Obviously, this sparked thousands of angry men to spend countless hours writing posts, making Youtube videos, and harrassing people online about how feminism and cultural marxism were ruining the world.
Using the 1969 internet..
Blindman is a Western version of Zatoichi. The back of of the box even boasts this.
How much sexual content is the average spaghetti western? Is this going to be a Blind Dead scenerio, where the "forbidden sexuality" is about as extreme as those 8th grade sex ed videos?
Also, the Roger Ebert quote is pretty misleading. He was referring to Crimson Bat.
So this is my review of a Grindhouse exploitation Italian Western shot in Rome and Spain in which Ringo Starr plays the antagonist to a blind bounty hunter.
The opening shot is amazing and I hope they do something similar if they ever make a Dark Tower movie.
It sure would be silly to open the Dark Tower movie in the Algul Siento, which doesn't appear until a pivotal scene in the seventh book.
Wouldn't that be silly?
The blindman fled across the desert and Ringo Starr followed. Maybe.
He enters a town:
This had better not be the extent of the More Sexual Content Than The Average Spaghetti Westerntm.
His hat is pulled over his eyes. For the reveal of his blindness later.
Oh, sorry. Spoiler alert: He's blind.
He rides around the town for a few minutes, until a man comes out of a store.
The gunslinger asks where a man named Skunk is. The man replies the "funeral parlor" and we get the reveal.
Damnit, Zoltan et the eyes again.
Did I choose this movie just to rant about the Dark Tower movie?
Of course not. They never made a Dark Tower movie.
The gunslinger asks whether the church has a tower.
Look, I really, really don't want to spend this entire review complaining about the Dark Tower movie. But it's so tempting.
The gunslinger shoots the bell at the top of the tower and wakes up the town.
Skunk comes out of a house and asks what the gunslinger wants. the gunslinger replies "my 50 women" and I regret my line about feminism at the beginning of this review.
Skunk claims that he doesn't have the women and makes a homophobic joke.
Man, I missed watching these exploitation movies.
The gunslinger has to transport the women to the miners. Domingo has the women. Skunk tells him that he is in Mexico. \
Every night, the gunslinger asks the lord where his friends are. What a smooth way to establish character.
Oh, also he blows up the building with Skunk.
The gunslinger rides across the desert in a sequence that looks exactly as I imagine it will be in the upcoming Dark Tower movie.
They're including the second book.
The gunslinger comes across a man in a hut and reveals his name: Blind Man Ciego.
Ciego asks where Mexico is. The man points, and Ciego goes.
Okay, hold up. The movie established that Ciego is blind when he had to feel the arm of the man pointing towards the church.
Nine minutes in and already an inconsistency. Not good.
This bothered me so much that I went back. Apparently Ciego told the man to show the horse. Sorry for doubting the integrity of Blindman
Ciego looks at a map to confirm that Mexico is indeed south of Texas. He enters another village.
There are many long shots of Ciego just standing or walking around.
Ciego asks for a room at an inn. The inkeeper tries to light a candle.
Ciego says no to the candle, but asks for a prostitute.
Said prostitute enters, strips, and lies down next to Ciego.
Have I mentioned that I miss doing exploitation movies? Her name is Margerita.
Ciego asks whether she knows where Domingo is. She claims ignorance, but relents when he offers money.
She accepts the money in exchange for screwing someone over.
Margerita tells him to talk to Pilar's father. Who is Pilar? No idea.
Ciego asks Pilar's father where Domingo is, but three characters plus Ringo Starr ride into the village and ask for Pilar. Pilar is a prostitute.
One of the them is named Pedro and uses a guitar to announce their arrival to Pilar and remind me that I could be watching Man of la Mancha or something.
Ringo Starr plays Candy, Domingo's brother.
Hold on. Ciego has been searching for information about Domingo for long enough to justify a traveling montage across the desert. A few seconds after he asks the person who knows about Domingo, Domingo's brother shows up.
So far, this adaptation of The Dark Tower has been better than I thought, but contrivences like this are bringing it down
The other men barge in and drag out Pilar. Candy and Pilar ride away into the horizon. As they leave, Pilar's father calls Candy a pig. Keep that in mind.
The remaining men beat up Pilar's father. Ciego, the gunslinger who was hired to escort 50 male-ordered mail-order brides to Mexico, gives them a lesson in morality
Ciego: Peace brothers. There's enough hate in this world. All we have to do is try to love one another.
After discovering that he is blind, the men force him to dance and shoot at his feet. Ciego falls down, and retaliates with some gunshots.
I'm glad there is at least some gunplay in this film about a gunslinger.
At Candy's brothel, woman splash water onto the naked prostitutes. The camera holds on them for a long time.
Not because they are naked. Because this movie holds on every shot for a long time.
Also because they are naked.
Candy and Pilar are traveling back to the brothel. They sleep in a tent the first night and share some meaningful lines.
Candy: You are my woman. You understand?
Pilar: I will never be your woman.
This dialogue is an improvement over the dialogue in The Dark Tower (2017).
Now some soldiers wander into the brothel and the prostitutes parade in front of them
Ciego and Pilar's father reach the brothel. The soldiers have exposed the breasts of many prostitutes.
I am more intrigued at who thought this was a good decoration for a brothel.
This is Domingo. Not the skeleton, the guy facing the camera.
Ciego somehow got into the brothel, shoots a gun and gets the attention of everyone.
Ciego, the riteous gunslinger, asks for his 50 women to fulfill his contract with Skunk.
Domingo asks to see the contract. In the most hilarious contract related joke since A Night at the Opera, Domingo claims he can't read.
Domingo burns the contract and tells Ciego that he burnt the contract. Because he is blind.
"Fight" scene. Domingo throws Ciego around and kicks him. I honestly thought that there would be more gunplay in . Even Crimson Bat I: Crimson Bat, The Blind Swordswoman had a swordsfight pretty early on.
Maybe Ciego doesn't want to accidentally hit the prostitutes. That's understandable. What isn't understandable is the lack of gunplay almost one third into this movie.
Domingo kicks Ciego out of the brothel. Then he hosts a meal for the soldiers. The soldiers hand over $50,000 in silver coins in exchange for the prostitutes.
$50,000 in 1971 equals about $308,440.95 in 2017.
I'm not going to calculate the inflation of silver.
Dmonigo has a snake around his wrist.
I think that means he is bad.
Candy walks into a room in the brothel and asks Pilar who killed his men.
Ciego confront him.
Ciego: I didn't see a thing.
The soliders wait for the display of the prostitutes. Instead, Domingo and his men shoot all the soldiers. This might be a good twist if I cared about the plot.
The soldiers at the table are still alive. Until Domingo's men kills everyone except a leader, who is worth some money.
It's really difficult to care about any of this. All I can think of is how far the plot has strayed from The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
Ciego waits by a train, still holding Candy at gunpoint. Domingo and his men approach. Domingo promises that he has the 50 women.
The women board the train and the conductor counts them. Ciego releases Candy and somehow there is over an hour of movie left.
Candy and Domingo have the following brilliant exchange:
Candy: You're gonna let him go?
Domingo: That's right
Candy: Well I'm going to stop him.
Ciego creepily caresses women's faces. One of them pull a gun on him.
Something about "woman having autonomy" really clashes with the overall themes of Blindman.
The train goes back to the brothel. Ciego eats alone. For a long time.
If my synopsis so far (42 minutes into movie) has been muddled, boring, and thin...that means I am accurately conveying the movie!
There are three solid minutes of Ciego eating.
Which are three of the best minutes in the film.
Not a joke. Domingo and Candy put a snake in the bowl of food and for two minutes, a competent series of images flash across the scene.
A first for this movie!
Seriously, this is a suspenseful scene for What Ever Happened To Blind Man?
Ciego senses the snake and ruins the scene.
Ciego: What kind of a son of bitch puts a snake in a man's food?
He says this before flinging the snake off of him.
Candy and Domingo enter and laugh.
Ciego claims that if he dies, they will never see Pilar again.
Ciego says that he has Pilar and at this point, I don't know whether he is telling the truth. Last time Pilar was in the movie, she was in the brothel. Why is the movie so complicated
Candy and Domingo torture Ciego as the prostitutes look on. Torture involves being yanked up and down on chains.
This doesn't work. Candy threatens to break every bone in his body unless he tells him where Pilar is.
This is a lie, because the next scene is a new interrogation technique. Now there is a fuse going towards his genitals. And the fuse slowly burns. You know, this is a surprisingly suspenseful scene as well. Especially for The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger.
The prostitutes watch.
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"Damn it, this is the fourth time this week!"
|
Candy cuts off the fuse before castration. Ciego reveals that Pilar is in a shepherd's house on a mountain outside the village.
Ciego spouts some patriarchial cisnormative toxic masculine philosophy about how his genitals are more important than his eyes because they define his manhood or something like that.
I'm more curious about whether this is the promised More Sexual Content Than The Average Spaghetti Western tm.
Now Candy and his men ride across the desert and nobody follows. They reach the hut.
Back at the brothel, Ciego is chained up outside the prostitutes' cell. He practices swinging on the chains and manages to kick Domingo. Ciego steals his gun and keys to the cell.
I was expecting a lot more of the violence in this movie to be gun-focused. Just saying.
Ciego opens the door to a cell and frees a prisoner. However, he makes the man go back and get his hat. How else will he be able to dramatically reveal that he is blind at the beginning of the next movie: The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three?
Ciego and the man try to escape, but they get caught at the doors. He shouldn't have wasted time retrieving the hat.
Finally a gunfight. Except the man doesn't really shoot as much as punch. Ciego shoots a few times.
They escape onto the roof. Ciego whistles to call two horses. He jumps on one. When the man tries to jump, Ciego whistles the other horse away as a joke.
Definitely risk breaking your only ally's legs for a joke. Good idea.
More riding across the desert. Ciego tells the man to leave him. Forget the line about the ally.
Candy and Domingo enter a town church and discuss the situation with the prostitute and not killing a blind man in front of a priest.
Domingo tells Candy to forget about Pilar. He has a good point. Candy doesn't think so and and a fight ensues.
Now Domingo decides to get Pilar for Candy. That character development took all of twenty seconds.
Pilar's father tells Ciego and Pilar that he found some dynamite in the cave that they are in.
I know rapidly jumping between locations is in the style of The Dark Tower but it doesn't work in movie form.
Ciego tell's Pilar's father to buy two additional wagons, fill them up with dynamite, and bring thin to Domingo's fort.
I just noticed that Ciego keeps bullets in his hat.
Pilar asks Ciego why he is helping and Ciego admits it's just for the money. I love this movie.
Pilar's father tries to get back to his wagon, but Candy accosts him about Pilar and Ciego. Candy stabs him for calling him a pig at the beginning of the movie. Totally worth planting that seed about four-five minutes ago.
Pilar tries to leave the cave, but Candy flees across the desert towards her. She runs back in and tells Ciego. Ciego plants some dynamite and tells Pilar to go towards the back entrance.
Candy's men approach on horseback and, in any other movie, this would be the climax. But there is still over half-an-hour left. There are a lot of scenes in this movie that could be climaxes. I guess that's why it's an exploitation movie.
The music is great.
Commenting on the music in a written review is not too useful, is it?
Ciego detonates the dynamite and closes in the front entrance. He also apparently blew up whatever was playing the great music.
Candy gets into the cave first and gets upset by Pilar's underwear hung on a clothesline.
I have to complain about this scene. Ciego blew up several sticks of dynamite around the cave, causing falling rocks to seal off entrances, and the vibrations kept the flimsy clotheline and underwear up?
Don't try to convince me that Ciego kept a clothesline and pair of Pilar's underwear lying around, set up and detonated a series of dynamite sticks, and then hung up the clothesline and underwear in the few seconds before Candy came in just to be petty.
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| More Sexual Content Than The Average Spaghetti Westerntm |
Ciego shoots Candy and escapes out the back entrance with Pilar.
This should be the ending. They killed the villain and escaped. But the movie is only two thirds done.
Domingo and his men enter the cave. Right. They find Candy's body.
Pilar and Ciego enter Domingo's fort. Pilar finds her father's body,' Ciego grabs a maid, forcing her to sing.
This is a clever parallel to the beginning of the movie, where Domingo's men forced Ciego to sing.
Her singing draws the attention of Domingo's sister. Ciego grabs her and forces her to open thhe cell with the fifty prostitutes.
They escape onto a few wagons.
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| Awfully small number of fifty prostitutes |
Meanwhile, Domingo and his men ride across the desert towards the cave. The "fifty" prostitutes jump out of the wagons and run away from Domingo's men. Domingo shoots a few of them.
At this point, I've completely lost track of everyone's motivations. The movie is still great though.
Domingo' men surround the prostitutes around a pole with their horses, evoking carousel imagery which means...
Which means...
Hey, one of the woman's tops is pulled down! Again!
Domingo shoots a few more women until he spots Pilar. He orders his servant to bring her to him.
Ciego ties up Domingo's sister and rips her clothes off. Of course he does.
Afterwards, Ciego blows up the entire village. Why is this guy the hero again?
