Van Heflin’s last Western
So many American Western stars
went off to Europe in the late 1960s to make Italian Westerns. As cowboy film
audiences declined in American movie theaters and the big studios made fewer
and fewer, leaving the genre to TV, the so-called spaghetti westerns gave the
genre a new lease of life. And those who had appeared in ‘proper’ Westerns in
the 1950s and early 60s had a new chance to earn a buck (or a lira) or two and
get their names back in the billings.
One of the ruthless four in each corner of the poster
Sadly, most of these films were
total junk. Very badly written and with abysmal production values, they were
usually caricatures of the Western. They were churned out in great numbers,
like Poverty Row programmers in the 1950s, to capitalize on the brief flurry of
interest before it died.
One such was The Ruthless Four about four men who
were, yes, ruthless. Actually, to be fair, I have seen worse spaghettis than
this one. For one thing, there’s proper orchestral music, some of it even
semi-interesting, and not that ghastly whistling or people shouting ho-ho or
that Morricone junk. It’s by Carlo Rustichelli, so five out of ten, Carlo.
Van protecting his gold
Van Heflin, 58, and Gilbert
Roland, 63, headline. They are supported by Klaus Kinski (24 such European Westerns,
among which the only one that came close to being any good, A Bullet for the General) and ‘George
Hilton’ (Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara,
a Uruguayan, who did 22 of these pulp movies). The plot? Oh, it’s about Van
finding gold in the Sierra Nevada (the Spanish one, obviously) and having to
recruit partners to get the gold out and they are all, er, ruthless.
George
Klaus
There are two bad guys near the
end who have Buntlines and take on Van and Gil who have Winchesters. Mistake.
The worst thing about it,
really, is the poor direction by Giorgio Capitani. The pacing is plodding and
sluggish. At times you really need to be a Western fan to get through to the
end. It was Signor (or Monsieur, he was born in Paris) Capitani’s only Western.
Maybe he would have got better with practice.
It was notable as Van Heflin’s
last Western. He died in 1971.
Van's last Western. RIP.
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