Review: “Return Of Sabata” Not Dead On Arrival

It’s kind of ironic how two jokey American writers, who smugly tried to teach the world about the strange joys of terrible cinema, inadvertently highlighted a couple of inherent problems facing contemporary film criticism.

First, the pair – unwittingly one suspects – pointed out the sad truth that some movie scribes simply don’t have a sense of humour.

Second, they showed how a number of journalists who choose to write about films may not necessarily be qualified to do so.

In their 1978 book The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time (and how they got that way), Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss obviously enjoy pulling their targets apart, gleefully peppering their commentaries with a range of insults and sarcastic remarks aimed at making their readership titter along with their syntactical hijinks.

And, in an effort to verify their arguments, they include snippets from some of the contemporary reviews written by a number of leading critics and published in the popular press just as the films were being released.

To be fair, this amusing duo was regularly on the money. There were, though, other moments when perhaps they missed a glaring point or two about the works they were gleefully dissecting.

A case in point would be their entry on Gianfranco Parolini’s 1972 spaghetti western Return of Sabata, in which the boys conclude their plot summary section with this observation: “The words ‘The End’ at long last appear across Sabata’s face, which is positioned dead centre on the screen like a target. Viewers who wish to attend this epic fully prepared are advised to bring their darts.”

Later, they describe the movie’s lead, Lee Van Cleef, as bearing a “stunning resemblance to a six foot tall rodent with a moustache”, and whose “pointed nose, menacing piercing eyes and grim little mouth are there – all that is missing is (sic) whiskers.”

The authors are also quick to use their poison pens to bring down Giampiero Albertini’s eccentric portrayal of a corrupt Irishman: “… his crude impersonation of a leprechaun brings to mind the pathetic confusion of those 19^th century Japanese artists who portrayed the first Westerners to visit their country.”

Additionally, when addressing the efforts of the other actors in the movie, Medved and Dreyfuss are just as snarky, saying they “have all the animation of the mechanically moving tin cut-outs in a shooting gallery”.

“They die in the best operatic style, staggering around clutching their chests, or collapsing in quivering jerking heaps,” they continue.

“One might think that the victims in this film were trying to pioneer a new dance craze. We wish them luck.”

Meanwhile, as they backed up their acrid assertions by referencing contemporary critiques, Medved and Dreyfuss, it seems, chose the most acerbic bits of prose they could find.

Take, for instance, Kathleen Carroll of The New York Daily News: “Italian western heroes never die, but, oh, how one wishes they would fade away.” Then there’s The New York Times’ Roger Greenspun, who accused Parolini of “sometimes to be mounting grand opera, sometimes to be interpreting (Franz) Kafka and sometimes to be decorating a Christmas tree.”

Even Movies on TV’s Steven H Scheuer found himself included in the act: “Lowest rating! Insanity out west, junk on the screen.”

Misunderstood intentions

Admittedly, this sort of knee-jerk response is understandable given anyone who watched Return of Sabata back in 1972 would no doubt have found it reasonably perplexing if they simply didn’t like spaghetti westerns or – more to the point – couldn’t grasp exactly what Parolini (aka Frank Kramer) and his co-writer Renato Izzo were trying to achieve.

Plus there’s absolutely no denying this film, which is a loose sequel to the 1969 Van Cleef-led Sabata, is actually quite bonkers and, at face value, remarkably loopy.

But, as Austin Fisher – author of 2011’s Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western: Politics, Violence and Popular Italian Cinema – points out in the extras included with Eureka Entertainment’s Blu-ray issue of the movie, there are sound reasons for this.

According to the writer, Return of Sabata came out between the Enzo Barboni-directed They Call Me Trinity (1970) and its 1971 follow-up Trinity is Still my Name, two mostly benign Italian western spoofs which proved to be surprisingly popular with audiences across the globe.

“So we can see quite a common pattern of genre evolution happening here,” Fisher explains.

“When a genre has been around for a long time it’s a very well-known fact that as the conventions of the genre become slightly clichéd, they become, perhaps, slightly old hat – they become a bit stale; the genre tries to rework itself.

“And it often does that through self-referential parody – through comedy – and that’s exactly what’s happening at this point in the spaghetti western’s evolution, and that’s what we can see with Return of Sabata.”

So in effect what Fisher is saying is this movie is not meant to be taken seriously at all, but in fact is being played for laughs.

Would this have meant, though, that had writers like Medved and Dreyfuss – as well as all of the other critics who hated the film when it was first released – taken this on board, they may have perceived it differently?

Perhaps, but the chances are most of them probably would have got stuck into it anyway on the grounds it’s not really a great comedy unless one is a true fan of the genre and is willing to overlook its sheer bizarreness.

Or, to put it another way, this is a movie which requires more than a modicum of background knowledge and patience.

Odd happenings

A case-in-point is the film’s almost absurd opening salvo, when it appears Sabata is engaged in a cat-and-mouse gun battle to the death with a bunch of men inside what looks like an elaborately designed barn.

