Castellari's Keoma was part of the late 1970's second wave of spaghetti westerns. It is typically considered one of the better entries in the genre, some even rate it as a classic alongside Leone's masterpieces. However, while it has clearly been attempted to make the film look stylish and sophisticated, and at a casual glance it does look pretty well made, a more in depth look shows that it falls quite a long way off the mark.

Basically, it's clear that what Castellari has is a bunch of director's tricks up his sleeve - slow motion, unconventional camera angles, subtle merges into flashbacks and so on - all of them thieved from the work of other filmmakers. That in itself is no bad thing - after all Tarantino has made a career out of doing the same - but the difference is that Castellari clearly has no idea how and when to use these techniques. He simply throws them in at every opportunity, so that they actually stick out rather than enhance the film. The most obvious example is the Sam Peckinpah style slow motion deaths after someone is shot. In Peckinpah's films it was used skilfully to highlight the brutality of certain killings here and there throughout the movie. In Keoma it is used more or less every time someone is shot - about forty or fifty altogether - totally losing any impact it might have had.

Add to this that Keoma is a completely boring spaghetti western character - basically just a hippy with a colt - and not one of Franco Nero's better performances. The dialogue is terrible. The plot is text book spaghetti western back-for-revenge. This movie doesn't really have a lot going for it.

And then there is the music, famous itself among spaghetti western fans for being almost unlistenably bad, which seems to sum up the feeling of the entire film. Quite a nice melody, but either sung in a piercing shriek by the female vocalist or an unnerving growl by the male vocalist.

In short Keoma is a perfect example of style over substance - it's all dazzling flair in an attempt to cover up a pretty poor film. Viewers should stick to the real classic spaghettis like Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci's work.

Director Castellari is nowadays perhaps best-known (if at all) by the younger generation of film buffs for one thing: making the original INGLORIOUS BASTARDS (1977), which Quentin Tarantino has been threatening to remake for years now. However, in my opinion, he should instead be remembered for making this impressive, belated Spaghetti Western gem.

An odd blend of violent action and heady mysticism apparently concocted by one of the credited screenwriters Luigi Montefiori (better known to hardened Euro-Cult fans as an actor under the alias of George Eastman) but, as star Franco Nero and Castellari himself state in the Anchor Bay DVD supplements, the script took so long to get written that they decided to work without one and make the dialogue up as they went along! That the end result is so satisfying (and practically unique in the subgenre) is a remarkable achievement in itself.

Keoma is a half-breed returning home from the American Civil War to find his hometown ravaged by the plague and overtaken by the villainous Caldwell (Donal O' Brien); among his cohorts are Nero's three half-brothers who had made his childhood a living hell, with his surrogate father (William Berger) and colored mentor turned banjo-playing town-drunk (Woody Strode) unable to do much to counter Caldwell's oppression. A Bergmanesque, cadaverous old woman is frequently seen roaming the streets dragging a cart behind her...

What follows is the typical confrontation between Good and Evil but Castellari infuses the familiar mixture with several directorial flourishes: occasionally striking compositions (particularly a memorably Fordian opening shot), frequent use of slow-motion in true Peckinpah-style, flashbacks in which Keoma is a spectator to his own past experiences (inspired by Elia Kazan's THE ARRANGEMENT [1969]!), a touch of elliptical editing, Christian symbolism (Keoma is crucified at one point) and, most distressingly of all, a folksy soundtrack (inspired by Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, no less and warbled...er...sung by a shrill, high-pitched female singer and an out-of-tune deep-voiced male) which narrates in song the action we're seeing on the screen. I say distressingly because the Guido and Maurizo De Angelis compositions found here have forever been a thorn in the side of even the film's staunchest admirers!! Personally, I didn't mind the female singer so much after a while but when her (possibly drunk) male companion took over in the last half hour, I was in for some cringe-inducing moments for sure...!

Despite these misgivings, the film is still one of the best Spaghetti Westerns out there (and certainly the last great example of the subgenre); its undoubted highlight is provided by a terrific, lovingly protracted action set-piece in which Nero, Berger and a reformed Strode (back to his former arrow-shooting glory - perhaps a nod to the role he played in Richard Brooks' splendid THE PROFESSIONALS [1966]) wipe out most of Caldwell's gang. Their triumph is short-lived, however, because both Berger and Strode lose their lives in the ongoing struggle (Berger poignantly so, while Strode's death scene is particularly great), with Nero almost bowing out himself under the strain of his siblings' torture - who have subsequently disposed of Caldwell and taken over the town themselves; the final confrontation, then, between Keoma and his three half-brothers is eerily set to the "strains" of Olga Karlatos' (playing a woman Keoma had earlier on saved from a plague-infested colony) wailing and screaming as she lies giving birth to a child amidst the carnage!

While at first I was disappointed that the Anchor Bay DVD only included the English dub, having watched it now it seems clear that the actors were all speaking their dialogue in English on the set - although, as connoisseurs will certainly know, this was all re-recorded back in the studios anyway (as was common practice in the Italian film industry). Still, if ever it gets shown again on Italian TV, I'll be sure to check it out just for completeness' sake. Thankfully, however, Castellari contributes a highly enthusiastic and informative Audio Commentary in which he discusses his major influences while making the film, among them Sidney J. Furie's THE APPALOOSA (1966), Altman's McCABE AND MRS. MILLER (1971) and Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973).

Ultimately, Franco Nero in the title role is almost as iconic a figure as Django and, hopefully, I should be getting to another fairly obscure but highly intriguing Spaghetti Westen of his - Luigi Bazzoni's MAN, PRIDE AND VENGEANCE (1968), an eccentric updating of Georges Bizet's opera "Carmen", co-starring Klaus Kinski and Tina Aumont - pretty soon...

Franco Nero (Django himself, as well as The Fifth Cord, The Visitor and many others) is Keoma, a half-breed survivor of the Civil War who has returned home to find his home destroyed by a plague and the gang leader Caldwell (Richard O'Brien, Zombi), who has Keoma's half-brothers on his side.

When our hero saves a pregnant yet plague-ridden woman (Olga Karlatos, Zombi) from Caldwell's men, he must go to war with his brothers while trying to mend fences with his father (William Berger) and his actual father figure, the freed slave George (former pro wrestler Woody Strode, Spartacus).

This sounds like a great set-up for a Western, but this movie transcends the genre thanks to a script written by George Eastman and the directorial skills of Enzo G. Castellari (1990: The Bronx Warriors, Warriors of the Wasteland). Beyond the extreme violence in nearly every scene, this movie boasts dramatic illusions that push it past the spaghetti genre and into a work of extreme drama. There are parts that remind me of a Japanese film as well as the next level of Western as prophecized by El Topo, a fact confirmed by Eastman's interview on this film's extras.

Throughout the film, Keoma is constantly visited by an old woman pulling a cart filled with army boots. In the filmed version, she is simply a woman who saved him during the massacre of a Native American camp, while the script had her as the personification of death itself, always chasing Keoma even as he saved others from her.

While sold in some countries as a Django film, this stands on its own. Starting with the Eastman script, Castellari rewrote on a daily basis with the help of his cast and crew, drawing inspiration from the works of Shakespeare and Peckinpah.

Adding to the mystical feel of the film is the soundtrack, which was composed by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis, who you may know better as Oliver Onions. They've scored plenty of Italian favorites, such as Torso, the theamtically similar western Mannaja, 2019: After the Fall of New York and, of course, the stunning theme song for Yor Hunter from the Future.

Arrow's new release of Keoma features a new 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative, the choice to enjoy the film in English or Italian (with newly translated English subtitles), audio commentary by spaghetti western experts C. Courtney Joyner and Henry C. Parke and tons of documentaries.

There's The Ballad of Keoma, a new interview with star Franco Nero; Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, a new interview with the director; Writing Keoma, a new interview with George Eastman (this is the entire reason I wanted this release to come out!); Parallel Actions, a new interview with editor Gianfranco Amicucci; The Flying Thug, a new interview with actor Massimo Vanni; Play as an Actor, a new interview with actor Volfango Soldati; Keoma and the Twilight of the Spaghetti Western, a newly filmed video appreciation by Austin Fisher; an archival piece called An Introduction to Keoma by Alex Cox; the original Italian and international theatrical trailers; a gallery of original promotional images from the Mike Siegel Archive and a reversible sleeve featuring the original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips (whose comic book Criminal is great).

The interview with Nero is worth the price of this disc, as his recollections are great. How does he look better at 78 than I do at 46? And when else are you going to find George Eastman discussing his writing or that Castellari has Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen in his mind for not only the soundtrack but the dialogue of his characters? Man - this is pretty much a dream release for me!

Of course, this being an Arrow release, everything is as perfect as it gets. The print is stunning, rich in both blackness and colors, while the presentation is, as always, the pinnacle of modern media releasing. This is a film that screams that it demands to be in your movie collection.

Supposedly, Castellari has a movie called The Fourth Horseman in pre-production, with Franco Nero (as Keoma), Sid Haig, Michael Berryman, Bill Mosely, Kane Hodder, Fabio Testi, George Hilton and Gianni Garko (as Sartana!) listed as the cast. If this movie happens, I might have to fly to Italy to see it in an actual theater. Or projected in a screen while people get drunk around me in the hills outside the city, old school Italian movie style.