Die Killermaschine

Watching this film Killing Machine Americans Margaux Hemingway, Richard Jaeckel and Willie Aames looked so jarringly out of place among the Spaniards and other European types in this Spanish produced film, you have to figure that they did this one for the paycheck and the European trip. Hope the checks cleared for them.

Jorge Rivero of the Mexican cinema and best know to American audiences as Pierre Cardona from the John Wayne western Rio Lobo is our protagonist. A former terrorist he's settled down to the simple life of a truckdriver in Spain. He has a California kid brother-in-law in Willie Aames and a pregnant wife in Ana Obregon. Rivero gets involved in a dispute between Spanish and French truck farmers and his wife is killed. After that he's a Killing Machine and he sure has the expertise.

Lee Van Cleef is the organized crime figure head of the union. He never looks out of place because he's the same smirking, sardonic Van Cleef we know from a gazillion American and spaghetti westerns. He knows it's a turkey, but gobble he doesn't.

I doubt the film will get the restoration it needs. The sound is terrible, the acting is phoned in performances, and the direction most pedantic. Sounds like these truck farmers were peddling some spoiled fruit.

Just some few comments and justifications about the plot.

The french unionist are also farmers. Historically, last four or five decades, every time french farmers are in strike or perform any protest about their salaries or because of low prize of their products they use to destroy the trucks and or the fruits from Spain because in their opinion Spaniards are unfair producers (best prices, best weather, more production, best quality). French police use to be absent during these vandalic acts.

Under the UE laws there no reasons to make this, but it still happens occasionally. However nowadays it is more usual see French farmers stopping lorries importing farm produce from Spain, Portugal and Morocco, in a border protest over what they call unfair price competition.

Sometimes farmers parked tractors to block several roads near the borders. The farmers' protests over food prices have disrupted traffic across France every year.

The movie is time-located just in worst years of the Spanish-French farmers relations.

Steel-fisted, preternaturally handsome action hero, Jorge 'Fist Fighter' Rivero thrills as, Txema Basterrenech, a former explosive expert for a shady hardline terrorist outfit who grimly discovers that his new straight life as long distance lorry driver, and loving husband to the beautiful, pregnant, Elisa (Ana Obregon) is to be fraught with no less danger than the shadowy past he had hoped to distance himself from! The intractable, Txema won't kowtow to the relentless brutality of enjoyably despicable B-movie mob boss, Major Julot (Lee Van Cleef), this defiance fatefully becomes the shatteringly violent catalyst which propels, Txema upon an explosive campaign of righteously destructive retribution, methodically hunting down the three vermin responsible for his wife's death with the same ruthless efficiency as his arch nemesis, Major Julot!

Making the most of this incendiary cocktail of volatile exploitation material director, J. Anthony Loma wastes very little time with narrative niceties, the distressing scene of a physically overwhelmed, Txema being savagely beaten and then forced to watch on helplessly as, Julot's hired goons torment his young wife makes for a memorably unpleasant interlude, thereby making it absolutely impossible not to sympathize with Txema's roiling hatred for cruel Machiavellian gangster, Julot and the unconscionable brutality of his pitiless henchmen.

'Killing Machine' delivers gritty, skull-shattering B-Movie catharsis of the highest order, and watching the earnestly enraged, Txema sending his ignominious abusers into the flesh-searing inferno they so richly deserve makes for gloriously edifying, blood-lusting entertainment, and not only is Txema's explosive revenge excitingly mounted, 'Killing Machine' has a notable cast of illuminated Euro-cult Thespians, Richard 'Grizzly' Jaeckel, Hugo 'City of the Living Dead' Stiglitz, Aldo 'A Fistful of Spaghetti westerns' Sambrell, Frank 'Pieces/Slugs' Brana, and the truly reprehensible mafia sleaze, Julot being essayed with immaculately glacial élan by screen con Lee Van Cleef. But one of Killing Machine's greatest strengths lies in the sublimely moody synth score by Euro-crime legends, Guido & Maurizio De Angelis whose magnificent theme is, perhaps, one of their very finest works! 'Killing Machine' is a bona fide, Grade 'A' B-Move Cult waiting to be discovered!

A masterpiece of Spanish cinema, Goma 2 is a beautiful revenge story in which an ex-ETA member who has no problem calling themselves "the Spanish" and who is marked by ETA, decides to take revenge on the mafia farmers after the death of his wife (Ana Obregón, who provides a formidable performance) in an attack in Roussillon (Very in the ETA style) and the inaction of the Spanish authorities who supposedly control the protagonist as part of his amnesty pave the way for explosive revenge in on the other side of the Pyrenees.

Without forgetting Lee Van Cleef as villain in command and lawyer for the bad guys, making this piece of art one of the best samples of Spanish cinema.

Apart from special mention is the fact that the ETA members have a file with their members in Spanish, only in Spanish.

I can't say why, but this is probably (together with the ator films) the worst film I've ever seen. Twice I've fallen asleep while watching it. It's dark and blurry and the story is pathetic. But then again, Lee van Cleef is in it, and he's fun. I don't have so much to say about it, so I stop here.