The Scarlet Worm

The Scarlet Worm: Finally! Wild Dogs in mass-release! Longtime fans had a lot to get salivating over: Fredianelli free from starring and cinematography and able to focus on directing, Lambert writing (after his wildly successful two previous outings with Fredianelli), Stielstra starring, special guest stars, and a solid, sordid grindhouse set-up. Everything was in the right place, but with all of these elements, the final product ends up feeling a bit too restrained, a bit too tame to live up to its premise and the promise of all involved. If the earlier Fredianelli efforts sometimes felt a bit slapped-together or a bit rough around the edges, this effort feels a bit too pretty and concerned with professionalism (a gambit that seems to have paid off in some ways). A perfect point of comparison is A Habitation of Devils, Lambert's previous collaboration with Fredianelli. That movie is super rough around the edges, with a script that barely manages to bounce between generic stereotypes and digital video cinematography sometimes so underlit to the point of indiscernibility. However, it manages these hiccups due to a sense of what, for lack of better terms, I'll call "going for it." This same "going for it" mentality is all over other WD pics like The Minstrel Killer and even the recent Apocrypha. Why then does even Stielstra, normally a maniac when facing the camera, play it so cool? Why can't the genre kings (Fredianelli and Lambert) deliver on some of their promises? Why does Print have a reputation for being such a dirty bastard and such a merciless killer but never show us why? Why can't we see what makes his work such poetry to him (as he says over and over and over again)? Even the flick's abortion subtext feels pretty inoffensive and tame (unexpected, consider the distributor Unearthed Films, generally known for stuff like the Guinea Pig and Slaughtered Vomit Dolls). Money was well-placed to grab Dan van Husen, who provides most of the flick's best scenes, but even his work and the (as- expected) excellent shoot-outs feel bogged down by a laborious execution of the basic genre steps. There is a nice father-son dynamic between van Husen and Stielstra, but even that seems to too frequently be displaced in favor of other beats and concerns. I wanted to love this one so much, but in the end, I just can't find as much to love about it as in the cast and crew's other various projects.

This movie was quite a surprise. Here we have quite a few ingredients for a complete failure; very low budget, a period film, lots of physical violence and action and a medium sized cast of mostly inexperienced actors (and a few well-worn veterans). On top of that the screenplay wasn't content to be just some genre template; I think it really wanted to be about something. The fact that they pulled off anything with those obstacles is a plus. I have to applaud the filmmaker's ambition even if he effectively shot himself in the foot because of it. A western might seem to be a simple type of period piece to do but if you are attempting it with limited resources you need to either scale your film down to maximize them, or really stay on top of your game and be attentive to all the details. Mr. Fredianelli did neither. I wonder what he would have created if he had?

It is a bit of a tough slog to get through if one cares only for the quality (or lack of it) on display. The screenplay, although it rises above the vast majority of low budget screenplays - in what it attempts - is still repetitious and frequently awkward. No doubt it's heart was in the right place but you don't film your "intention", you polish your darn screenplay and make it acceptable! It tries to provide interesting character "bits" but because the exchanges seem unrehearsed (or like poor quality improv) they don't feel believable and the film stumbles to a stop again and again. Dialogue veers from a conscious attempt to sound "period" to almost casual modern profanity while dropping anachronistic phrases and attitudes left and right. Much of it's serious aspects seem neither developed nor even well thought out.

Particularly deadly for a period film that wants to be seen as something other than neighborhood kids playing cowboys, there doesn't seem to be a clear grasp of the time and place while at the same time I got the impression the director knew there should be one: people are not as clean and neat as modern counterparts, however the effort to achieve this is comically bad - very specific smudges on cheeks and brows that seem only to have come from contact with a make-up artist. And how do you explain the town's barber who always wears chaps, unless they were part of a western costume he borrowed? And the town's hookers with their modern underwear and lingerie? The fabric of the shirts and the modern styled jeans? The lead character wears an anachronistic suit, but they knew he should have a different type of tie. Of course the fabric, fold and cut of the tie looks like it belongs to a last minute available resource, not the period, but at least there was the attempt.

