The Hills run red Review

Director: Carlo Lizzani - Cast: Thomas Hunter, Henry Silva, Dan Duryea, Nando Gazzolo, Nicoletta Machiavelli, Gianni Serra, Geoffrey Copplestone, Guglielmo Spoletini, Loris Loddi - Music: Ennio Morricone

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With its revenge story and setting in the aftermath of American Civil war, The Hills Run Red seems to serve a typical spaghetti western dish. But Spanish locations and some outrageous violence put aside, the film is often more in line with the psychological Hollywood westerns of the fifties by the likes of Anthony Mann or Budd Boetticher. Tom Betts noticed some similarities of the film's plot with Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks. Officially it's a Spanish-Italian co-production, but the Spanish Cb Films Studios, located near Barcelona, were working under the umbrella of United Artists.

The story is as follows: shortly after the end of the Civil War, two southerners, Brewster (Hunter) and Seagal (Gazzolo), have laid their hands on a Yankee payroll. The Union army is on their trail and when they are about to be captured, they decide to split up: Brewster plays decoy and disappears behind bars, Seagal escapes with the money and promises to look after his friend's wife and child. Five horrible prison years later, Brewster finds his home derelict, his wife dead and his son missing. Seagal has become a powerful land owner and horse-trader; he has 'adopted' Brewster's son (and told the boy his father is dead). Seagal orders his psychopathic henchman Mendez to kill Brewster, but with the help of a mysterious stranger called Getz, Brewster survives the ambush ...

Director Lizzani recuperated two American actors from favourite American westerns: he had seen Dan Duryea in Winchester '73 and Henry Silva in The Tall T. The aging Duryea (he died two years later of cancer) looks old and tired, but turns in a touching performance as the stranger Getz, whose identity and motivation are only revealed in the film's final scene. Silva overacts, but also dominates every scene he's in with his strong screen presence, his crazy laugh and dirty tricks. As a result the film's logical main villain, Gazzollo, is almost totally eclipsed. Silva was modeled after Dirk Bogarde in The Singer not the Song and his performance was very influential; Corbucci most probably modeled Jack Palance's Ricciolo/Curly after him. Giusti calls him one of the greatest villains in spaghetti western history (1). It's bizarre that Silva was never asked for a spaghetti western again.

The script, by Dean Craig (2), combines Leonesque influences such as gang infiltration and warring factions with an Americanized story about revenge and redemption. Lizzani keeps up the pace and makes the most of some of the more sentimental story elements. The relationship of Hunter with his son is not too embarrassing (if the boy looks familiar: he also played the young Silence) and the scene, in which Duryea's identity is revealed and Hunter's character is redeemed, is very well handled. But the film is very uneven and some of the dialogue is awful. To make things worse, the script was tampered with and a completely superfluous final scene (shot in the garden of a Roman villa, so it seems) was added to the movie, in which deceased characters suddenly re-appear.

According to Lizzani, Thomas Hunter thought he was a Henry Fonda, but never showed any dedication to the job; his performance is awful (a third rate imitation of one of Jimmy Stewart's obsessed characters from a Mann movie). The best remembered scene is a very sudden and bloody shootout in a saloon, introduced by Silva's hasta la vista. Toni Secchi's cinematography is quite inventive with a camera shooting through windows, doors and interstices, giving the viewer the impression that he's in the middle of the action. Morricone's score is, like the movie, a mix of more classical and typical Italian influences.

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Notes:

• (1) Marco Giusti, Dizionario del western all'italiano

• (2) There has been a lot of discussion about the name 'Dean Craig'. In Roberto Poppi and Mario Pecorari's Dizionario del cinema italiano it is attributed to Piero Regnoli, but some sources keep insisting on Mario Pierotti, even though the name 'Dean Craig' keeps popping up after Pierotti's death. On IMBD Pierotti is called one more pseudo of Regnoli, but italian sources strongly deny this. See for all this:
  • Gianfranco Casadio: Se sei Vivo Spara! Storie di pistoleri, banditi e bounty killers (Ravenna, 2004)
  • http://it.movies.yahoo.com/u/un-fiume-di-dollari/index-122027.html

By-- Scherpschutter