Machete

Photographer Karl Struss first worked on a movie with director Kurt Neumann back in 1939. The film? Island of Lost Men. It wasn't until 1946 that he teamed up with Neumann again on Tarzan and the Leopard Woman. Further Neumann-Struss collaborations were The Dude Goes West, Bad Boy, Rocket Ship X-M, Tarzan and the She-Devil, Mohawk, She-Devil, The Deerslayer, Kronos, The Fly, Machete, and Counterplot. When Kurt Neumann died, Struss turned to photographing television commercials, and worked exclusively in this field until his retirement in 1970, after a 51-year career in cinematography. Struss himself passed from this life at the age of 95 on 16 December 1981.

When director Kurt Neumann died on 21 August 1958, The Fly, his most popular movie was just about to go into general release, and he still had three films on the shelf: this one, shot back-to-back with Counterplot (held back from release until October 1959) in Puerto Rico, and Watusi (released August 1959). Unfortunately, the script of Machete is remarkably silly, even though it does offer Miss Blanchard the chance to play the femme fatale so enthusiastically. Alas, the rest of the players, particularly Juano Hernandez, are wasted; and a number of gratuitous musical numbers do little to enliven audience interest. On the other hand, the location photography by Karl Struss is aways a definite asset.

When I looked up Juano Hernandez on netflix.com, this was one of his movies that was available for streaming. So it was that I'm now reviewing this for Black History Month. He plays Bernardo, a servant for Don Luis Montoya (Albert Dekker) who's just married a woman named Jean (Mari Blanchard). She, big-bosomed blonde, decides to flirt with his adopted son, Carlos (Carlos Rivas), one of his workers. There's also another worker named Miguel (Lee Van Cleef) who has sinister designs...Really, the plot I just mentioned (though I didn't give some minor details) was soooo predictable to me that I just had to laugh at some of the lines and scenes. And Hernandez, who returned to his native Puerto Rico for this, doesn't really have much to do or say other than take orders and offer some advice and wisdom. So no, I can't really recommend this particular movie called Machete.

Thirty years ago, Albert Dekker came to Puerto with just a machete. Now he owns an immense and profitable sugar plantation. He returns from a trip to New York with beautiful Mari Blanchard as his wife. Will her attraction for and to anything in pants destroy everything and everyone?

Miss Blanchard is certainly a cutie-pie, and there is some good acting talent here, including Lee Van Cleef and Juano Hernandez. However, it's an old story, with hints of THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED. Still, the location shooting in Puerto Rico helps, and there's a dynamite fire sequence to end this competently produced tale of Good Men and Bad Women.

Machete (1958)

This is a run of the mill and rather dismissible movie with two or three odd qualities that might appeal to some. One is the inclusion of Lee Van Cleef (of Spaghetti Western fame). The other is photographer Karl Struss who three decades earlier did two terrific (and beyond terrific) movies, "Sunrise" (as co-cinematographer) and "Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde."

The third aspect is simply the setting, Puerto Rico circa 1958. It would be more fun to see a movie set in Cuba in 1958 of course, right before the revolution, but here is a Caribbean counterpart, with certain parallels. Most of the action takes place at a sugar plantation that could have been either country, but it really was filmed in Aguirre, P.R. and acknowledges this at the start. The director, Kurt Neumann, is a famous B-movie hack director and the movie lets its low budget show throughout, but the setting is what it is and there is some small benefit there. An early scene shows locals in a celebratory dance which is fun if a bit touristic for the audience.

Struss doesn't exactly shine in this film but there are a lot of "good" shots and a number of night shots including most (but not all--bad editing there) of the fire scenes are night, and well done! It's the climax of the movie, and you knew it was coming since they mentioned it at the start and it's too cinematic to avoid. The three or four main characters all get intertwined in this final scene, and if the acting is pretty awful, the idea is pretty great.

See this? No, I wouldn't bother, unless one of the aspects above appeals very much. It won't bore you--it's actually pretty fast and has a bunch of shifts in plot to keep you watching. But it will constantly seem clunky.

Machete is directed by Kurt Neumann and Neumann co-wrote the screenplay with Carroll Young. It stars Mari Blanchard, Albert Dekker, Carlos Rivas, Lee Van Cleef, Ruth Cains and Juano Hernandez. Music is by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter and cinematography is by Karl Struss.

Set at and filmed in Aguirre, Puerto Rico, Machete is a sort of jungle noir mixed with melodramatic oddities. Plot essentially has Blanchard sticking her chest out and marrying Dekker's plantation owner purely for financial security. Upon arriving at said plantation, she quickly gets the hots for Hernandez's hard working and honest Bernardo, which puts everybody's nose out of joint, not least the scheming Miguel (Cleef). Who promptly sets about spreading the poison to feather his own nefarious laden nest.

Blanchard gives her all for the femme fatale role, but everyone else is either subdued or bogged down by the silly scripting. This in turn produces some very uneven performances by the rest of the cast, which in Dekker's case is unusual. Struss' night time photography is a plus, though there's nothing particularly striking or any atmosphere enhancement going on. The fight choreography is also very poor, rendering the machete symbolism weaker than I'm sure the makers intended.

As a Dekker fan I'm just pleased to have been able to see it and strike it off my "to see" list, while Blanchard's exuberant efforts always keeps it watchable. But it's a hard one to recommend with any sort of confidence. 5/10