Mannaja Trois?

Hey people, I've decided to dust off the old bloggo and give it another tiny tiny chapter, which will hopefully help me get out of this non-writing funk I've been living in (I blame facebook, riding my bike and getting drunk for this...but never myself ) and back into the glory of boring you to death about movies. I've seen quite a bit of stuff since my last post, made mental notes to write about certain films, but then wiped them away with a guilt soaked magic eraser and never following up, like I should have. Well hopefully those times are behind me and I will stop spending money on those damn nifty erasers. So what film brings me here? Well, unfortunately it wasn't a steamy three way orgy of tomahawks as indicated by the photo above, but you're getting warmer.





 
The movie is called Mannaja (aka "A Man Called Blade") from 1977 and was directed by Sergio Martino, who is better known for his Giallo films. Mannaja is a pretty formulaic spaghetti western that succeeded at keeping me entertained. Nothing out of this world as far as story goes but some great scenes when it came time to showcase some gore (Martino being a Giallo director, I expected this). Mannaja (excellently played by Maurizio Merli) is the main character in the movie, a tomahawk wielding bounty hunter in search of some loot for some scumbag he rounded up. After chopping said scumbag's hand off with his tomahawk, Mannaja drags this dude into some wack ass town where drinking and chasing tail has been outlawed. The town has no sheriff but is run by a rich old man (Philippe Leroy) named McGovern. The old man has the town by the balls; he owns and operates the silver mine where basically the whole town works at. The catch is that he's an asshole and is literally working people to death and not letting them chill and get loose on the weekends...imagine that! Mannaja finds out out all this and decides he wants to meet this douche so he can get his money for the scumbag, but it's not that easy son.

Everybody following along okay so far? There is a Douche AND a Scumbag, two different characters...just want everyone to be clear on that. Of course, he can't go straight to the Douche directly, he has to talk to his top bitchboy first. The top bitchboy is a guy named Valler (John Steiner) who has two Dobermans. That's his thing, he chills in a shitty western town with his badass dogs that will bite your ass if you look at him sideways. They meet at a card game and when Mannaja brings his card game-winning, money-taking skills to the table, bitchboy sicks his dogs on him. This turns out to be one of the funniest scenes in the movie because what Mannaja does is basically slap the the shit out of the dogs with the back of his tomahawk, making them cry and run. After killing a couple of the guys and taking his winnings, Mannaja decides he doesn't need the reward for the scumbag and cuts him loose.

 From here the film takes some expected turns. McGovern (the old guy that runs the town) and Valler (bitchboy) keep sending guys to try to kill Mannaja but they just end up with his tomahawk in their skulls and shit. On one of these attempts, Mannaja almost dies but is saved when a pimp named Johnny Johnny(Salvatore Puntillo) and his girls find him in under a pile of rocks that fell on him. Johnny Johhny (whose parents apparently liked the name "Johnny" so damned much) dreams of having his own brothel someday, so naturally, since they saved his ass, Mannaja promises to hook him up in the town of no sin...you guessed it; CONFLICT. Shit goes wrong and more people get tomahawks in them. It's gonna happen when you piss this guy off. Talking shit? BOOM! Tomahawk to the dome! You said what? FWACK! You get a fuckin' tomahawk chest ornament! At this stage in the film it starts getting really good, as you can tell from my excitement about tomahawks. Without spoiling it, it turns out to be a pretty decent plot with some unexpected twists that involve some great gore and some pretty impressive torture. Don't believe me? See below!

Yes, you are seeing what you are thinking, he is buried up to his neck and his eyelids have been pinned wide open with needles (or nails, couldn't really tell) with a fuckin' spike under his chin...pretty dope, huh?

All in all a very entertaining film with some excellent shots as above and some good acting. Although I can't speak for myself , I do need to point out that I  read in a couple of places that this film is very similar to a film from 1976 called Keoma. I haven't seen Keoma so I can't compare, but I definitely will check it out now. I'm assuming that Keoma is superior because it stars Franco Nero of Django fame, but I'll have to wait and see. Something interesting is that the similarities don't stop at just character and plot, some say that the reason Maurizio Merli even got the title role in Mannaja is because he looked like Franco Nero. The funniest thing I found out is that the score was done by the same team in both films, Guido De Angelis & Maurizio De Angelis, two brothers that in my opinion, created one of the worst theme songs to a western ever when they wrote the theme to Mannaja. It's as if they wanted to really wow the world with a horrid combination of Leonard Cohen and David Bowie. It had me cracking up when the title sequence came on. Truly awful sounds do that too me, I just can't believe the recording session where somebody was like "Fuck yes! I wanna hear this shit during my ENTIRE movie!", it just doesn't compute in my head. You can kind of hear it in the background of the trailer, but the vid below really lets you have it.