The actors perform as if they are still in the process of learning their lines - nothing else could excuse the halting, labored way sentences slowly stumble out of actor's mouths. But, having said that, at least the performers were not encouraged (or allowed) to be unnaturally over-the-top; the sort of hammy theatrical style so common amongst wanna-be actors only experienced with the community or collegiate stage. So again, a big plus tempered by a big negative.

The director was wise enough to know he needed his frame filled with texture and dressing however this only translates into a wide disparity between the appropriateness of props and set dressing. A more experienced (or talented) visual eye could have also shown how to better compose shots so that the environments seemed real; as it is 90% of all interiors look as if they were shot in the same place, slightly - and unimaginatively - re-dressed. They are also shot in such a way that it looks like they could only dress one wall, and a corner, per "location" - I'm sure moving the camera would reveal things we shouldn't see. Because of this limitation more than half the film is visually flat and stagy.

Obviously the director aspires to be a Peckinpah or a Leone - and he is to be praised for aiming high - but the number of shootouts and violent confrontations require the ability to pull them off. In this he only achieves a fifty percent success rate, which is commendable; but if he'd had fewer of them he could have spent twice the time and effort to get them perfect. One can see him straining to recreate a Peckinpah blood-bath vibe, but when half your violence is rather embarrassingly staged and shot, you're not doing your film any favors.

Unfortunately it strikes me as the work of a film fanatic who is happy enough just to attempt something, and is far less concerned with whether he is doing it well. I'll give him respect for using blood squibs but why settle for such poor consistency blood? Or the over reliance on the terribly cheesy digital gun flash effect (when we'd be seeing much more smoke than flash from period firearms)? And if he wants his films to be good, as opposed to just ballsy, he should do some research (or recruit people with the appropriate skills and knowledge). The production reeks of enthusiasm over ability, and fosters the concern that he might not know the difference. And if there had only been more polish to the poorer parts, it wouldn't be so difficult to sit through.

I found myself curious, and mildly optimistic, to see what this filmmaker would do with future projects but a quick search reveals he's made another 29 of these little films in the past seven years so I'm wary the optimism, however slight, might be poorly placed.

This effort by a band of six young cinephiles works well. Don't watch it expecting "High Noon" quality acting and scripting. But if you're looking for a highly original, yet true to genre Western, I recommend "The Scarlet Worm."

It was released by "Unearthed Films" so I expected a 30-or-more year old film, literally dug up out of old B movie archives. But this is a new effort, made in 2010 and released in 2011. The setting is the early 1900s, and plot is complex, including traditional cattle rustling, revenge killings and more. It's dark, gritty style is evident in the gunfight sequences and in the sympathetic, non-sensationalist treatment of the girls in the brothel. It held my attention right to the last as it unfolded.

A couple of things to note: First, it has some pretty violent scenes so I wouldn't make it a family-night movie. Second, it features some classic Western movie stars whose heyday was decades ago but whose names you might remember, like Montgomery Ford and Dan van Husen. They and their young compadres give this low-budget movie panache. Enjoy, pardner.

A middle-aged hired gun named Print (Aaron Stielstra) is obsessed with having style and poetry to his assassinations.

He has been working with loyalty for his boss, Mr. Paul (Montgomery Ford), for years. But his latest assignment - the killing of a brothel owner (Dan van Husen) who mandates cruel abortions on his whores - presents two challenges.

He must train a young understudy during the assignment, and he's been told to pull off the killing "quick and dirty" -- which may not leave time for Print's usual, obsessively imaginative methods.

OK firstly, the only reviews for this movie are stellar. Guess what that means? They are written by shills who worked on the film.

This move is absolutely horrible. Laboriously directed and no acting and poor writing. The hookers are hideous.

Stay away.

Horrible production horrible direction. This movie has the quality of high school students playing with a camera in someone's backyard. Long pauses of dead screentime take the place of tension. Wannabe actors without personality, and whatever talent they may have has been hidden by bad camera angles and confusing direction. Everyone seems to be posing for the camera. The sound is bad. The script (if there was one) is more childish than disgusting. It's kind of like the worst movies John Waters ever made, with a Western dress-up theme. Just having it on in the background was torture.