¡Mátalo!

Fans of bizarre semi-psychedelic Westerns like "Keoma" should check this out. The cinematography and editing are wonderfully out of control, lotsa slo-mo sadistic violence and the movie is drenched in loud fuzzy acid rock. The simple plot deals with four ruthless thugs (incl. one ultra sexy but deadly femme fatale Claudia Gravy), gold, lust, murder and betrayal.

These eccentric hardass Italian Westerns look way better than most contempoary movies.

This one emerges an outstanding, if eccentric, Spaghetti Western which certainly gives that notorious genre effort DJANGO, KILL...IF YOU LIVE, SHOOT! (1967) a run for its money in the weirdness stakes!

Though simply enough plotted - with the script itself admirably laconic - and effectively set (for the most part) in a ghost town, it's essentially a mood-piece: stylized to a fault, the film features virtuoso camera-work and bold editing throughout; still, the general tone - buoyed by the remarkable experimental electro-rock sounds created by one Mario Migliardi - is effortlessly hypnotic.

The cast is equally interesting: Spaghetti Western regular Lou Castel as the unlikely hero (who, admitting to be unskilled at handling guns, utilizes boomerangs for weaponry during the body-strewn climax!); Corrado Pani - surely one of the genre's most idiosyncratic villains - brings a topical, i.e. late 1960s, touch of hippiedom to the Old West (the film is, however, thankfully free of the politics which informed many latter-day similar efforts)! Incidentally, both these top-billed stars are off-screen for an inordinate length of time - thus allowing Claudia Gravy, the luscious female lead, to take centre-stage (no complaints there!).

Pani's sidekicks, then, are equally colorful: one is Gravy's current lover, who assumes leadership of the gang after Pani's untimely 'exit' early on, and the other a sadist who covets the girl (though she continually rejects his advances). In fact, for a film of its type, there's an unusual emphasis on sex here - as much to the fore, I'd say, as the violence...which is present in quite graphic fashion (the sadistic outlaw beats Castel repeatedly with a chain, but he later has his own hand trampled by horse's hooves!).

Regrettably, the film is only available on DVD in an English-dubbed version through Wild East; the fact that the original language is not included would normally be enough to dissuade me from acquiring it (in spite of an accompanying Lou Castel interview which ought to be interesting) - but my recent unhappy experience with Wild East's edition of another Spaghetti Western title, THE MAN FROM NOWHERE (1966), certainly doesn't help make a case for it...

Spaghetti westerns are known for their absence of well defined good and evil, a familiar element of most earlier Hollywood westerns, and this moral ambiguity is one of the key hallmarks of 60's and 70's pop culture. With a title like Matalo! (a term which is roughly translated as 'kill 'em all!') this 1970 film certainly has the cynical morals and body count of typical spaghettis, but director Cesare Canevari takes this all a step 'further' by adding superficially entertaining gimmicks of the era, like hippie fashions, druggy cinematography, and especially Mario Migliardi's preposterously enjoyable prog-rock soundtrack, which sounds like a melting Ash Ra Temple LP played through a phase shifter. The central character is a hoot; a smiling trigger-happy psychopath named Bart, played by Corrado Pani, who cheerfully shoots everybody in sight. This is a uniquely odd specimen of the spaghetti western genre, which makes it essential. Worth your time as long as you don't take it seriously.

Maybe Cesare Canevari fancied himself a radical, maybe he didn't care at all about doing a western in the first place, maybe he didn't really care a whole lot about making movies to begin with. Because Matalo is as much a western as something like Sukiyaki Western Django. People wear stetson hats and fire sixshooters at each other, they ride horses and there's a ghost town, but the rest is a blurred Gothic fantasy filmed in awkward closeups and frantic camera movements. It's artsy and aesthetically minded in the same way Jess Franco was artsy, that is to say the intention is there and sometimes the translation makes sense, but the cruddy execution is 70's European exploitation. The curtains are colored fiery red and the lightning of the overfurnished interiors is dark and expressive like it came from a horror movie or a spooky western by Antonio Margheriti.

The plot about a gang of psychopathic robbers seeking refuge in a dusty ghost town to count their dough while they wait for their boss to arrive so they can make the split, all this while the desert keeps spitting out parched half-dead stragglers at them, is bare bones. It doesn't make a lick of sense and I bet Canevari intented it that way; I can see someone trying to make a case about Matalo and existentialism, but I won't go there. The movie is more concerned with its own exaggerated theatrical shenanigans. It even has Lou Castel duke it out with the robbers using boomerangs. It has a halfmad bearded robber go wip the blue velvet bedsheets with a golden chain in slow motion, he then whips Lou Castel in slow motion out in the street, then a horse comes along and stomps him half to death, in regular motion this time (I'm kidding, it's slow motion again).

If you can imagine the inmates of an insane asylum turned loose on such a void script with a camera and filming equipment, someone has randomly worn the director's hat and points at various objects to be filmed, and a dozen of the other drooling imbeciles keep spinning the camera around, while others dressed in cowboy attire fire guns around them aimlessly and grimace into the camera; then you can imagine the way in which Matalo is special, even among spaghetti westerns. Now and then a half-competent band doles out fuzzy acid rock in the soundtrack. The use of slow motion is not rousing and lyrical like in Keoma, the baroque sensibilities are not as pronounced as those of Django Kill, the kitschen-sink craziness lacks El Topo's singularity of vision. It's mostly wired in a way to elicit "far out, man!" reactions from the psychotronic crowd; but they can always watch.. I dunno, Vampiros Lesbos?

When someone gets a credit for providing electroacoustic special effects, you know you're in for something different. Matalo is a very different type of Western. The hero doesn't even carry a gun. He carries boomerangs.

This whole heap of weirdness doesn't have much of a plot by the way. What we get is a dodgy character called Bart get saved from hanging by a bunch of laughing Mexicans. He then proceeds to steal a bunch of gold and after Bart and the Mexicans get out of town (to a soundtrack of psych-rock), Bart shoots every single one of them and ends up meeting his two friends. They all end up at a creepy ghost town where every grave has the name Benson, and every shot front also sports the name Benson. While a fourth bandit turns up in the form of sexy Claudia Gravy, the movie starts flashing subliminal shots of an eyeball while we realise that someone else is creeping about town. Plus, Claudia seems to be playing mind games with every one of these guys.

This is all told to the sound of howling wind and strange effects, whirling camera shots, acid rock, trippy editing and bizarre acting. When Bart is seemingly shot dead during another robbery, the other three start conspiring against each other while waiting to head to Mexico.

The hero take shapes in the form of Lou Castel and his boomerangs and he spends most of the film being held captive and getting tortured, especially by Claudia Gravy (she sits on a rope swing while threatening him with a knife in one of many strange scenes). There's also a scene where a horse decides to join a fight, and those boomerangs make for some groovy camera shots when we finally get to the weird showdown at the end.

Although not as satisfying as the similar Django Kill! If you live...shoot! or as goofy as Get Mean, this is still one weird-ass Western that should be tracked down. Just don't expect much action. Claudia Gravy has a great second name, doesn't she?