Pirates of the Mississippi Review

From The Spaghetti Western Database
Revision as of 18:39, 12 November 2012 by Tiratore Scelto (talk | contribs) (Created page with "The first of three Sauerkraut westerns produced by Wolf C. Hartwig, all starring muscle man (and former peplum star) Brad Harris and a young Horst Frank. The movie is part of ...")
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search

The first of three Sauerkraut westerns produced by Wolf C. Hartwig, all starring muscle man (and former peplum star) Brad Harris and a young Horst Frank. The movie is part of a loose trilogy, the other two entries being Massacre at Marble City and Black Eagle of Santa Fe. Two of the three movies were based on novels by German author Friedrich Gerstäcker, but the order of the movies and the novels is different. Italian actor Tony Kendall (Luciano Stella) plays a character called Black Eagle in the first and the third entry, but in the first he's a Cherokee, in the third a Comanche. It was all very loose.


Horst Frank is John Kelly, a former Cavalry Colonel, now the leader of a gang called the River Pirates. With the help of the Cherokee tribe, Kelly wants to attack the river boat and the small town of Helena. Harris is an old acquaintance of the local sheriff (Felmy), who's falsely accused of being a member of the gang. He's saved from the gallows (in Blondie/Tuco style!) by his old pal and of course helps him to investigate the case.


This was one of the first Sauerkraut westerns, made in the wake of the immense success of the first Karl May adaptation Treasure of Silver Lake (1962). In an early scene sheriff Felmy is introduced as a good friend of Cherokee chief Kendall, suggesting an alliance between a white and a red men in the Old Shatterhand and Winnetou tradition. Those familiar with the Winnetou movies, know this early alliance scene will be reflected in the finale, with the Indians coming to the rescue of the citizens of Helena, who're under the attack of the villains. That all sounds familiar, but Gerstäcker's novel, on which the movie was based, provided a several subplots that kept the screenwriters more than busy. They changed a couple of details (in the book gang leader Kelly leads a double life as the local judge, in the movie they're two different characters) but the script remains a rather intricate one, with lots of characters and complications.


Felmy (most Germans will know him as commissar Hans Haferkamp from Tatort) looks a bit too sophisticated for the role of a western hero, but he's not a bad actor and it helps a lot that Frank is cast as the villain this time around (in the other two entries he'd play a positive character). Kendall/Stella always sustained that he was offered the role of No Name in A Fistful of Dollars because Leone had seen him in Black Eagle of Santa Fe, but (as said in my review of that movie) it's more likely that Leone saw him in this one. It was definitely made prior to Fistful and when watching it, you'll notice quite a few scenes and plot devices that would pop up in Leone's famous movies (1). Even if these similarities are coincidental, the movie has some considerable historic value. Gianfranco Parolini directed the action scenes (the fight scenes were choreographed by Harris), who would reunite Harris and Kendall in the years to come in a series of spy movies.


Like most Sauerkraut westerns Pirates is a corny affair, but it's quite lively, a bit plot-heavy maybe, but good fun when you're in the mood for these type of movies. Rolf Kästel's cinematography is impressive, but the film has a rather odd look, due to the vivid, occasionally even dazzling colors of the costumes. Frank later confessed that they had been used shortly before in the Munich Carnaval Parade (2). Ein Bier, bitte.


Notes:

  • (1) Apart from this Blondie/Tuco scene, there's a scene with Parker (Kelly's mistress) arriving in the town of Helana which strongly reminded me of Jill's arrival in Flagstone (she's also dressed like Jill). A prison escape scene seems to have inspired Leone to a similar scene in For a Few dollars More and there's a (not very trustworthy) person in a wheelchair.
  • (2) Marco Giusti, Dizionario del western all'italiano


Wolf C. Hartwig

Although he produced a couple of westerns, Wolf C. Hartwig is probably best known to western fans as the producer of Sam Peckinpah's non-western movie Cross of Iron (in German: Steiner: Das Eizerne Kreuz).

Hartwig started producing movies in the fifties. Before he had been an interpreter (he had worked as such at the German headquarters in Paris during the war) and a language teacher. In 1954 he founded Rapid Films. He produced a series of adventure movies, often set in Asia and offering a (for the period) a daring amount of eroticism and violence. Some of the actors he worked with on a regular base were Lex Barker, Horst Frank and Frederick Stafford. He wasn't lucky with the western genre; he produced a few of his own but they weren't successful.

Hartwig finally struck gold with the first Schulmädchen Report movie. It was an erotic movie filmed in quasi-erotic style; it all looked like a documentary (a reporter interviewing schoolgirls), but people visited the movie not for the sociological information, but for the nudity. Six million Germans bought a ticket and Hartwig would produce no less than 12 sequels.

Hartwig was a fan of war novels and had long been dreaming about a large-scale war movie, telling the Russian campaign told from the German viewpoint. Cross of Iron was a very troubled production and it wasn't the international success he had hoped for, but the movie did very well in Germany itself.

Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies.