Revenge in Four Acts

The Italian film poster for DEATH SENTENCE (1968)

Film historians estimate that probably more than 550 spaghetti westerns were made in Europe (mostly Italy and Spain) during the height of that cinematic craze between 1961 to 1977. More than fifty per cent of those offerings were mostly forgettable programmers or mediocre genre fare or outright junk. And probably less than twenty-five per cent of the movies were high water marks or masterworks such as the Sergio Leone ‘Dollars’ trilogy and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Sergio Corbucci’s Django (1966) and The Great Silence (1968) and Sergio Sollima’s The Big Gundown (1967). Yet, there were still more than a handful of spaghetti westerns that were stylish examples of the form or offbeat and imaginative enough to warrant special attention and one of those is Sentenza di Morte (English title: Death Sentence, 1968), directed by Mario Lanfranchi.

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In the Land of Mah-Na Mah-Na

Between 1967 and 1974 Sweden emerged as the most progressive and liberal nation in the world due to a government that supported a wide variety of social and political interests such as women’s rights, anti-war advocacy and the environmental movement along with a relaxed attitude about sex. Films like Mac Ahlberg’s I, a Woman (1965), Vilgot Sjoman’s I Am Curious (Yellow) from 1967, and Joseph Sarno’s Inga (1968) also helped confirm Sweden’s image as an epicenter of sexual freedom so it was inevitable that such a situation would inspire a moralistic backlash. What no one expected was that it would come from Italy in the form of a Mondo Cane-like documentary directed by Luigi Scattini entitled Sweden: Heaven and Hell (1968).  Continue reading

Stranger in a Stranger Land

Have you ever felt like you didn’t fit in or were completely out of sync with everyone in your immediate world? That is the existential dilemma that drives the narrative of Smog, a 1962 film from little known Italian director Franco Rossi that depicts a European traveler’s first impressions of Los Angeles.  The man in question is Vittorio Ciocchetti (Enrico Maria Salerno), a lawyer from Rome who arrives at LAX airport en route to Mexico on business, and the title of the film, of course, refers to the toxic mixture of fog and car exhaust that has characterized Los Angeles weather since the 1940s when cars began to clog the streets and freeways of the city.   Continue reading