is nauseatingly bloody, funny and sad at the same time.
If you watch carefully, you’ll see how Dawn in the following scene is cycling home, passing a poster with a luscious female and the word “perfect”all over it. I’m thinking that was no coincidence and part of the film’s message.

My biggest problem with the film is that nearly every male Dawn encounters is only out to take sexual advantage of her. Alright, that may be slightly overrated and the movie seems to know that too: one of Dawn’s partners doesn’t seem out there to rape her and the big question (for you, Dawn and of course the boy himself) is whether her vagina will strike again if the sex isn’t assault-related. Allow me to leave that unanswered: let’s not spoil the movie.

The fact is that you’ll see a couple of bloody penises in Teeth, a movie that’s both dark and entertaining. Yes, the film hammers a bit too much on its message and avoids getting sidetracked (which for once could’ve been a bit of a blessing and give the movie less the feel of a manifesto). Nevertheless, there’s a key moment in the film where Dawn is trapped by a man and knows she’s about to be raped. She looks disturbed and anxious, a real damsel in distress, but suddenly her face changes: it has hit her that there will be grave consequences for anyone who tries to assault her. For that moment you’ll forgive the scenes where Teeth is out a bit too much to prove its point. It’s not a perfect film, but it found a truly innovative story for its social commentary and for that we applaud it.

8/10

Movies I missed in 2008: Vinyan

With only 20 hours seperating me from the year 2009, it’s time to make my Best of 2008 lists. Of course no movie list can be complete, for the simple reason noone can see every film made in the course of one year. Apart from those you skipped willingly (Hancock, Disaster Movie, etc.), there’s those you never heard of (no examples here – for obvious reasons) and those you never got round to seeing. My list of missed movies includes There Will Be Blood (which will appear in lots of top 10s, I assume) and… Vinyan.

Vinyan is the second movie by Fabrice du Welz, the Belgian talent behind Calvaire.
His second movie is set in Thailand and focuses on the day of the tsunami and the months thereafter. A mother (played by Emmanuelle Béart) is convinced her young son didn’t die during the tsunami and is desperate to find him after seeing video footage of some kids in the middle of the Thai jungle. She believes one of those boys is her son. With the help of her husband (Rufus Sewell) she goes on a quest to retrieve her son.

If all that sounds a bit like a drama, think again and mainly think of Vinyan‘s predecessor, Calvaire. Du Welz is an author (he writes and directs his movies) of movies you can’t stick into one category. Vinyan seems to combine drama, ghost stories and horror… well, that’s what I could determine from the clips I saw.

For some reason it only played one or two weeks near me and one week I was far too busy to go and watch a movie, the other I was struck by a cold. Première has three extracts of the film and the opening sequence of the film. I liked most of those clips, so it’s quite possible the movie would’ve ended up in my Top 10 (I didn’t think it was a great year for cinema, to be honest). I guess I’ll have to post an update once this will be released on dvd.

For now… if Vinyan is still coming to your country, be sure not to miss it. Here’s the link to the opening sequence (all clips are in English with French subtitles) and if you click on the right side of the screen, you can also catch three extracts from the film and the trailer.

http://www.premiere.fr/Bandes-annonces/Video/Vinyan-Les-premieres-minutes-du-film

(Thanks to cinebel.be for the images)

Johnny Hamlet (Quella Sporca Storia Nel West)

Amongst the ideas you may have never expected to be turned into a movie, Enzo G. Castellari is proud to present you Johnny Hamlet, Shakespeare’s famous play served with an Italian western sauce.
If not anything else, it’s definitely quite different. But is it any good?

The idea was penned by Sergio Corbucci, director of a.o. Django and The Great Silence.
Preoccupied with directing too many movies himself, Corbucci couldn’t find enough time to make this idea into a movie. And that’s where Castellari stepped in.

Before we can discuss the movie further, let’s have a look at the various names of this film: the original title is Quella Sporca Storia Nel West.
The English title mixes the names of the main character and the character’s source and so we end up with Johnny Hamlet.
The German version is called Django – Die Totengräber warten schon. Never mind that this film isn’t related to Django or that there’s only one gravedigger in the film (and that he isn’t exactly waiting). You have to understand that in Germany it was apparently mandatory by law for every Italian western to be released as Django.
Django was of course a popular character and even the Italian producers tried to stick the name in as many westerns as possible: take Pochi Dollari per Django.
Castellari claims he was hired as a second-hand director for Pochi Dollari per Django (Some Dollars for Django), a Django rip-off that was going to be realized by Leon Klimovsky.  Castellari’s description of Klimovsky says it all: “A real gentleman, but I couldn’t see him turn out a great movie.”
Castellari helped the man and – as westerns were so popular at the time there were at least 300 made per year – did good enough a job for him to asked as a director for a western: Vado… l’ammazzo e torno (Any Gun Can Play). Soon afterwards he heard about Corbucci’s idea to turn Hamlet into a western… when Corbucci backed out Castellari stepped in.