Check out the intro and quirky theme song!
(The fun begins at around 2:08)

I truly enjoyed Mannaja. Even if it was a little generic, the last act threw out some curve balls that made the movie standout. The direction was solid and so were the performances, making this something I would recommend. Just remember, when the opening theme comes spilling out of your speakers in all of it's glory...turn it up!

Thanks for reading, time for me to go smack some Doberman Pinschers!

Jingle, Django!

So I FINALLY got around to seeing Django, the legendary Sergio Corbucci western that spawned (literally) like hundreds of unofficial sequels. The title character was played by Italian actor Franco Nero, and for a while, after this movie, they would just throw the name "Django" into the title of anything he was in.....regardless of the fact that the movie had absolutely NOTHING to do with the original Django or even with the western genre, for that matter, which is pretty damn hilarious. Shit, okay, so where do I start? Well let me start with the beginning..the title sequence! If you love westerns, you must have already developed a love for really creative and interesting opening credits, but you've also probably developed a sinister glee for really really bad title sequences with ultra cheesy visuals or horrendously tacky music. This my friends, is definitely the greatest (worst) theme song I've ever experienced, it leaves you in complete awe at the suck. Bear witness to the spirit of 1966 below!




The story is basically your usual Spaghetti western fare. It was made in 1966 so it obviously borrowed from Sergio Leone's worldwide smash A Fistful of Dollars that put the genre on the map, which as we all know was a reinterpretation of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which in turn is based on a novel called The Glass Key....exhausting, huh? But getting back to Django's plot, it basically is about a coffin dragging dude named Django that arrives into an incredibly muddy town (more on the mud in a bit) after rescuing a hot red headed piece of ass named Maria (played by Loredana Nusciak) that was tied up and being whipped by these sadist bandits. After killing them (in like a split second, of course) and going into the town for some r&r with Maria, sure enough, the town is being destroyed by two groups of maniacs; these crazy American red-hooded racist nutjobs (the sadist bandits killed were part of this gang) and Mexican outlaws that just love ears (more on the ears later). So voila, there you have it, instant Spaghetti western!! Without giving too much away, Django obviously starts getting involved in "cleaning" up this town by playing dirty and doing shit for his own benefit, which in this case is to avenge his wife's murder and some muthafuckin' gold, which I might add, is some of the fucking fakest looking excuse for gold I've ever seen in a movie, but who cares? Django goes on to single handedly mow down tons of dudes with his secret weapon...he's got a fucking Gatling gun in that coffin!! Lots and lots of dudes flying through the air and ridiculous blood effects ensue, of course, and then EVERYBODY wants a Gatling gun, monkey see, monkey want a Gatling gun!

This was Corbucci's predecessor to what most people consider to be his masterpiece Il Grande Silenzio (The Great Silence), but you can see the beginnings of what made him one of the better contributors to the Spaghetti genre instead of just a copycat. For example, in both The Great Silence and Django, the locations had an incredible role in the mood of the film. For Silence it was snow upon snow, the entire movie was utterly bleak and cold, and for Django it was tons of fucking mud. Dirty, filthy mud that just screamed misery and hell. I didn't understand why the fuck it never rained in the movie (I don't think it did), but the mud was freaking endless!! There was even a hooker fight in the mud! For some reason, Corbucci just loved to go with extreme weather conditions in his movies, go figure. Another trademark of Mr. Corbucci was violence and gore, well, violence and gore by the sixties standards which is pretty tame when compared to today's standards, but it still managed to get banned in the UK for like 25 years or something. The main reason for the hoopla and uproar in this film was a pretty effective scene where a member of the racist nutjobs gets his ear sliced off and fed to him before getting shot in the back, delicious! Watching this, you realize where Tarantino got the idea for the famous ear scene in Reservoir Dogs. It really looks like a piece of rubber covered in red paint, but damn is it cool looking!

Hooker mud wrestling and ear-tastic fake gore in this clip!
(sorry no subtitles, but you didn't come hear to read, did ya?)

A lot of fake blood, exagerrating stuntmen and mud make this film stand out, but one thing will stick with you forever, and that unsung hero is the theme song! The master behind this little ditty is a Buenos Aires-born man named Luis Bacalov, and I swear he laced that track with some subliminal shit, because tell me you aren't gonna walk around singing "Oh Django!!" to yourself for the next couple of days after seeing that video?!? Hell. Yes.

Check the trailer for horrible English overdub and More Sing-Song goodness!