BY FRED BLOSSER
Mill
Creek Entertainment has released a double-bill of “Fort Yuma Gold†(1966) and “Damned Hot Day
of Fire†(1968) in a Blu-ray + Digital edition. Mill Creek notes that the films are two of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite
Spaghetti Westerns -- a shrewd strategy to attract fans who may be interested
in sampling the same, often hard-to-find genre movies that Tarantino devoured
in his formative years. Both pictures
are above-average Italian Westerns.
In
“Fort Yuma Gold,†directed by veteran Italian filmmaker Giorgio Ferroni as
“Calvin J. Padget,†outlaw chief Nelson Riggs schemes with renegade Confederate
Major Sanders to steal a million dollars in gold from Fort Yuma, a Union
outpost, in the last days of the Civil War. While Sanders orders his troops to make a diversionary, suicidal attack
on the fort, he and Riggs will sneak into the post through an abandoned mine
and grab the loot. When a Union
commander some days’ ride away learns about the plot, he dispatches two of his
soldiers, Captain Lefevre and Sergeant Pitt, to warn the fort, guided by Lt.
Gary Hammond, a Confederate prisoner of war. As a native Westerner, Hammond knows the safest route to Fort Yuma. The two Northerners don’t. Secretly, Hammond hopes to elude the two
Yankees en route, locate Sanders‘ detachment, and avert disaster by warning his
friend Lt. Brian, one of Sanders’ adjutants, about the Major’s treachery.
The movie’s traditional plot is reminiscent of
Hollywood’s Civil War Westerns like “Escape from Fort Bravo†and “Alvarez
Kelly,†reflecting the strategy generally used by Italian studios in the early
days of the Spaghettis to make their films look as much like American
productions as possible. The actors
billed as “Montgomery Wood†(Hammond), “Red Carter†(Sgt. Pitt), and “Benny
Reeves†(Juke, Riggs‘ henchman) were actually Italians Giuliano Gemma, Nello
Pazzafini, and Benito Stefanelli. Gemma
also used the “Montgomery Wood†alias in three other Italian Westerns, and his
resemblance to American leading man and future best-selling novelist Tom Tryon
may have helped further the impression that “Fort Yuma Gold†was an import from
America. The deception probably worked
as long as ticket-buyers failed to recognize Ferroni, Gemma, Pazzafini,
Stefanelli, Dan Vadis (Riggs), Jacques Sernas (Sanders), and Antonio Molino
Rojo (Brian) as homegrown veterans of the Italian sword-and-toga epics of the
late 1950s and early 1960s. When the
popularity of the toga spectacles waned with the rise of the Italian Westerns,
many writers, directors, and actors transitioned easily from one genre to the
next. The hammy, WWE-style melees
between gladiators and centurions in the Hercules and Samson movies became the
saloon brawls of the Spaghettis, with athletic actors like Gemma, Pazzafini,
and Stefanelli doing their own stunts. By 1966, in turn, public tastes in the Italian Westerns had begun to
favor the cynical, down-and-dirty violence of Sergio Leone’s massively
successful Spaghettis over the American model. In Italy, “Fort Yuma Gold†opened as “Per pochi dollari ancora†or “For
a Few Extra Dollars.†The moviemakers
were clearly hoping to ride the recent smash success of “For a Few Dollars
More,†even if Ferroni/Padget’s style bears little likeness to Leone’s. If you don’t expect a polished American
picture on one hand or a nihilistic Leone clone on the other, you might enjoy
“Fort Yuma Gold†on its own terms as a mostly fast-paced, sincere B-Western.
“Damned
Hot Day of Fire†(titled “Gatling Gun†or “Machine-Gun Killers†in some
editions) shares a Civil War setting, with a more ambitious and convoluted
undercover-spy plot. The storyline
sometimes strays into the familiar Spaghetti template of three characters
working at cross purposes, but the secret-agent spin is novel for the
genre. Inventor Richard Gatling is set
to deliver his newly devised machine gun to the Union Army, but before he can
do so, he’s abducted and his prototype gun stolen by Mexican bandit Tarpas
(John Ireland). Tarpas plans to ransom
Gatling to the Union for a million dollars, and sell the gun to the Confederacy
for another million. Spymaster Allan
Pinkerton assigns unjustly disgraced Union officer Tanner (Robert Woods) to
pose as a war profiteer, rescue the kidnapped inventor, and retrieve the
missing gun. Another agent, Wallace, not
being privy to Pinkerton’s plan, thinks that Tanner is in cahoots with
Tarpas. American actor Woods starred in
eighteen Spaghetti Westerns. Ireland
appeared in nine, sometimes playing an American gunslinger and sometimes, as
here, a bearded Mexican bandit. The
script gives Tarpas a tragic dimension, beyond yesterday’s and today’s
simplistic “bad hombre†stereotype, that Ireland deftly underlines in his
performance. For every scene where
Tarpas crudely takes off his boot to strike a match on his calloused heel,
there’s one where the bandit glowers with anger and shame as his blonde-haired
hooker girlfriend calls him a “half-breed.†Piero Piccioni’s funky, organ-based theme for the film sounds a little
like Booker T & the M.G.s’ 1968, Top 20 cover version of Dominic
Frontiere’s title theme for “Hang ‘Em High,†but that may be coincidental. Like “Fort Yuma Gold,†the movie is filled
with supporting players who enjoyed gainful employment in Spaghettis. Between them, the two films showcase nearly
every actor in Italy who wore a stetson or a sombrero in the Italian West. Names like Benito Stefanelli, Nello
Pazzafini, Antonio Molino Rojo, Angel del Pozo, Roberto Camardiel, Lorenzo
Robledo, and Gerard Herter may not ring a bell for casual viewers, but you’ll
recognize their dusty, sneering visages from the Westerns of Sergio Leone,
Sergio Corbucci, and Sergio Sollima.
The
Mill Creek double feature, licensed from First Line Films, presents the two
Westerns in good condition at proper widescreen aspect. “Fort Yuma Gold†has minor drawbacks --
overly bright greens in some scenes, and a soundtrack pitched so low that
you’ll have to crank up the audio on your set -- but otherwise the print looks
fine, and the elements may have been the best available. “Damned Hot Day of Fire†is sharp and
clean. The Blu-ray is contained on one
disc, with no chapter menus, supplementary materials, or subtitles (except for
captioning in some scenes in “Damned Hot Day of Fire†where the original Italian
dialogue track was never dubbed into English for U.K. or American
release).
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