Though the travelling circus company begin the movie with “To be or not to be”, Johnny Hamlet isn’t a faithful adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. Hamlet is called Johnny, for instance and Ophelia is not Hamlet’s girlfriend (Ophelia is part of the circus, Hamlet’s girlfriend is called Emily). However, certain names have made the transition: Hamlet’s uncle Claudius became Claude, there’s Horaz (Horatio) and Hamlet’s mother is Gertie, an acceptable abbreviation of Gertrude.

That not everything is strictly followed is a good thing: the basic idea (Claudius killing his brother, Hamlet avenging his father) is kept, but other plotlines have been changed. The effect is that you can’t always guess what’ll happen next and who will kill who.

Castellari can be a good director and you can see Johnny Hamlet was early in his career: you see the director’s enthusiasm in a lot of scenes. The camera swings nicely, sets are colourfully decorated… Castellari wanted to show the world he wanted to become a good director.
Of course, adapting Shakespeare is also a bit problematic: most people know the original and will have to agree that, if they kept a bit more of the original play, the movie could’ve been even better. Now it ends up at 7 out of 10 and it’s an entertaining spaghetti western, with a few nods to Hamlet.

But it is an beautifully made and entertaining film, so you won’t be disappointed when you choose to spend your evening watching Quella Sporca Storia Nel West.

DVD Review

How do I look?
Koch Media have done a nice job with this film: visually the movie looks quite stunning, especially if you compare the images to those of the trailers. A lot of work has gone into this and we’re more than happy to forgive the release the occasional visual line or crack in the audio. You’d have a tough time finding more than a handful, anyway.

The DVD release itself looks nice: its yellow draws immediate attention and I was almost able to find this DVD in the dark. If you take the DVD out of the cardboard box you’ll find the DVD presented as a book, with the film’s title on the cover and a Shakespeare quote on the back. “Sein oder Nichtsein, das ist hier die Frage: Ob’s edler in Gemüt, die Pfeil und Schleudern des wütenden Geschicks zu dulden oder, …” and then another 20 lines of Hamlet in German.

Language options, the more the merrier
You can choose between watching this movie in German or the original Italian track.
The German track is incomplete as the movie used to be cut. The scenes that were cut before are presented in Italian with German subtitles.
If you select the Italian track you can opt between German and English subtitles. A recent visit to Xploited Cinema told me that there were no English subs despite what it says on the box. Weirdly enough, the DVD I own does have English subs but doesn’t mention it on the cover. I don’t know if there’s a new version (not likely though) or if Xploited made an error here. Anyway, I’ve just seen the film and with English subtitles.

Any extras on the side?
Which brings us to the extras: the most interesting extra is a 34 minute long documentary, Strange Stories from the West. It’s mainly an interview with director Castellari and it sheds some light on the man’s career. Castellari’s interview is interrupted for an interview with Francesco de Masi (who’s responsible for the soundtrack). Afterwards, Mr Django himself, Franco Nero, comes to tell us why he wasn’t in this movie.

A nice release can’t do without the original trailer and we find two here: a German and the original Italian. Not understanding a benign word of Italian, I can’t tell you what the Italian blurb was, but I can tell you someone let his child loose on the trailer. Almost every scene presented in this 3 minute long trailer has been coloured in by a hyperactive toddler without taste. Never did drugs, but would like to know what a bad trip feels like? The Italian trailer will help you out!
The German trailer shows the same scenes, but without the insane colour schemes. Though it does draw a bit too much attention to the German title Django – Die Totengräber Warten Schon. Best line: “Though there are many Django movies there’s only a few by Corbucci and only one Django – Die Totengräber Warten Schon.” Hey, it wasn’t our idea you’d rename every Italian film Django, my German friends, so don’t blame us!

Wolfgang Luley wrote a 4-page booklet for the release. Actually, that’s one page for the cover, one page for a giant picture and only two pages of text in German, but it’s a bit informative, so we won’t make too much of a fuss about it.

And finally, a selection of 149 pictures (stills, covers and artwork) close the extras section.

Koch Media have done a nice job on this release. There’s enough extras to make you happy and most of them were relevant and don’t feel like they’re dragged out of some vault as filler material. And, unless you’re allergic to the colour yellow, the release looks nice too.

Overall review:
FILM – 7/10
EXTRAS – 9/10

Quella Sporca Storia Nel West (Johnny Hamlet / Django – Die Totengräber Warten Schon)
Italy, 1968
Director: Enzo G. Castellari
Based on an idea by Sergio Corbucci
Cast: Andrea Giordana (Johnny), Gilbert Roland (Dazio aka Horaz), Horst Frank (Claudio aka Claude), Manuel Serrano (Santana), Françoise Prévost (Gertie), Ennio Girolami (Ross), Ignazo Spalla (Guild), Gabriella Grimaldi (Emily / Ophelia)

The DVD has been released by Koch Media (Germany) and is a Region 2 release.