Violence/Gore: Good old western-style action.

Sex/Nudity: Good old western-style innuendo.

Best Line: “You’re a pack of whites breaking a treaty.”

Score:

Starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot in their prime but never spoken of, SHALAKO insists by its lack of pop culture caché that it’s a dog best left unwatched. Those who catch the film at its beginning are not likely to make it past the wretched title song–“Shalako, Shalako/He rode wild country down New Mexico/Borne on the wind to follow the sun/Fought death with a knife/Would gamble his life to own a woman/Love came to Shalako …”–nor are the hearing impaired going to be thrilled watching opening credits rolling over listless footage of Sean Connery aimlessly riding about the desert on horseback. This is five-and-a-half minutes of film begging its audience not to endure the additional 107.

Those who take on the challenge will find that the story proper opens up with a group of European aristocrats, American politicians, and filthy, scummy, dirty-haired hands on a hunting excursion in the desert. The haughty bourgeoisie are quickly established as believing they are above harm. When Countess Irina Lazaar (a ravishing Brigitte Bardot) is not satisfied with the day’s kill, she runs off alone to do some additional hunting, and in the process enrages the local Apache Indians on whose land the hunting party has entered, thereby violating a treaty. Shalako (Sean Connery) shows up and rescues her, assuring the Apaches that he’ll get the hunting party out of the area. The hunting party refuses to move and so the Apaches attempt to slaughter them. Shalako distracts them, but some of the hired hands have decided to rob the surviving aristocrats, taking their jewelry and one member’s more than willing wife. Now two parties have to try to make it to safety before the Apaches come back.

Directed by Edward Dmytryk (CROSSFIRE, MURDER MY SWEET) at a leisurely pace, Shalako doesn’t have enough story to justify its 113-minute running time and suffers quite a few dry spots as a result. Several exciting segments are followed by uneventful sequences that fail to maintain a consistent forward momentum. Fortunately, the entire cast is engaging enough to keep the audience’s attention. Connery and Bardot both come across well and make a nice pair, even if they don’t smolder together as much as expected. Stephen Boyd (BEN-HUR, BILLY ROSE’S JUMBO) makes a good grey-hat villain, Jack Hawkins (THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY) plays the jilted husband role with pathetic conviction, Peter Van Eyck (MR. ARKADIN, TARZAN’S HIDDEN JUNGLE) is the repentant German aristocrat, Honor Blackman (GOLDFINGER, THE AVENGERS) is the unfaithful wife, and Woody Strode (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, BLACK JESUS) is Chato the Apache with a grudge against Shalako.

As the story twists and turns, there are several low-key moments of character development and individual story arcs that will prove worthwhile for those who stick with the ride. The film benefits from a refusal to have any black-hat villains, allowing all the characters to display fluctuating emotions and the ability to make mistakes…and correct them. But just when everybody is pleasantly heading for the exit, that crappy theme song is reprised.

DVD Extras: Nothing.

AH

Violence/Gore: There’s some gunplay and rough-housing, but the worst is kept off screen, with an opening sequence that only suggests one of the Chicago mob boys has just been turned into hot dogs.

Sex/Nudity: Copious nudity when Mary Ann offers his girls for sale, and Poppy’s green gown leaves nothing to the imagination. There’s also a horrific gang rape that happens off screen to Poppy’s friend, Violet; we only see the aftermath.

Best Line: “You just bought the farm.”

Score:

When Chicago mob hitman Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin) heads to Kansas City to shake down Mary Ann (Gene Hackman with a very weird character name), a defiant cattle rancher/beef distributor who’s been stiffing his Mafia bosses to the tune of $500,000, Nick gets a lot more than he bargained for. First of all, the serene, windswept fields of the American Midwest are no place for an Irish city guy like Devlin, and soon he finds himself playing cat and mouse in the tall grass with corn-fed Aryan types all too keen to perforate him and leave him for fertilizer or process him into sausage. Second, he’s about to face the biggest challenge of his sin-filled career: falling in love with an innocent young thing who looks up to him as her own personal savior. You see, Mary Ann has a side business in white slavery, selling drugged girls in cattle pens to depraved businessmen, and Nick has just taken a shine to one would-be sex slave, the red-haired, doe-eyed Poppy (Sissy Spacek).

Lee Marvin turns in a mesmerizing performance as a man who has so much blood on his hands and yet instantly earns our respect and sympathy for his strange but pronounced sense of morality. The man is clearly a killer, but he instantly takes a fatherly role when he rescues Poppy. Although their relationship may eventually become sexual–this is left unclear–it’s obvious his paternal affection for her is genuine. It’s almost as if this is a man who has found in a young girl something that can make him feel human again, and he welcomes the emotional connection. He does have some inkling of her attractiveness, though, as he goes out of his way to dress her in a transparent green gown that leaves nothing to the imagination and then takes her out on the town, practically daring those around them to stare at her. But really now, is she that stupid? Does she not notice she’s wearing a thin film of gauze? Strange girl.

