Der Bastard

Another great film from writer/director Duccio Tessari!

The highlights of the film are Giuliano Gemma and Klaus Kinski who play two brothers who don't always see eye to eye and their mother - Rita Hayworth. They're a crime family. There is some overacting. There are some odd choices... but by God it is entertaining to behold. It looks like they all have fun with their roles, and I was here for it! Kept me interested throughout. Bond girl, Claudine Auger, is in here for a bit but doesn't do much.

The other part I appreciated is Duccio Tessari's directing. The way he reveals information is intriguing. And the man knows how to film landscapes.

It's a bit difficult for me to give a final verdict on this movie since, despite the running time given by IMDb, I saw it by way of a crummy bootleg of an Asian TV broadcast that had been chopped down to about 67 minutes. Still, what remained was entertaining enough to keep me watching (and wondering what had been left out).

The Bastard is about a thief who's betrayed by his brother, crime boss Klaus Kinski, and has the tendons in his right hand cut. After that the movie is about the thief licking his wounds, enjoying some sexual healing, learning to shoot with his left hand, and planning his revenge. Then, in an odd and way-out-of-left-field plot device, a natural disaster intercedes and makes the ending feel like a cop-out.

It would be nice if somebody brought out a restored version so people could rediscover this one.

I am not a great spaghetti crime flicks fan. Not at all. But this one is worth in some points. I think it's an acceptable time waster, where we can watch one more time the lost Rita Hayworth, already "dead" as an actress, a real one, I mean. Don't forget that she had the terrific Alzheimer disease - lost of memory - and that she forgot almost all her script lines. The sequence where she talks to Giuliano Gemma in the drawing room, and holds a bottle of whisky, as she wanted to read the bottle label...I guess she actually read her script lines. She had the very same problem on the set of other films, such as WRATH OF GOLD. When I knew that, I must admit that I was devastated. So sad. It really made me sick.

So, back to this feature, I spent a good time watching it. A robbery right in the middle of the movie, a sequence with no real connection with the rest of the story, a scheme I have seen in some other films.

But the real mystery, is why the hell an earthquake has to do in such a movie?

As if we saw John Mac Lane in a DIE HARD flick dying in falling from a chair...

Yes a strange movie indeed.

Like so many of the Hollywood female legends of bygone days Rita Hayworth was having trouble finding work. But it was more than changing taste and newer and younger stars coming along. Hayworth was showing signs of the dementia that sadly plagued her last exile years from the silver screen.

The Bastard was one of many bad films she made toward the end of her career. She plays the mother of a pair of criminal sons Giuliano Gemma and Klaus Kinski. One's just bad, but Kinski is plain psychotic. Kinski thinks Gemma betrayed him, Kinski has him worked over and then rapes and runs off with Gemma's girlfriend.

All this while poor drunken Rita weeps and just says she wants one big happy family again.

We learn here that Joan Crawford turned this one down. Smart career move.

Who's the bastard? It's hard to tell in this film because they all are. Maybe it's Guiliano Gemma, a machine-gun totting jewel thief who is a crack shot who guns down fellow bad guys without a second thought. Or maybe it's Klaus Kinski, Guiliano jealous brother who wants those jewels for himself. Or maybe it's their whiskey chugging mother (Hayworth), who is totally out of it when it comes to her two sons trying to kill each other.

Even though it's set in modern America, there's a whole Spaghetti Western feel about the plot as Guiliano is betrayed and crippled by his brother (who instructs doctor Umberto Raho to surgically sever tendons in his arm so he can't shoot anymore), and Guiliano is taken in by a pretty ranch owner (Auger) who nurses him back to health. There's a growing romance between the two but Guiliano just can't let go of the past, getting ready for revenge by using a harp as target practice. Which is a strange choice when you think about it. "Hey Claudine, you got any bottles I can shoot?" "No, just use on of the spare harps I've got."

In tone, this one isn't too far removed from the mid-seventies Eurocrime films, with the gun violence, car chases and sexy, deadly ladies, and Duccio Tessari sure has a certain visual style that keeps things alive. There's a complete 'Eh?' moment very late in the film that comes out of nowhere, but that just adds to the general mean tone of the film.

Man, the good Eurocrime films far outweigh the bad ones. This is another one I recommend.