Kill Them All And Come Back
Alone
(1968)
Director: Enzo G.
Castellari
Cast: Chuck Connors, Frank Wolff, Franco Citti
Although I
certainly spend a great deal of time writing about movies for this web
site with the primary aim being to convince the public to give certain
movies a chance (and to urge the public to give certain other movies a
wide berth), at the same time I certainly believe in the proverb, "All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." In other words, when it comes
to everything in my life, I try to also find a fun side to whatever I
tackle, and that includes movies. As I've mentioned many times before
on this web site, I watch a heck of a lot of movies not for the purpose
of reviewing them, but for personal pleasure. And I have a great deal
of books in my personal library concerning multiple aspects of the
motion picture industry that I love to pick up and read, and I'm always
expanding that library. There is one thing that I often love to read
about concerning the motion picture industry, because it's a completely
different case for every motion picture that it concerns. That aspect
is how a movie, upon completion, is marketed to the public. For
example, there is the whole aspect of a movie's theatrical poster
and/or its video box cover. The art of a perfect movie poster or video
box will manage to do more than one thing to the people who look at it.
It will be attractive to the eye, and it will also clearly illustrate
what the movie being advertised is about. If you don't manage to do
both of those things, there is a high risk that your potential customer
will be disinterested and will move on to other movie. I should know -
there have been a ton of movies I have come across whose poster and/or
video box art turned me off, sometimes to my regret when I much later
watched the movies and saw that they were good after all.
There are other marketing aspects of movies that are
equally as interesting as poster and video box art, such as the way
that well known stars in the movie are trumpeted. But there is one
particular way a movie is sold to the public that I really want to talk
about, and that happens to be the title of the movie being sold. At
first, you might think that the title of the movie isn't all that
important. But it is. In his memoirs, movie producer Samuel Z. Arkoff
wrote about the Steven Spielberg-produced movie Arachnophobia,
which despite very good reviews only did okay business at the box
office. Arkoff blamed the disappointing turnout on the title of the
movie, writing, "I'm convinced that most of the American public had no
idea what the picture was about, at least not in the vital, early days
of release when a title should grab the public from the moment they
hear it." I think Arkoff may have been on to something there. Over the
years, I have seen other good movies get doomed at the box office by
bad titles. For example, there was the 1977 William Friedkin movie Sorcerer. The
title got audiences thinking it was a movie akin to Friedkin's previous
movie The Exorcist.
But when the public discovered that it was instead a saga of down and
out men trucking through the jungle, there was a big backlash, and in
short order the movie died at the box office. Badly titling movies
happens in other countries as well. I think I've mentioned before what
happened with the Canadian movie Young People F**king,
which was advertised without that censoring I put into writing the
title. The movie got some good reviews, but did terrible business
mainly because the unsubtle title turned off even the young adult
audience the producers were trying to attract.
No doubt about it - a movie needs a good title, one that
is both
attractive and tells a potential audience what the movie is clearly
about. And there is one particular country that has a film industry
that for decades has come up with titles for its movies that manage to
do both of those things. That country is Italy.
In the past, I have
reviewed examples of Italian movies with great titles that grab you,
such as The Bloodstained Shadow and Strip
Nude For Your Killer.
Those titles certainly not only gave me an idea of what the movies were
about, but made them so irresistible that I knew I had to watch them.
It's even better when it comes to the spaghetti westerns that Italians
have put out. Such great spaghetti western titles that have grabbed me
include God
Forgives, I Don't and Heads You Die, Tales I
Kill You. But the ultimate title I have ever come across in the
spaghetti western genre has to be Kill Them All And Come
Back Alone.
Naturally, as soon as I heard of that title, I knew I had to see it,
and I promptly bought the DVD. I first heard of the movie through the
book Spaghetti Westerns -
The Good, The Bad, And The Violent
by Thomas Weisser, a book that reviews practically all the spaghetti
westerns that were ever made. What made the movie sound even sweeter
was the plot description in the book, which read as follows: "Clyde
Link (Connors, Skinheads)
is a captured Confederate soldier who schemes with Union prison guard
Sergeant Bryant (Wolff, Once Upon A Time In The West)
and the commandant, Lynch (Citti, The Godfather), to
steal the Army's gold reserve, harbored at that very depot. The heist
goes well. After killing everybody who helped (and escaped with him) in
the caper, Link goes to join his two real partners (Bryant and Lynch),
but they double-cross him. The commandant shoots the Rebel, and
thinking he's dead, they bury him. Later that night, he claws his way
out of the grave and hunts down the traitorous conspirators."
