Culture Shock 12.19.13: 'Big Gundown' is a Western gem rescued from obscurity

Fewer and fewer vintage films are finding their way to DVD, much less to the high-definition glory of Blu-ray. Too many still languish, in need of restoration and preservation, in the vaults of indifferent studios.

So, give indie distributor Grindhouse Releasing all due credit not only for rescuing "The Big Gundown" from obscurity, but for giving it a release worthy of "Citizen Kane," or "Vertigo," if Hitchcock is more your flavor.

Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin says "The Big Gundown" is the best spaghetti Western not directed by Sergio Leone, and if that isn't true, it's not far off the mark.

Leone set the standard for the genre with his Clint Eastwood-starring "Man with No Name" trilogy and his operatic "Once Upon a Time in the West," which turned everyman Henry Fonda into one of the screen's great villains. His success spurred many imitators, most famously Sergio Corbucci's "Django." But director Sergio Sollima's "The Big Gundown" (1966) is the cream of the crop.

Lee Van Cleef, who upstaged Eastwood in Leone's "For a Few Dollars More," stars as John Corbett, a bounty hunter looking to turn his reputation for cleaning up Texas into a political career. But Senate campaigns don't come cheap, even in the 1800s. So, when a rich businessman (Walter Barnes) offers his backing in exchange for help getting a railroad through his property, Corbett accepts. After all, the railroad is good for all of Texas, Corbett figures.

They've barely sealed the deal when news comes of a 12-year-old girl's rape and murder, and the lone suspect is a knife-throwing Mexican outlaw called Cuchillo (Tomas Milian). What better campaign publicity could you ask than bringing in a notorious child rapist and murderer to face justice? It's all so convenient. Too convenient, as it turns out.

Finding Cuchillo is surprisingly easy, but keeping him is another matter. Corbett may have cleaned up Texas, but he has never faced anyone quite as wily as Cuchillo, who tricks his way to freedom time and again, and charms beautiful women with raw machismo.

Milian plays Cuchillo with charisma to spare. He may be a rogue, but we don't believe for a minute he's really guilty. For once Van Cleef is the one getting upstaged, and that's by design.

Van Cleef delivers a measured performance that pays off when we get to the "big gundown" the title promises. The inevitable showdown pits Corbett against the businessman's personal hired gun, a monocled Prussian baron (Gérard Herter) who left a pile of dead duelists back in Europe.

Cuchillo starts out disillusioned with both the Mexican government and the revolutionaries looking to overthrow it. By the end, Corbett is left wondering if politics north of the border is any better.

Like other Italian-made Westerns, "The Big Gundown" is filmed on location in Spain, and Sollima and cinematographer Carlo Carlini make the most of the desolate yet gorgeous Mediterranean locale. This is an Old West that's deadly yet seductive, especially as reproduced on Blu-ray by Grindhouse Releasing.

It has been a banner year for Grindhouse, coming off last year's tragic death of company co-founder Sage Stallone (son of Sylvester Stallone) at age 36. First there was Grindhouse's Blu-ray/DVD combo of the little-seen Peter Cushing horror flick "Corruption," marking the 100th anniversary of Cushing's birth.

Now there's "The Big Gundown" ($39.95 suggested retail), a four-disc release that belongs on every cinephile's shelf. The set includes two Blu-ray discs (the English-language version and a longer Italian cut with English subtitles), the English-language version on DVD and a CD of revered film composer Ennio Morricone's energetic score.

It's a lavish presentation of the sort more films deserve.

Culture Shock: 01.10.13: Tarantino's 'Unchained' melody is pitch perfect

There is a pivotal scene in "Django Unchained" in which Dr. King Schultz, the charming, dapper German bounty hunter played by Christoph Waltz, explains the ways of bounty hunting to the title character.

Yet as callous and cold-blooded as it may seem to gun down a man in front of his child — even when the man is a murderer who has it coming — it still pales compared to the random, everyday brutality of slavery in the plantation South before the Civil War. When confronted with that, it's Dr. Schultz who is a little "green around the gills," and Django (Jamie Foxx) who remains detached and focused on his mission. Besides, it's nothing the ex-slave hasn't seen — and lived — before.

In his followup to 2009's "Inglourious Basterds," Quentin Tarantino again uses the formula of an old-fashioned revenge movie to address one of humanity's darkest periods. And again he shows that while his skill and ingenuity as a director and screenwriter may transcend the talents of most filmmakers who populated drive-ins with exploitation fare in the 1970s, he remains fluent in their language, including their ability to cloak social commentary in blood and bullets.

But just so there's no mistake, Tarantino opens with retro-style opening titles and the theme song to the original "Django," the 1966 spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Corbucci and starring Franco Nero, who shows up here for a cameo.

"Django Unchained" is a rousing exploitation film through and through. And I mean that as a compliment. Dress it up or deconstruct it however you like, it's a blaxploitation Western, like the ones the seemingly immortal Fred Williamson starred in 40 years ago, only far more ambitious. Much like Williamson's characters, Django scandalizes Southern whites by doing such things as riding a horse. But that's only the beginning, and like "Inglourious Basterds," it can only end in fire.

When he has a contemporary setting, Tarantino litters his scripts with pop-culture references. With a story set two years before the Civil War, he relies on mythology. Django's wife (Kerry Washington) is improbably named Broomhilda, a corruption of Brunhilde from Germanic legend.

Like the hero Siegfried, Django will have to walk through fire to save her. At least Django doesn't have to face a dragon, merely a snake in the form of reptilian plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a smooth-talking fraud who subjects his strongest slaves to blood sport and likes to be referred to as "monsieur" but can't speak French.

The bigger threat, however, is Candie's house slave and confidant Stephen, played as a literal Uncle Tom by Samuel L. Jackson, who reminds us what a great actor he is when he's not just playing himself with an eye patch or a lightsaber. Jackson's Stephen is as complex as he is despicable, and Jackson doesn't hold back.

Surrounded by flamboyant performances by DiCaprio, Jackson and especially Waltz, who again steals the movie just like he did with his Oscar-winning turn in "Inglourious Basterds," Foxx has a hard time standing out. Yet over the film's nearly three-hour running time, his Django evolves from skittish slave to bewildered freeman to confident avenger, each convincing and all accompanied by simmering rage that subsides only with thoughts of his wife. It's not flashy, but it's the hardest role to pull off.

Tarantino, meanwhile, is trying to top himself. "Pulp Fiction" is still his masterpiece, and the "Kill Bill" films are still the ones that deliver the most pop-art enjoyment, but with "Django Unchained," Tarantino splits the difference between the extremes. That may make it the most Tarantino of all of Tarantino's films.

This could be the one he's remembered for.