Domingo and his men ride into town and find his sister tied up naked. Somehow having survived the explosions.
Domingo forces the other men away. Ciego flees across the desert and maybe Domingo follows. Ciego finds one of the empty wagons that originally held the prostitutes and decides to go investigate.
Cut to Candy's funeral.
They killed the advertised main Starr!
Some people release doves.
It's symbolic of the peace that will surely fill the final 24 minutes of this movie.
They pray and men in black enter with bells and candles.
I really do like the look of this man in black.
I hope they cast someone similar for the upcoming Dark Tower movie and not just a big name like, say, Matthew McConaghay.
Pilar, dressed in a white dress and silly crown, approaches the coffin.
Domingo announces that Pilar will still marry Candy.
The priest reminds Domingo that, despite the movie being okay with treating woman as property and sexual coercion, necrophilia is still frowned upon.
(Side Note: If you have been looking for a "good" necrophilia-based horror-comedy(?) about cystic fibrosis, watch Excision. I enjoyed it, but it was probably pretty bad. Very disturbing)
Domingo grabs Pilar and claims he will marry her without a priest. "Marrying" in this context is stabbing her with a knife. Different cultures have different tradition.
At this exact moment, Ciego ignites some explosives. Ciego sure is good at timing things.
Ciego rides into town and taunts Domingo. He rides away and intentionally falls off his horse so that the men will ride away from him. That's pretty clever.
Ciego and Pilar reunite. Ciego is in barn when Domingo's sister jumps him, knocking him over with a pot.
This entire movie is just characters appearing in locations for no reason.
Ciego strangles her with his legs. Again, not a lot of shooting from this alleged gunslinger.
Domingo's men have guessed that Ciego is at the fort, so they go back. After confirming, they ride back to get Domingo.
There are about twenty minutes left and it doesn't feel like the movie is approaching a climax any more than the other times the movie appeared to approach a climax.
Ciego and Pilar ride to find a place to hide. On a white horse. Domingo's men spot it easily.
They ride to a cemetery. BAD IDEA. One of the men goes back to get Domingo. Again.
Finally we have a good gunfight. Ciego hide behind a barn and shoots the men as they appear. He hits one with his rifle, drops it, and scampers away. Damn it.
Pilar and Ciego enter the barn and ambush one of Domingo's main men. Ciego drops a shovel to judges how far down a drop is and then jump to attack the man.
Domingo and his men flee across the desert and nobody follows.
Pilar and Ciego confront Domingo in a cemetery. This is the climax. Unlike the other five climaxes.
Ciego tells Pilar to get down on the ground and drops his rifle. Domingo raises his gun and the most ridiculous twist in the movie happens.
Remember those soldiers who were last in the movie about an hour ago?
Apparently, Ciego created an alliance with them off screen and arranged for them to be waiting right behind the graveyard for this moment.
Makes sense.
As much sense as anything else in this movie.
Domingo and his head man retreat to a barn. Another one. The soldier shoot the head man and Ciego follows Domingo into the barn.
Following the tradition, the final confrontation of this movie involves no gunfighting. Just a lot of punching and hitting.
Domingo does point his gun at Ciego, but, in another astonishingly silly twist, a general pops out and burns Domingo's eyes with his cigar.
This poetic justice would be a lot more effective if Domingo's vendetta against Ciego stemmed from Ciego's blindness instead of the whole "you killed my brother" thing.
Yes, I am critiquing the poetic justice of an exploitation film about a blind gunslinger featuring Ringo Starr as the villain.
Domingo scampers around, finds his gun, and attempts to shoot Ciego. Ciego casually shoots and kills Domingo.
The moral is "Smoking solves all your problems."
Ciego shoves some dynamite into Domingo's mouth, tells him he is fucked, and flees across the desert with Pilar.
This is a whole lot more realistic than the final confrontation in The Dark Tower (2017). Even taking into account the magic.
Ciego finally tells the general for what this entire quest was about: getting the $50,000 for delivering the women.
This theme is explored in the following dialogue.
General: But why do you love money so much?
Ciego: I like to buy things.
Also, the building explodes, making the head soldier laugh. They leave as friends.
With two minutes left, Pilar informs Ciego that the general left with the fifty women. Ouch.
The general flees across the desert and the blindman follows.
Blindman is a lot of fun. It doesn't take itself seriously at all and is one of the best movies I've covered.
I can definitely say that this is the best Dark Tower movie I've seen all year.
The joke being that this is the only Dark Tower movie I've seen this year.
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