The lighting (by Sandro Mancori), with its green and red hues, wouldn’t look out of place in a Dario Argento giallo movie (or a Hammer horror one for that matter), while – in a surrealist touch – a row of well-dressed fellows sit at a table at one side of the room ticking off the kills. Then, when it’s all over, a circus clown (Sandro Scarchilli) and his team come barging in, accompanied by carnival music, during a moment which adds a touch of Federico Fellini to the whole thing.

Yes – Sabata has become a performer in some kind of travelling sideshow, a development that seems a little unusual given the indestructibly nomadic gun slinging persona he nurtured in the first two films (1969’s Sabata and Return of Sabata the following year) looks out of place in a carnival.

From here on in the narrative – which is similarly structured to the first instalment of this alleged trilogy – gets stranger and becomes (depending on one’s disposition) annoyingly convoluted.

To begin with, Sabata forms an uneasy alliance with the double crossing Clyde (Reiner Schone), an old Confederate army buddy who owes him $5000 and just so happens to manage Hobsonville’s local saloon/gambling den.

Together, they team up with a pair of acrobats (Nick Jordan aka Aldo Canti and Karis Vassili aka Vassili Karis), in addition to a drum beating narrator of sorts (Pedro Sanches aka Ignazio Spalla), to take on town heavy Joel McIntock* (Albertini) with the aim of first finding, and then pilfering, the crooked Irishman’s stashed wealth.

As with its 1969 predecessor, Return of Sabata is full of twists and red herrings – so many in fact they pretty much render the plot nonsensical.

Clyde, for example, can’t resist trying to undermine or betray the savvy protagonist at just about every given opportunity, yet their “partnership” continues until the end of the film.

Meanwhile, in another piece of convolution, it turns out McIntock’s safe of cash – monies collected from the denizens of Hobsonville in the form of unreasonably steep taxes – is loaded with counterfeit currency, prompting the gunslinger (as in the first instalment) to threaten the businessman with a bit of blackmail.

There’s even a scene when a gang of out-of-town hombres (from a place called Redstone) turn up to kill Sabata for having dumped one of their sisters at the altar (and leaving her pregnant to boot). As it turns out, this episode – which occurs about 70 minutes into the narrative – marks the first proper acts of on-screen death (aside from the earlier discovery of a murdered showgirl), effectively putting to rest Medved and Dreyfuss’ assertion that the titular character “goes around town killing everybody in sight until he finds the Irishman”.

Additionally, the authors wrongly claim Sabata wants to seduce McIntock’s wife Jackie – played by Jacqueline Alexandre – when in fact she is actually his fiancé and it is the conniving Clyde with whom she is having an affair.**

Unexpected victory?

Return of Sabata may not be as good as its 1969 forerunner (it doesn’t, for example, have any quirky hidden subtexts or an exploding horse; plus the bad guys are nowhere near as colourful) – and, combined, both instalments appear to be quite a different beast than Adios Sabata, wherein a more serious (not to mention athletic) Yul Brynner takes on the title role.

But like the first chapter, it’s kind of fun. Moreover – and this isn’t necessarily a badge of honour given the plot is so confusing – it is a work which requires at least a couple of viewings, even it is just to confirm how peculiarly astonishing the whole thing really is.

In their book, Medved and Dreyfuss also include a snippet from Donald J Mayerson’s review of the film in Cue which goes some way towards summing up the problems one might encounter when approaching a movie of this nature.

“(It) is so muddled and plodding on the screen that I noticed not only members of the audience sleeping, but one reviewer as well,” he wrote.

“I envied them!”

Looking at this rationally, Mayerson is both right and wrong.

There’s no denying the off-the-wall Return of Sabata is all over the shop, but in a strange way this is part of its appeal. Its delivery is haphazard, the narrative sometimes borders on the surreal, there’s perhaps a tad too much slapstick on display, bits of the score (by Marcello Giombini) resemble surf music and, ultimately, it is packaged like a comic book. Furthermore, it seems, Parolini and Izzo didn’t want it any other way.

Assuming this is correct, had Mayerson not left his sense of humour at the cinema’s entrance when he sat through this – and had he been aware that what he was witnessing was not an aberration, but something Fisher calls genre evolution – the thought of sleep most likely wouldn’t have crossed his mind.

FOOTNOTES

*In the IMDb and Wikipedia pages for the film he’s called Joe McIntock, but it’s definitely Joel. There are no credits at the end of the movie to unequivocally verify this, though.

**When it comes to getting it wrong Leonard Maltin – who gives the film one-and-a- half stars out of four in his movie guide – goes quite a step further, saying the story sees Van Cleef “chasing down some baddies who bilked him out of $5000”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss: Return of Sabata, The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time (and how they got that way), Angus and Robertson (various locations), 1978, pp 186-191

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