Les forcenés

Albert Band created one of the more interesting spaghetti westerns by featuring American stars Joseph Cotten, Gordon Scott and Jim Mitchell plus top actors from Italy including Franco Nero.

A rebel father called Temple Cordeen (Joseph Cotten) and son (Gordon Scott) split over the hanging of a Yankee during post-Civil War . As a Civil War soldier named Lon Cordeen returns home to his father who can't accept the loss of the Confederates. Serious conflicts arouse which split the family . As Temple Cordeen swears vengeance on those who have taken his lands during war . And the journalist's daughter (Ilaria Occhini)seeks justice against Temple , whom she blames for his death .

Italian made spaghetti that contains thrills , action and lots of gratuitous gunplay . The picture with no much plot displays elements of Greek tragedy and a touching finale . There is plenty of action in the movie , guaranteeing shootouts, fights or stunts every few minutes . This Spaghetti was filmed in 1965 , a notorious year in the development of European western that almost doubled since former year with movies mostly filmed in Spain and Italy . It results to be a peculiar version about confrontation between father and sons ; theme to be treated in other Hollywood films such as ¨Broken Lance¨(1954) by Edward Dmytryck with Spencer Tracy as daddy and sons as Robert Wagner , Earl Holliman , Hugh O'Brian ; and previously in ¨House of strangers¨ (1949) by Joseph L Mankiewicz with Edward G Robinson , Luther Adler and Richard Conte . Joseph Cotten is magnificent as the ruthless wealthy owner who sadly contends his sons . Franco Nero , in a smaller part that you'd expected from his billing , in nevertheless excellent as a good guy who marries Temple's daughter . There appears several familiar faces from Spaghetti such as Franco Balducci , Romano Puppo , Giovanni Ivan Scratuglia and Giovanni Cianfriglia . It packs a mediocre cinematography by Alvaro Mancori , also producer , being necessary an urgent and perfect remastering . Musical score well composed and conducted by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino is impressive ; including catching leitmotif and enjoyable sounds from Western .

The motion picture was professionally directed by Albert Band and Mario Sequi . A veteran filmmaker, Albert Band is one of Hollywood's most prolific directors who started his career in the early 50s. He began financing a number of motion pictures through the seventies and eighties and helped his son, Charles Band, bring together his own production company, 'Empire Pictures', in the early eighties. Upon the collapse of Empire Pictures in the early nineties, Band continued to work with his son and help bring a number of low-budget and medium budget films to the Hollywood screen and direct to video releases. Band directed some Western such as ¨She came to the Valley¨, ¨Massacre at Grand Canyon¨, ¨The Young Guns¨ and this ¨The Tramplers ¨ at his best ; furthermore , he made terror , action and of all kind of genres .

I obtained a used VHS version of this film. The film quality was a bit degraded but I still enjoyed the film. My copy appeared sepia-toned throughout with some great landscape shots. The movie is a real horse opera with a haunting, melancholy mood. The lead actor does a competent job but the real standouts are Joseph Cotton as the evil father and Jim Mitchum as the troubled younger son. Cotton is a man whose character has been warped by slavery and the War Between the States. After the war, he is unable to let go of the past, which causes his children to break away from him and strike out on their own with mixed success. The wife and two daughters and a female love interest only have small roles but they manage to convey a lot of emotion with the little screen time they're given. This film is worth a look if you enjoy westerns. The style is somewhere between a standard American shoot 'em up and a Sergio Leone effort.

After the war of secession, the aging Cordeen, who owns thousands of acres in Texas, rules his numerous and quarrelsome sons with an iron hand. He sends them out to deal with the threat of the representatives from the North. However, not all the sons share his unlimited hatred for the Northerners.

A rather odd western, because it comes across like a Bonanza episode stretched out to a feature film length but with spaghetti sauce modestly sprinkled over it. It's quite sluggish, but just about watchable due to Joseph Cotten's performance as a destructive Southern patriarch in a post civil war scenario. It's good to see Gordon Scott in a rare non-loin cloth donning role, and though he looks ill at ease, he does well as the son of Cotten, who doesn't agree with his cruel ways. Pitched as a family tragedy, this western has its moments, capturing the aftermath of war quite well, but it's a little too drab, though. Good for a one time watch at least. There's a despondent and haunting aura in this film.

Like Ethan Edwards in that much better western The Searchers, Joseph Cotten's Temple Cordeen doesn't believe in surrendering. He's taken no notice of the surrender at Appomattox and in fact when we first meet him, he's hanging a Yankee journalist who had the temerity to tell the black people on Cotten's Texas ranch they weren't slaves any more. At the same time his oldest son Gordon Scott comes home just in time to see the lynching and he's appalled by what dear old dad has done. This is how The Tramplers begins.

Joseph Cotten before the Civil War was the local Ben Cartwright in his corner of Texas with five sons, two daughters and a host of other relatives. But by the end of the war, he and most of his family are acting more like the Clantons. Scott and youngest brother James Mitchum are against the father along with their two sisters. The three middle boys, three really putrid specimens of humanity stick with Cotten.

Elements of The Searchers, The Texans, Saddle The Wind, and The Westerner are to be found in The Tramplers. I'm sure that Scott, one of the people who played Tarzan, Cotten, and Jim Mitchum, took their European vacation and their paychecks and said their lines and made sure the checks cleared the bank before saying them. I'm not a fan of European westerns and The Tramplers is not a film to convince me to be one.