IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, OF THE SON, AND OF THE COLT (1971)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

My review of CREEPING DEATH mentioned that writer-director Mario Bianchi had a long cinematic career, but not that most of it was in sex-films. However, according to IMDB his first two directorial efforts were "weird westerns." Neither of the oaters is all that great, but the first one is a little better-- and since Bianchi didn't contribute to COLT's script as he did to that of DEATH, I might be tempted to fault his writing-- if I didn't know Bianchi had also contributed to the script of Riccardo Freda's flawed but interesting TRAGIC CEREMONY.

  The script for COLT, in contrast to that of DEATH, might be unfocused. but it's better in terms of giving the viewer lots of cowpoke creepiness. The film starts as a stagecoach is held up by bandits dressed as saloon girls, who are under the command of outlaw Wace Cassidy (expatriate American actor Craig Hill). Two passengers Mister Pick and his daughter Toni (Francisco Sanz, Agata Lys) get special attention, with Pick forced to watch Cassidy rape Toni.

Four years later (though Bianchi takes his sweet time in establishing that fact) as the action moves to (and thereafter stays in) the cow-town where Sheriff Bill Nolan (also Hill) hangs his hat. He's been sheriff for some time, married to one Clarissa, but no one's noticed his uncanny resemblance to Cassidy, and when a wanted poster for Cassidy comes Nolan's way, he conceals it. Is the noble-seeming sheriff leading a double life?

Somehow I doubt Bianchi really expected viewers to buy an idea he barely bothered to sell, so he rather quickly reveals that Nolan and Cassidy are twins, and Nolan changed his name to distance himself from his evil brother. But Cassidy isn't the main menace here. It just so happens that it's Halloween (did anyone in the Old West celebrate the haunted holiday?) and that makes it easier for a mysterious, leather-masked plotter to move about. Some reviewers have seen "The Masked Thief" (as an alternate title for the film calls him) as an early slasher/giallo type. But though the Thief kills a couple of people, he has more in common with the masked masterminds of serials. He manipulates Nolan and Cassidy into almost killing each other-- I *think* in order to rip off a bank-- but when Nolan unmasks the Thief after a lively battle, I doubt anyone will care, any more than I did, when the mastermind's ID is revealed.

Bianchi blows a lot of potentially good subplots, as when Pick and Toni come to town to accuse the sheriff of Toni's rape and then largely disappear from the story. One might expect Clarissa to have a scene or two of emotional torment, but that expectation would be wrong. One reviewer liked Hill's Cassidy, but I thought he was too comically eee-vil, while Nolan was more suitably heroic. Still, COLT-- the title I've chosen to use here, just because it sounds cool despite meaning next to nothing-- is never dull, which is more than I could say about CREEPING DEATH.