Arde baby, arde

Here's a spaghetti western that barely gets a paragraph in Thomas Weisser's excellent overview of the genre---it's THAT obscure. Much to my delight, the film is far better than Weisser's brief synopsis implies. Lucky Johnny (as a child) is rescued by an undertaker just as a rattlesnake is about to pounce. The two of them go about their ghoulish business until they decide it's time to strike it rich. There are two intriguing subplots involving a pair of down on their luck stage robbers and a black cavalryman who is victimised by greedy bounty hunters. The film was originally shot in Panavision, and even the crummy pan and scan TV version I caught couldn't obscure some outstanding cinematography. Topped off with a fine score, highlighted by an excellent (uncredited) 70s soul song over the end credits, Lucky Johnny is another obscuro film waiting to be rediscovered by our good friends at Anchor Bay. I'll be first in line for the DVD.

I love westerns, so I'm always excited when I come across one I haven't seen before. When I came across "Dead Aim", I was more pumped than usual because this was a Mexican western - I haven't seen that many movies from Mexico, and I was interested to see if it was a fresh spin on the genre. Well, it was... but in a *very* strange way. A lot of it is surreal - you can obviously see the influence of another Mexican western - "El Topo" on this movie, because there are several similar images and themes present. Also, this movie has a lot of atmosphere, with every scene coming across in a creepy or haunting fashion. But ultimately, the movie does not work - there are far too many unanswered questions from the very beginning to the ending. Still, I'll admit that I am glad I saw this movie, because it's unlike any other western I've seen. If you do decide to watch it, try to find a widescreen version, since the pan-and-scan print I saw is very awkward at times.

This is the first spaghetti western that I have seen that does not have an Italian director. It is actually an Italian/Mexican co-production, and I am assuming that the director is Mexican or Spanish by his last name. I'm guessing that being partly Italian, and having a decidedly Euro-western flavor makes this a spaghetti western.

The movie has a couple of slightly macabre touches. The main character is the adopted son of an undertaker and even bears a coincidental resemblance to the wrestler called "The Undertaker." At one point he starts picking fights to give himself an excuse to shoot people. He does this to drum up business. There's another part where he and the old man find a mountain of dead bodies. The elder undertaker calls them "beautiful" and says "we've found gold." Pretty cool stuff.

The biggest problem with this movie is that the plot (actually I should say plots, because there are several) meanders off into so many directions that there ends up being no point at all to the film. It's part Burke and Hare, part haunting love story, part revenge tale, part racial struggle, etcetera. But if you don't think about it too much, it's really quite enjoyable to watch. It's actually very beautiful and stylish in parts.

I think the music score could have been better. Some parts of the score were good, and I really liked the rattler sound during the gunfights just before the shooting, but some of the music sounded too much like something you would hear in the background of a 1970's TV show.

Overall, I found it very interesting, but it's definitely not for everyone.

Fans of Heavy Metal series "Hombre" by Antonio Segura, Luc Besson's "Le Dernier Combat", or the cult classic "Zachariah" looking for a similar romp in the hay from a movie will find this strange euro spaghetti western to be a pleasure to their violent and strange taste. It quickly establishes our anti-hero Johnny--who is an uncanny double for Peter Fonda in Clint Eastwood garb, from a babe in the desert with one of the coolest violent beginnings to a film since "The Sorcerer" with Roy Schieder, to a young gunslinger adopted by the area's undertaker. I won't detail the plot because I think for most of us who will enjoy the movie the mystery of what will happen next, and what rogue's gallery of characters will be added, are the whole reason for watching. This movie really does take some strange turns as it wanders through the desert underworld. One should probably suspend disbelief, fore continuity, rationality, character motivation, and Oscar performances this film does not have. However, in the world it creates for that 90 minutes, everything makes complete sense. For a time this film is showing on Joox.

About the only thing I liked in Dead Aim was its highly logical and original notion that out on the great plains and deserts there were a lot of people who would succumb to the elements or to violence where there would be no one to bury them. That's where James Westerfield comes in, the traveling undertaker who buries folks. His job must have taken a certain amount of nerve because in the case of several of them they could really have been ripe.

So traveling undertaker Westerfield in his final film role finds a toddler on a desert and saves him from a rattlesnake. The kid who lost his parents, father to a robber, mother to the desert, grows up to be Glen Lee. He serves as Westerfield's assistant and in the meantime learns some skill with a colt. And then of course he becomes a source for Westerfield's trade.

Being on in the desert his education has been neglected in certain matters so when he catches sight of Venetia Vianello, he decides to pursue the areas he's been lacking. The fact she belongs already to Virgil Frye does complicate things and serves as the basis for the rest of the story.

This was a Mexican production that aspired to pasta status, but fails to meet even those standards. It's got some dull stretches in it and a musical score which does not measure up to that which you hear in spaghetti horse operas.

There are a lot of fine south of the border westerns which you can catch occasionally on Spanish language television in the USA. Dead Aim just isn't one of them.