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El Rojo
1966 / Colour / 82 m. / Italy/Spain
Starring: Richard Harrison, Piero Lulli, Nieves Navarro, Mirko Ellis, Franco Ressel, Andrea Aureli, Raf Baldassarre
Cinematography: Aldo Giordani
Production Designer: Luciano Vincenti
Film Editor: Tatiana Morigi
Original Music: Benedetto Ghiglia
Written by: Mario Casacci, Rate Furlan, Antonio Giambriccio, Roberto Gianviti, Mike Mitchell, Leopoldo Savona and Jose-Maria Seone
Produced by: Tonino Sarno
Directed by: Leopoldo Savona
Reviewed by Lee Broughton
Synopsis:
When the Sorensen family are cut down by arrows as they travel to their gold mine near the town of Gold Hill in New Mexico it appears as though they’ve fallen victim to a random Indian attack. However, when the family’s eldest son Donald (Richard Harrison) returns from the Civil War he immediately suspects foul play. After teaming up with Hank, an embittered ex-Reb turned medicine show man, Donald discovers that four supposedly upstanding men — Lasky (Piero Lulli), Wallace (Franco Ressel), Navarro and Ortega — have ingratiated themselves with Gold Hill’s fearful citizens by overseeing the extermination of local Indians. In return, the four partners have been allowed to take control of the town’s saloon and bank. Furthermore, they’ve been secretly using nefarious means to grab nearby settlers’ land and the Sorensens’ gold mine is now part of their property portfolio. With both Donald and a rogue Indian (Mirko Ellis) seeking revenge, the four partners go to ground and surround themselves with an army of protective henchmen.
Critique:
El Rojo is a pretty low budget affair that is built around a fairly generic revenge storyline but it remains a really fun little film. It’s also quite unusual in as much as its four main bad guys are self-serving cowardly types for the most part. Instead of provoking machismo-driven postures of defiance, the threat posed by Donald and the rogue Indian prompts Lasky, Wallace, Navarro and Ortega to hide themselves away in unusual places and surround themselves with the toughest bodyguards they can find. This narrative contrivance results in one of the film’s most pleasing aspects: Donald is forced to cook up some ingenious and entertaining ruses in order to get close to his intended targets. The inventive nature of these deceptions helps the show to establish something of an identity of its own.
Beyond the inventive ruses, further novelty elements can be found throughout the film. Donald himself is actually quite an unusual genre hero: he charms information out of local ladies by giving them sugar cubes and sketching their portraits! And the embittered ex-Reb Hank supplies some interesting weaponry: a super pistol with a silencer attached and a special rig that allows him to fire several rifles at once. Also watch out for the sudden, machismo-fuelled appearance of the mysterious gun-for-hire Black Bart who is able to silence cocky tough guys by simply removing the ominous-looking mask that obscures the lower portion of his face. Bart’s unsettling presence adds a horror show-cum-gothic element to the film and there’s more macabre oddness and intrigue to be found elsewhere here. For example, the scene where Navarro meets his end at a Mexican carnival employs Mario Bava-esque lighting strategies to illuminate quirky bits of business involving the symbolic sacrifices of life size straw men on blazing bonfires.
In spite of its low budget the film manages to perform well enough at a technical level. Richard Harrison’s overly impassive turn here isn’t his best Spaghetti Western performance but he remains effective enough to get by. By contrast, the supporting cast — which is chock full of familiar faces — contribute spirited performances that add much to the show’s fun factor. Predictably cast as villains, genre stalwarts Piero Lulli and Franco Ressel (who starred as Stengel in Gianfranco Parolini’s Sabata [1969]) are on good form here but the show is almost stolen by Raf Baldassarre who plays their suitably cocksure and nasty chief henchman, Ramon. Fan-favourite Nieves Navarro pops up intermittently as Lasky’s saloon singer girlfriend. An element of suspense and intrigue arises when it becomes apparent that she and Donald know each other but there’s not really a great deal for the popular actress to do here.
While it lacks the sense of style and panache associated with the Spaghetti Westerns directed by the likes of Sergio Leone, El Rojo remains a competently assembled film for the most part. The show’s reasonably solid if unremarkable cinematography and logical and coherent editing (taken for granted elements that are not always guaranteed to be fully functioning in low budget Euro genre flicks) just about get the job done. And Benedetto Ghiglia’s lively soundtrack score manages to rise above the level of standard generic fare on a couple of occasions. The inclusion of a Native American character (which is quite an unusual feature as far as Italian Westerns go) serves to add further interest to this picture. Indeed, El Rojo‘s overly quirky but ultimately fun content is precisely the kind of offbeat stuff that leads to minor genre entries like this one acquiring bona fide cult film status.
Psychotronic Cinemas rating: Good +
© Copyright 2013, 2020 Lee Broughton.
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