Il piombo e la carne (1965)

Director:

Marino Girolami

Writers:

Gino De Santis (screenplay)
Gino De Santis (story)

Release Date:

28 July 1967 (Finland)

Genre:

Western

Cast

Rod Cameron	...	Nathaniel Masters
Patricia Viterbo	...	Mabel Masters
Ennio Girolami	...	Sam Masters (as Thomas Moore)
Bruno Piergentili	...	Chata (as Dan Harrison)
Manuel Zarzo	...	Nelson Masters
Carla Calò	...	Master's Maid (as Carrol Brown)
Alfredo Mayo	...	Mortimer Lasky
Julio Peña
Piero Lulli	...	Jonathan
Tota Alba	...	Minnea
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Edy Biagetti
Antonio Danesi		(as Tonino Danes)
Consalvo Dell'Arti	...	Judge
Ignazio Dolce
Franco Latini
Manuela Lupo
George Lynn
Dante Maggio	...	Bob Raskin
Enzo Maggio	...	Ciente Bari
Marco Mariani
Marisa Quattrini
Ignazio Spalla	...	Slim McClear

Also Known As:

Bullet in the Flesh (USA) (TV title)
Bullets and the Flesh (USA)
El sendero del odio (Spain)
I sentieri dell'odio (Italy)
Les sentiers de la haine (France)

Runtime:

93 min

Country:

Spain | Italy | France

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16

Company:

Bercol Films

Early Eurowestern Melodrama

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Il piomo e la carne is an early, obscure Western alla Italiana closer in look and feel to the German Winnetou films or to pre-Leone westerns like Gunfight At Red Sands (1963). Sergio Leone successfully translated the genre into an Italian sensibility (the Marchent brothers did the same for Spanish westerns). Before Fistful of Dollars (1964), the films were an odd bricolage of earlier American westerns, attempting to recreate the feel of the American genre. The results were a number of odd films that are equally ridiculous, surreal, and enjoyable in their enthusiasm for the genre – enthusiasm for dressing up in cowboy hats and strapping on holsters (or warpaint, the mask of Zorro, and so on). The bright cartoonish colors, a sense of phoniness that removes them from the real world, and crude execution give them something of the feel of comics or of the cover illustrations on dime novels. This is not to say that most of them are good, but they can be enjoyable in their own way.

Il piombo e la carne is a Romeo and Juliet story focusing on the relationship of a Cherokee chief Chata (Piergentili) and the Mabel (Viterbo), the daughter of Nathaniel Masters (Cameron). Chata has been meeting Mabel and playing with her brothers since they were children. Masters, driven by hatred over the infidelity of his ex-wife when he was at war, has slowly been strangling to death the Cherokee, recently stealing their last fields. They are forced to sell trinkets in the streets. Masters and a wealthy backer, Mortimer (Mayo), have a contract to supply timber to the railroad, but his timber holdings are inferior to those of the Cherokee. They burn the forest and blame Chata, justifying their theft of the tribe's forest, which they consider sacred. Chata is sent to prison and forsaken by Mabel. When he returns after one year, he attempts to resist the treatment of his community and violence erupts.

Much of the movie is pretty hokey with Italian or Spanish extras in "red-face" (as Cherokee) or black-face (a "mammy-type" servant). These Cherokee are a strange amalgam of any scavenged gesture or prop signifying "Indian" – totem poles, warbonnets, vaguely African masks hung in wigwams, and so on. In a way this is no less ridiculous than practices in earlier American westerns, but in these early eurowesterns it is brought to the fore and is really surreal; Sergio Corbucci would slyly play off of this in his clever Navajo Joe (Yes, the casting of Burt Reynolds as a Navajo Brave is ludicrous; that's the whole point!). However, there are some interesting aspects: There is a hint of interesting psychological and story-telling subtly in the motivation of Viterbo's character forsaking lover for family; there is the usual eurowestern view that those in power are corrupt and essentially no more than common thieves, something emphasized by the surname of Rod Cameron's character "Masters" (think Day of Anger, Django, Price of Power, Tepepa, The Big Gundown, Sabata, Vengenance Trail, Flying Fists of Shanghai Joe); and there is the recurrent spaghetti western theme of the role of racism which may reflect the view from the Mediterranean of the American civil rights movements of the 1960s (as in many of the already listed movies).

Piergentili is not an inspiring lead. Easily the best performance was provided by Luigi Pistili in one of his rare good-guy roles as a pistol-packing preacher. He is a familiar face to fans of the genre, appearing in 34 other films. Director Marino Girolami directed 77 films in a long career. His son Ennio has a role in this movie. His brother Enzo Castellari is one of the most popular directors in Italian popular cinema, directing the excellent WAI Johnny Hamlet (1968) and Keoma (1976), as well Inglorious Bastards (1978) which was recently remade by Quentin Tarantino.

(I watched a fullscreen print that was somewhat faded.)