still Cipolla colt (Enzo Castellari, IT/ES/DE 1975)

Spaghetti on Sixteen Night

Koolhoven & Simons: Spaghetti on Sixteen Night

Koolhoven & Simons celebrate an exceptional centenary: it’s one hundred years since Kodak launched 16mm film. A lot of Spaghetti Westerns were shot on 35mm and then transposed to a smaller format, to be shown during flights and in various small venues.

A lot of low-budget films used to be shot on 16mm. Light, handy 16mm cameras were also favoured by documentary and experimental filmmakers in the 1960s and ’70s, including makers associated with New Direct Cinema and the nouvelle vague. 16mm meant you could film on the streets and improvise, and what’s more it was cheap. An then there was the fact that 16mm-copies brought genre movies outside the realm of luxury cinemas.

Ronald Simons: “In the sixties and seventies most Spaghetti Westerns were shot in 35mm; some of the titles were copied on to 16mm film, to show them during intercontinental flights; these 16mm copies were also shown in the vast growing network of municipal community centers."

Tonight we have two examples of ‘16mm Spaghetti’: the first a classic hunt for gold, starring the memorable Bud Spencer delivering his much feared ‘Big Thump on Top of the Head’ blows, the second a crazy comedy.

Programme

The Five Man Army (Un esercito di cinque uomini) (Don Taylor & Italo Zingarelli, IT/US 1969, 104’)
Dario Argento wrote the script for a western centered around a classical theme: the hunt for gold by five ruthless though likable scuundrels - the treasure being guarded by the soldiers of the Mexican army, fighting of the revolutionaries. Five men who are a Whole Army will do anything to get their gold! With dynamite, swords, bare fists and knives! Together they are unstoppable!
Cipolla Colt (Enzo Castellari, IT/ES/BRD 1975, 92’)
Hardboiled thriller and poliziotto director Enzo Castellari also tried his hand at making Westerns, in the ‘Spaghetti Comedy’ sub-genre. Is that all there is to say? Not at all – who else would make a simple onion farmer named ‘Onion’ the protagonist of a Western? Farmer Onion is played is played by none other than famous Italian actor Franco Nero. He is determined to protect his land from a money-grubbing oil baron; his onions do for him what the Colt does for the gunslinger – to find out how, you’ll have to watch the film… which was released in Germany with the title ‘Zwiebel Jack räumt auf’ (‘Onion Jack Clears Up’), and in the Netherlands as ‘Zeg het met uien’ (‘Say it With Onions’).