Fifteen Scaffolds for a Killer Review

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Director:
  • Nunzio Mallasomma

Cast:

  • Craig Hill
  • George Martin
  • Suzy Andersen
  • Aldo Sanbrel
  • Eleonora Brown
  • Renato Rossini
  • Margherita Lozano
  • Andrea Bosic
  • José Manuel Martin
  • Frank Braña
  • Ivan Scratuglia
  • Ricardo Palacios

Music:

  • Francesco De Masi
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< Quindici forche per un assassino

  • 1967



With a De Masi score, Raoul singing the theme song, Stelvio Massi operating the camera and one of the more original scripts in the history of the genre, Fifteen Scaffolds for a Killing seemed destined to hit bull’s eye. It’s by no means devoid of any interest, but if we’ll ever create a special category for genre entries not living up to their potential, this would be my nominee. Maybe it just wasn’t a good idea to engage a director of 73 years of age, who had made only four films over the last twenty years.


The movie’s script is rather intricate. It adopts the premise of A Fistful of Dollars about two rivaling gangs, to tell a more psychologically orientated story about taking the law into one’s own hands. Martin is the leader of a gang of horse thieves, Hill his rival, put on his trail by one of Martin’s victims who wants his horses back. It takes a thief to catch a thief, but Hill decides to make a profitable deal with Martin and the two gangs spend the night together in a barn next to the farm of a widow with two young daughters. The next morning the forthcoming husband of the oldest daughter discovers the bodies of the three women, who were raped and slaughtered. With the full help of the sheriff and a protestant clergyman (a pretty uncommon character in a spaghetti western) he organizes a lynch mob and starts chasing the two gangs, who are held responsible for the killings. While Martin and Hill take refuge inside an abandoned fort, the scaffolds from the title are erected outside the fort and used to hang gang members already killed by the bloodthirsty mob. After the people inside the fort have fallen out, a fire breaks beaks out and gang members fleeing for the flames are shot like rabbits. But then the evidence is presented to the sheriff that the horse thieves are innocent …


People who saw the international version, running some 85 minutes, have been complaining about bounds and cuts, and nourished great hopes that a longer version would be more smooth and consistent. I saw the jerski version, a fandub of the Spanish disc, which runs 1 hour and 36 minutes; it’s probably the longest version available, but still looks as if it has been edited with a hacksaw. Despite the grittiness, the release date, and a real plethora of familiar faces from the Dollar movies, Fifteen Scaffolds for a Killer has the strange, old-fashioned feel of those early Spanish outings produced by the Balcazar studios. There are also some shades of American movies like The Ox-Bow Incident and The Bravados (especially the denouement). There are several great scenes (especially in and around the fort), but none of the story elements is properly developed. The rivalry between Martin and Hill, their attitude towards the hostages they make, the background of the man who eventually is exposed as the killer … they should have done a lot more with these things. When the killer is exposed, he’s not brought to justice, but driven into the fort, so the men inside, unjustly accused of his crimes, can take care of him. They do, in an abrupt, and very effective scene, completely in line with the gritty atmosphere of the rest of the movie, but then we’re treated to a sort of ‘end after the end’, and not the kind you see in horror movies (where the monster always keeps coming back), but more like the epilogue of a fairy tale, in which we’re told that everybody (not yet killed in this case) lives happily ever after. It feels totally wrong, an extra nobody asked for.


The choice for a 73 year old director like Mallasomma was quite bizarre; he had mainly been active within the Telefoni Bianchi genre (romantic comedies popular in the forties and fifties) and was no real cult director like Lizzani (Requiescant) or Vancini (I Lunghi Giorni della Vendetta). Marco Giusti states the film was above all an initiative of Cetauri Films, Madrid, and that J.L. Romero Marchent was involved in the production (1). Giusti doesn’t say so, but I can imagine that originally Marchent would direct the film, and that Mallasomma took over for some reason. Contemporary critics slaughtered both Mallasomma and his movie; Casadio says the film shows Mallasomma’s incapacity to direct a western (2), the Vatican called both direction and performances insufficient, but had some praise for the script (3). Giusti admits he didn’t like the film then, but thinks more highly of it now. I liked it better too when I watched it for the second time. Those bounds and inconsistencies break any momentum, but once you’re familiar with them, they seem the hurt the movie less. Today’s comments tend to be more lenient: On his blog Julio Alberto calls it ‘un gran pequeño western’ (4), which sounds far too cute to translate. On a French western forum most comments were remarkably positive; the knowledgeable Breccio calls Mallasomma's direction 'elegant' (5).


Personally I was pleasantly surprised by some performances; I’m not of fan of either Hill or Martin, but they do their job pretty well here, especially Martin turns in a remarkably solid performance as a gallant thief who combines chivalrous manners with unexpected violent outbursts. And for the ladies fancying him (and there seem to be quite a few who do): he repeatedly shows his impressive upper part of the body. I’ve made a habit of saying as little as possible about De Masi’s scores. I thought it was quite anonymous, but his fans will surely have other ideas.



Notes:

  • (1) Marco Giusti, Dizionario dell western all’italiano
  • (2) Giafranco Casadio, Se sei vivo spara! Storie di pistoleri, banditi, e bounty killers nel western “all’italiana’, pag. 15
  • (3) Segnalazioni cinematographiche, Centro Cattolico Cinematographico, p. 82 – Quotation mentioned by Casadio


--By Scherpschutter

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