Based on what I just reported on above, there are
probably some readers who are right now yelling foul, claiming that I
have spoiled much of the movie for them. Let me assure you that this
isn't the case, and that isn't because there are more plot twists and
turns to come. The fact is that, aside from the claim that there is a
gold heist, the rest of this description from the book simply isn't
true. Connors' character in the movie is in fact named "Clyde MacKay",
there is no "Sergeant Bryant" character in the movie, and the character
of Lynch is actually portrayed by Wolff, not Citti. The opening
of the movie, where MacKay is given his orders, takes place in a
Confederate army camp, not a Union prison camp, though a Union army
camp is where the gold is being kept. And right after the heist is
pulled off, MacKay's doesn't kill off everyone in his gang. It should
come as no surprise that MacKay isn't shot and buried alive. At this
point, I should point out that while I did come across some praise for
Weisser's spaghetti western guide, I also came across some criticism
that some of its facts are wrong. Based on this utterly wrong
description for the movie, I must conclude that this criticism is
justified, and so let me use this opportunity to warn all spaghetti
western fans who might consult this book. So, what is the actual plot
of the movie? Well, it is more or less a western take on The
Dirty Dozen, which came out that same year, with prisoners of
the Confederate army recruited to rob the Union of their gold, with
Connors playing the leader of these cutthroats.
There was obviously an attempt to make Connors' men a
colorful bunch of fellows, like what The Dirty Dozen
had. There's a half-breed who is skilled with a knife, there's one
fellow who is filled with brute strength, and there is also one man who
is skilled in the art of a bazooka. (Yes, a bazooka!) There is
also a Klaus Kinski look-alike named "Kid", who doesn't seem to have
any special skills, but promises to show off a colorful personality.
This promise is never kept. In fact, aside from those special skills
that the rest of the team have, there is little effort to make each of
these men stand out from each other. They are not given that much
dialogue, for one thing, and in the various twists and turns that
happen during the course of the movie, they could easily be
interchanged with each other. Connors does manage to stand out somewhat
from his fellow actors, and we do follow his character closely, but his
character is to some degree off-putting. He has been given the command
to do the movie's title proclamation after the heist, and while I won't
reveal all of what he does later in the movie, I will say that some of
what he does lessens sympathy for him. As for the character of Lynch,
there is a twist with this character late in the movie that is never
explained, and will seem like lazy screenwriting. Speaking of the
script, it has other flaws that I could spend some time listing. While
there is revenge in the movie, it's written to be so quickly done, so
lacking in struggle, that it is far from satisfying to
witness. More flaws are simply ridiculous. Twice in the movie
people manage to catch up and overtake people to key locations despite
this clearly being impossible. Then there's stuff like the Union army
camp bringing water in when it's shown they have their own source of
water in the camp.
Many of these flaws would be death in an American
western, but in a spaghetti western, I find many similar flaws to add
to the fun. I laughed at times, but I was laughing with the
movie's enthusiastic spirit showing this stuff, not laughing at
the movie. A cynic may, for example, ask why the guy at the top of the
bell tower doesn't just use the less dangerous stairs to get down,
instead of throwing down a rope and sliding down it at a breakneck
speed. The filmmakers would probably say that it looks cooler, and I
would agree with them. Although there are a number of silly moments to
savor in Kill Them All And Come Back Alone, I must also
be fair and point out some other elements in the movie that I thought
were genuinely well done. The look of the movie is very good.
Cinematographer Alejandro Ulloa (who also lensed Compaņeros) makes the desert landscapes
pleasing to the eye, and the various army outposts in the movie look
like serious time and money was spent on their construction. The pacing
of the movie is good; the only time the movie drags is the sequence in
the prison camp, and then only just a little. From the beginning to the
end, it never takes long for a new action sequence to start once one
ends, and we are treated to a ton of varied action
(fist-fights, gun battles, explosions.) As expected from someone like
director Castellari, the action is first-rate, exciting and with a high
body count. And while all this is going on, we have, as expected, a
good musical score (by Francesco DeMasi), including an English-language
song where, like most other spaghetti western songs, you can't make out
95%
of the lyrics. Death for another movie... but as I said, the spaghetti
western genre makes it add to the fun.
(Posted March 20, 2021)
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See also: A Bullet For...,
The Hunting Party, If You Meet Sartana...
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