Never mind his softer side. Marvin never once comes across as a man who can’t take out anyone stupid enough to get in his way. In some respects, the film has no suspense at all, because you never believe for one second that Hackman and his bulky overall-wearing cronies have a chance in Hell against Marvin’s steely-eyed determination to execute every last damn one of them.

As for Marvin’s co-stars, Hackman is at his sleazy best. An actor who always seems to be one step away from a complete violent meltdown, his short-tempered Mary Ann–what is with that name anyway?–makes a great adversary for Marvin’s methodical Devlin. Hackman’s last scene is a bit of a letdown, but it’s a minor quibble in a movie that otherwise delivers the goods; there’s even an incongruous chase scene with a thresher that ends with a car being chewed to pieces by the whirling blades. Now that’s entertainment. As for our damsel in distress, trust me–you will never see Spacek look this impossibly alluring, and paradoxically this pure, ever again. In her first major film role as Poppy, she’s the perfect mix of angelic innocence and sex appeal. Also keep an eye out for Gregory Walcott, who does a great job as Weenie, a beefy guy who always looks like he’s sweating but who cult movie fans will recognize as the heroic airline pilot in Ed Wood’s immortal classic, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

PRIME CUT is a very satisfying slice of ‘70s sleaze leavened by a pleasant moral streak and an ending that should leave a smile on your face.

DVD Extras: Absolutely nothing.

ATB

Violence/Gore: Some gruesome shots of half-eaten corpses, sore-ridden cannibal mutants moaning and impaling people, and wanton rat-chewing help to punch up the otherwise flat proceedings.

Sex/Nudity: Intrepid heroine Pat fends off the violent advances of the cannibal killer, but Alex arrives to save her before things get out of hand.

Best Line: “You expect to find Manfred pressed between the pages of a book?”

Score:

When a prominent member of the British upper class goes missing in the London Underground, Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence) swings into action…which is to say he demands tea, plays a horrible game of darts on the back of his office door, and yells at his subordinates and men with long hair and flower-bedecked shirts. The culprit? A cannibalistic mutant, the last survivor of a tribe that lived in a disused Underground tunnel after a cave-in trapped their ancestors almost a hundred years earlier.

While often dull as dishwater and padded out with long tracking shots and almost silent passages of cinematic boredom that turn a 40-minute plot into an 87-minute exercise in tedium, the movie–known as DEATH LINE in its original UK release–is worth seeing if, like me, you’re a fan of the superb Donald Pleasence. This is Pleasence’s movie without a doubt; his Calhoun is not entirely a likeable fellow, but a man of miniscule means, even more miniscule manners, and an unhealthy suspicion of virtually everyone and everything around him. “Jaded” only begins to capture the essence of the man, but Pleasence manages to make him as playful and light-hearted as he is dour and paranoid. One almost wishes that the film had sparked further adventures for Calhoun, but alas.

Christopher Lee is also billed, but this is a seriously low budget movie, so your first question should be–how much did Lee get to show up for his few minutes of screen time? His scene is an incongruous one as well, shot with Lee delivering his lines entirely to camera, leaving one with the vague suspicion that he wasn’t even on set with the rest of the cast (in his final shot, you do in fact see that he’s there at the same time as Pleasence). Clearly brought in to cameo for the marquee value, Lee is wasted in a meaningless scene that adds nothing to the plot and only briefly delays Calhoun in his investigation into the disappearance of the missing upper-cruster.

For gorehounds, there’s quite a bit of bright red paint…er, blood…and some gruesome picked-over corpses. Some might cringe to see our cannibal friend tear the head off a rat with his teeth, but let’s face it, none of these effects will confuse you as to their utter lack of reality.

Our nominal hero is Alex, a long-haired abrasive American student pulled right out of the British “Let’s Make Fun of the Long-Haired Abrasive American Student” playbook. His whining girlfriend Pat looks like a heroin addict, and the mumbling cannibal who can only articulate the Underground warning, “Mind the doors,” is a less than compelling villain. Only Pleasence makes the whole experience anything other than a nightmare. See! Pleasence drunk! See! Pleasence complaining about tea bags! See! Pleasence rushing in at the end to take charge when the other characters just happen to stumble on the cannibal’s lair and solve the whole thing, rendering Pleasence’s participation absolutely worthless! See! Pleasence!

And Christopher Lee too, but only for a few minutes. Mind the doors!

DVD Extras: Just the trailer for the American release.

ATB