Find a Place to Die Review
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| FIND A PLACE TO DIE (1968) |
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Find a Place to die (Joe... cercati un posto per morire!)
An American geologist and his wife have located an old goldmine in Mexico but are attacked by the men of El Chato, a bandit who is terrorizing the region. The scientist manages to kill the assailants by using dynamite, but this causes a landslide and he gets pinned under a wagon. The woman undertakes a journey to a nearby hamlet, where a seemingly amoral American – an outcast Confederate officer, living south of the border - offers to help her for a share of the gold. He composes his own gang of Mexicans, but these men are as gold-hungry as the bandits who attacked the couple…
In Holland, this film was launched at the time with the phrase: A modern action movie, with a dash of eroticism! Find a Place to die has two women in surprisingly active roles and they do add a dash of eroticism to the movie. It’s also a bit of a unique spaghetti western in the sense that no scenes are set in one of the western towns of those Italian studios; it’s entirely shot on location, on Italian soil. Most exteriors were shot near Manziani, north-east of Rome, a rather green area, that was used more often for spaghetti westerns, but never before to represent Mexico. Cinematographer Riccardo Pallotini makes the best of it, calmly panning his camera over the green slopes and moss-grown rocks of the Lazio hills. Here and there a sandpit was throw in to suggest we’re in an arid area. A few early scenes are shot in the shade of the ruins of a monastery, and throughout the movie, we’re confronted with ruins of religious buildings, creating an atmosphere of decay, giving the film a distinctive look among the spaghetti westerns.
Carnimeo is listed as the only director, but he was supervised by Hugo Fregonese. The script was based on an American western, Garden of Evil (1954, Henry Hathaway), which may explain the redemptive, romantic ending with Hunter following the woman – by this time a widow – to New Orleans. Otherwise Find a place to die has those typical violent antics and anti-clerical sentiments of many Italian movies from the period. On their way to the mine, the group is joined by a pretended priest, a particular nasty character, who not only handles a six-shooter very well but also knows a lot about torture. The film is well-paced but rather short on excitement. It has good atmosphere, but the script is deceptively plain. A little more could have been done with the assortment of characters Hunter assembles for the mission, like a superstitious pimp/gunslinger who shoots vultures because they are messengers of death and a good-natured blockhead who can't control himself when Petit takes off her clothes. Chato's gang is told to be so ferocious that even the bravest men start to shiver when they hear the name, but when Chato is killed and the murderer says he is taking over the gang, only one member raises his voice, all others accept their new boss without any problem! Oh my, what a bunch …
Most probably the film owed its international release to the presence of Jeffrey Hunter. Among western fans, he’s above all known as the young man who accompanied John Wayne in the quest for a young girl kidnapped by Indians in John Ford’s The Searchers. Once considered to be one of the most promising actors in the business, his career soon went downhill. He already had serious drinking problems while making this film, but according to Giordano, he never drank on the set. He died the next year of the consequences of a skull fracture, caused by a bad fall after a having suffered a stroke. He is quite good as the former officer, now a gun-runner south of the border, who’s looking at world through the bottom of a glass (1). His rugged style and deep voice add a touch of spleen to both the character and the atmosphere; He’s running guns, and drinking heavily, but what he’s essentially doing down there, south of the border, is trying to find a place to die, like the beautiful theme song says. The title song is mimed (2 sung by Jula de Parma) by the gorgeous Daniela Giordano - with Jeffrey Hunter humming some background vocals (or groans) - in the film’s best scene, set in an improvised saloon, in one of those religious buildings that has fallen to ruins. It's a wonderful scene, sweaty, sultry and sexy.
French actress Petit, who walks around in skintight leather jeans and flashes a breast in one scene, had been the leading lady in Marcel Carné’s Les Tricheurs a decade earlier, but had since long stooped to Italian, Spanish and German B-movies. Giordano had been elected miss Italy two years before, Iranian actor Fazeli, who plays her pimp and lover in this movie, was her husband of the day. In one of her many interviews – she seems very approachable – Giordano said that the scene in the improvised saloon was directed by Fregonese, not Carnimeo. It wouldn’t surprise me if more scenes were directed by Fregonese. Find a Place to die has none of gimmicks of Carnimeo’s later movies and is certainly not meant to be funny. With it's predilection for torture it's even a bit mean-spirited. The action scenes are well-staged, but the attack on Eagle’s Nest, Chato hideout, is needlessly protracted. Gianni Ferrio's score is very fine and fits the melancholic mood of the movie perfectly.
--By Scherpschutter
