EL ROJO (1966)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

The "fair mythicity" rating on EL ROJO isn't at all for the generally routine spaghetti-western plot, but for an assortment of odd little touches writer-director Leopoldo Savona throws into the mix. 

We open on the scene of a wagon-train family arriving at the site of their newly acquired land, where they intend to work a gold mine. Then everyone in the family gets shot dead by arrows-- yet we don't see any marauding Indians about. Years later, four stalwart citizens of a nearby town are celebrating how rich they are before the admiring townfolk. Then a mysterious arrow is shot from an unknown Indian assailant, just missing the luminaries-- all on the very same day that a laconic stranger named Joe (Richard Harrison) arrives in town. Can there be a connection between all of these events?

No surprises here: the four rich guys-- Navarro, Wallace, Laskey and Ortega-- made their riches by killing off the family of goldminers and then by acquiring their mine. However, one member of the family wasn't there to be slaughtered, and it's the laconic stranger named Joe, who's looking for revenge. The Indian sniper, who has no lines in the picture, witnessed the slaughter of the family. Maybe the association of their bloody deaths is why Joe is called "Rojo" just once-- not counting a very oblique reference at the movie's end.

Though Joe has four obnoxious targets for his revenge-- one of whom, Laskey, married a local girl, Consuelo, who was apparently Joe's girl at some time-- director Savona doesn't play up the action/violence scenes as one might expect of a 1966 spaghetti western. Yet ROJO does maintain a curious offbeat charm in some little details Savona throws in. On a couple of occasions, Joe offers cubes of sugar to acquaintances and never explains where he picked up this habit. During one of Joe's revenge-plots, an accomplice-- also a patent-medicine peddler-- sets up a means of distracting the town by offering to burn the Devil in effigy, an odd ritual that the locals immediately embrace. Joe snipes at Consuelo for having sold her soul to one of the rich guys, and the script seems to agree with Joe, for unlike the majority of spaghetti-heroines Consuelo bites the dust.

However, the oddest thing in ROJO is also the only element that makes the film an uncanny western. At one point, a gunhawk comes to town, wearing a black mask over the lower part of his face-- except once, when he removes the scarf and displays an extensive scar that would do Jonah Hex proud. One assumes that one of the villains summoned the outlaw, not least because he's billed as "Nero Burt"-- in English, "Black Bart." Yet Bart (Angelo Boscariol) doesn't make any moves on Rojo. Then, near the movie's end, when Joe has wiped out the last enemy, Bart shows up and utters some cryptic line to Joe about how "the red and the black are together at last." Then the movie just ends, implying-- possibly-- some equivalence between the righteous vengeance-seeker and the Man in Black.

Savona directed four or five westerns I've not seen, some period historicals and one horror movie with the wild-sounding title, "Byleth the Demon of Incest." I may check out other sagebrush sagas in Savona's ouevre to see if any of them are as oddball as ROJO.