Dirty Not-Quite Dozen: The Inglorious Bastards (1978 edition)

I'm such a Quentin Tarantino loyalist that I fully intend to plunk down my sawbucks for opening weekend of Inglourious Basterds--this despite the presence of one of the least skilled A-list actors in history, and a deliberate misspelling that just drives me nuts (I'm far from anal about grammatical flouting, except when it comes to cuss words. Cuss words should never be writ with anything but the most pinpoint precision).

But Tarantino's mega-budget event flick'll have to go a long way to be as entertaining as the first movie (sort of) bearing the title.

The original Inglorious Bastards (now THAT'S how you spell 'bastards'!) hit international screens in 1978 with little fanfare. At its modest core lives a classic Dirty Dozen set-up: A group of condemned military miscreants--deserters, thieves, murderers--are accidentally sprung free when their convoy gets massacred by German fighter planes in France; then they spend the rest of the movie on the run from German and Allied Forces until a twist of fate offers them redemption.

No, the wheel ain't reinvented here. But does it really need to be? Director Enzo Castellari delivers vivid pulp characters and thrills aplenty on a shoestring budget, the action scenes fly fast and furious, and two of the most entertaining tough guys of the 1970's--Bo Svenson and Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson--stand at the forefront of this cinematic pissing contest. It's the kind of movie that my curmudgeony ex-army sergeant dad would've eaten up back when he still went to the movies: No-bull characterizations; lotsa stuff blowing up; no kung fu or fussy pretentions to art; and ten skinny-dipping machine-gun-packing Nazi women. The enclosed trailer summarizes things nicely:



Tarantino's revisionist opus, incidentally, has nothing to do with the original, but the auteur's influence encouraged Severin Films to put out an impressive '3-Disc Explosive Edition' of The Inglorious Bastards. Included: a pretty terrific transfer of the movie; an amusing conversation between Castellari and Tarantino in which the latter allots the former maybe six sentences edgewise; A making-of documentary almost as long as the movie itself; A CD of the original soundtrack; and most importantly, a tour with Castellari of the movie's scenic European locations...Just in case you were wondering what the river with all those skinny-dipping machine-gun-packing Nazi women looks like today.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Re-Issued Audio Yummies: Easybeats, ELO, and Divinyls

Image
Work's been clubbing me upside the head so thoroughly that I haven't been imbibing in much pop culture anything lately. Put bluntly, I ain't had the time...With one exception. Unlike most sane working stiffs who actually use their lunch breaks to, you know, relax and eat lunch, I hit the pavement and walk my metaphoric arse off during that precious half-hour. Headphones rest on my noggin, connected to an ancient Discman as I get a lungful of fresh air and an earful of music, old and new. Here's what's been getting the blood pumping (and the feet moving) of late--old stuff division. The Easybeats' biggest claim to fame may have been their international hit, 'Friday on My Mind' (covered by David Bowie on his covers LP, Pin Ups ), but Varese Sarabande's compilation CD The Very Best of the Easybeats proves that classic tune was no fluke. With all due respect to the Bee Gees , the Easys really were Australia's closest equivalent to the Beatles, a Br
Read more

An Interview with Joe Dallesandro

Image
( I wrote this interview for Seattlest.com , and it is reprinted on the Petri Dish with their kind permission. ) For a minute, it looks like the perfect photo opportunity. Joe Dallesandro—former bodyguard at Andy Warhol’s fabled Factory, star of several key Warhol-sponsored cult films in the sixties and seventies, and accidental avatar of the Sexual Revolution—stands outside the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, his back to me. He cuts an almost dangerous-looking figure. Clad head to foot in black, his compact body sits atop slightly bowed legs in an almost pugilistic stance as he smokes his cigarette. A soul-patched, dark-haired kid stops to bum a smoke, and both figures huddle, almost silhouetted thanks to the overreaching shadow cast by the hotel building, as vaporous off-white ribbons of smoke curl above their heads. But then Dallesandro begins to turn, and I don’t want to come off like some stalker before a formal introduction, so I retreat back into the hotel lobby. The sublime noir
Read more

Character Actor Heaven: Hollywood Collectors Show, Feb 2005

Image
Hollywood Collectors' Show, February 18/19, 2005 Character actors are the building blocks of cinematic life. And like a lot of important foundations (architectural or otherwise), they get little credit from the outside world for their contributions. Fortunately, there's the bi-monthly Hollywood Collectors' Show , where fans of all stripes can show these hard-working but underappreciated fixtures of film and TV some serious love, and even get some love back. Expect to make a bit of an investment for that love. Daily admission is $15 ($25 for a two-day pass), and all of the celebrities in attendance charge for their autographs (more on that later). But for a real film (or TV) nut, a Hollywood Collector's Show is absolute manna from heaven, and totally worth the extra change. Imagine a Star Trek convention stripped to its absolute essentials--ample celebrity guests and heaps of cool merchandise--and you get the idea. My wife and I saved our pennies for several months and
Read more