VCI’s Spaghetti Western Double Features, Vols. I and II repackages four Italian westerns originally released on DVD eight years ago or so by VCI into a pair of double-features. While none of them are among the classics of the genre, they are a distinctive collection spotlighting some of the genre’s less celebrated directors and stars.
Any Gun Can Play
The legacy of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is all over Enzo G. Castellari’s Any Gun Can Play (1967), about three scoundrels (folk hero outlaw Gilbert Roland, bank officer Edd Byrnes, and bounty hunter Jorge [George] Hilton) chasing a fortune in stolen gold hidden somewhere in the countryside. Castellari has none of the style or sweep of Sergio Leone, nor the cold-blooded edge or cynicism of Sergio Corbucci, but his twisty little story of suspicions and betrayals and shifting alliances has a pleasantly lighthearted tone, helped immensely by Roland’s easy performance. Byrnes cuts a surprisingly effective figure as the stuffy Eastern bank officer turned scheming crook, and he looks plenty hard and ruthless with a gun in his hand. In the overstuffed buffet of spaghetti westerns, this is one of the few worth dishing up.
Look on the back of the case of Eagles Over London (Severin) and you’ll see this Italian World War II action adventure identified as a “Macaroni Combat.” This rather clumsy moniker is a recently coined phrase in the “spaghetti western” vein but hardly expressive of this military caper thriller from Italian genre specialist Enzo Castellari (of the original The Inglorious Bastards fame). The plot is quite clever: a squad of Germans don British uniforms and identities and infiltrate Britain through the chaos of the evacuation of Dunkirk, while a British Lt. (a colorless Frederick Stafford with a thick European accent) stumbles upon the plot and tries to track them through London before they can execute their missions. Castellari is not an elegant director, but then that’s not what makes a World War II adventure like this work. Made in the shadow of The Dirty Dozen and The Battle of Britain, this film straddles both genres, delivering impressive spectacle—from the evacuation of Dunkirk (shot on the coast of Spain) to the air combat of the Battle of Britain (largely shot on soundstage in Rome)—and espionage action. There’s a lot of dubbing (most of the Italians are replaced on the soundtrack) and a cacophony of unlikely accents (the aforementioned Stafford, whose accent is justified by his Hungarian origins, and Van Johnson as a British Air Marshall right out of middle America), but it’s still quite entertaining, like an energetic B-movie with a lavish budget (you can see the money poured into the Dunkirk scenes, with its epic vistas filled with extras and a strafing run by a German fighter) and energetic direction.
The Germans in London in "Eagles Over London"
Originally titled La battaglia d’Inghilterra (“The Battle of Britain”) and also known as Battle Squadron, this film never received an official American release according to Quentin Tarantino (a big fan of the film and of Castellari’s oeuvre). Severin took a cue from QT to give the film its American DVD and Blu-ray debut and they got Tarantino to participate in the extras: a 14-minute interview with director Enzo G. Castellari (the discuss the film and the oddities of the Italian movie industry of the time) and an appearance hosting a rare film screening in L.A. with Castellari, gushing on stage while a woozy handheld video camera records the occasion. Also features a brief deleted scene with the German High Command discussing the invastion (in German with English subtitles).
We all know that Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds has little to do with Enzo G. Castellari’s original 1978 warsploitation artifact besides the setting and the (purposely misspelled) title [update: I review Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, here], but who cares? This violent knock-off of The Dirty Dozen and other “impossible mission / war caper” thrillers is great fun and now it’s out on Blu-ray, which is surely more respect than anyone involved with this energetic Italian knock-off ever expected. Check out the new trailer for the original film:
The premise is pretty simple: A bunch of American soldiers in 1944 France, up for court martial and on their way to military prison, escape during a German attack on their convoy and head off for Switzerland. They’re a colorful group: a decorated flier (Bo Svenson) with a tendency to go AWOL to visit his girlfriend in London, a black private (Fred Williamson) charged with murder (he killed his redneck superior officer, or so he says to another racist in an American uniform), a deserter coward (Michael Pergolani), a scavenger (Jackie Basehart) with hippie looks and a slightly Italian accent, and the joker misanthrope (Peter Hooten) who screws with everyone out of sheer cussedness.
