Kid Vengeance

KID VENGEANCE (2 outta 5 stars) Cheaply-made and poorly-directed piece of western fluff starring Lee Van Cleef as one of the most vile villains he's ever played. This was during his later years when he was getting a bit long in the tooth to believably play those nasty, tough guy parts... but he is still the most interesting thing in this movie. He leads a bunch of bandits who rape and kill the mom and dad of young Leif Garrett and then kidnap his sister. Leif goes after them with "vengeance" on his mind. He begins to pick off the bandits one by one, using some pretty unconventional means (bow and arrow, rocks, scorpions, the old snake-in-the-saddlebag trick). He eventually teams up with a gold prospector (Jim Brown) whose life savings have been stolen by these men as well. The film starts off looking like a bad TV-movie... but once the raping and killing starts it becomes obvious that this was no "Movie Of The Week". You might be interested enough to sit through it once but this is no classic by any means.

Seek this one out if you are looking for a different kind of Lee Van Cleef "spaghetti-type western". Definitely on a par with his lesser westerns like "Death Rides a Horse", but inferior to "The Big Gundown", this revenge story has quite a few unusual aspects. The surviving massacred family member is a young boy, who proves quite resourceful in his vendetta against Van Cleef and his gang. Lee is definitely not a sympathetic character, and his evil presence is perhaps only surpassed by "Angel Eyes" in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". The quality of the DVD is inferior, with the sound badly out of sync. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this unique "pseudo-spaghetti western". - MERK

I may be the only person in the universe that actually likes this movie. Of course the last time I saw this, I was 16, and not yet force-fed twaddle like Resnais, and being conditioned as to what to appreciate in cinema. Even so, this film was enough to make the great Lee Van Cleef hang up his six-guns forever, with the exception of riffing his cowboy image for Cheetos and Midas Muffler commercials. He is superbly slimy in this one, nonetheless-- with a big earring, bandana and goatee, his character McLain is outlandish, but in a good way. Despite the exploitative nature of the material, much of the film is otherworldly- the violence and the characters. Shot in orange hues and dreamy soft focus, Leif Garrett (yes... Leif Garrett) rides the trail of vengeance after Van Cleef's gang of slimeballs after they murder his family. He gets an ally in Jim Brown, who shares his thirst for revenge after Lee rips off his mine. The fact that some of the violence is ludicrous actually works- take for instance the scene with the scorpion, or when an outlaw has rocks dropped on his head in slow motion. The last half of this revenge western has a dream-like quality; perhaps it was meant to accentuate the state of mind of Garrett's character, and of a child at that. Dealing with such a loss and seeking retribution for it puts one in a strange state of consciousness-- how often have we felt after the death of a loved one that we are dreaming. or hoping that we will wake up soon? But at least, because this film is so bizarre, it is not your average revenge oater. It at least makes you think about you are watching. Isn't that what cinema art is supposed to do?

Leif Garrett did this film a year after God's Gun (aka Diamante Lobo). In the previous film, Garrett was quite good in a challenging (for several reasons) role, but his performance felt a bit tentative (also for several reasons). In this film, just one year later and for the same infamous producers, he was confident, sure-footed and turned in a very fine performance. The film was his to carry, and he did so quite well. Garrett was one of Hollywood's most promising young actors at the time, when too many child actors were, at best, barely adequate. True, it was a low budget, cranked out film, but Leif was a class act. Lee Van Cleef had played similar roles before - many times. He could have phoned this one in, and sometimes it looked as though he did. Jim Brown, following up a legendary professional football career with a number of turns as a film actor, handled his assignment competently. The only other actors with anything significant to do were Glynnis O'Connor, who sometimes overacted and wasn't as good as in some of her later roles; John Marley, good as always in the sort of role he has played many times; and David Menachem, an Israeli child actor who did several other American films but somehow didn't catch on. He should have; he was quite good. The production values were much better than God's Gun. The script was much more coherent, the dialogue more speakable, the direction more fluid. At least part of it was shot in New Mexico (the rest in Israel). Being in the US meant that the production was controlled by a SAG contract, always an advantage. Kid Vengeance (also available at one time or another under several other titles: Vengeance, Vendetta, Take Another Hard Ride) gave Garrett the chance to launch a serious career as an actor. He demonstrated that he was up to the challenge. But then the music producers came along. Too bad.

Young Leif Garrett watches helplessly while his parents are murdered and his sister taken by a savage band of grimy cutthroats led by Van Cleef, who looks like a hippie with full facial growth, earring, long hair, and headband (probably holding the hair extensions in place), and Robert Morley. (best remembered for waking up next to a horse head in The Godfather)

Garrett tracks the bandits and begins to slay them one by one before teaming up with gold miner Jim Brown to finish them off.

Not a spaghetti western, this was an Isreali production made in Isreal by Golan-Globus, who did a better job (Van Cleef too) with God's Gun.

Most people agree that Lee Van Cleef's career in westerns ended with a whimper, but I thought it was okay. Too bad that in the following twelve years nobody got him back in the saddle with a six-shooter. It would have been great having seen Lee Van Cleef on a horse in the action packed eighties.