LIVE FROM THE COUCH / Greg Walton

¡BASTARDOS!

Checking out another Tarantino influence.

For a man whose ego is so huge it dangles out a pantleg, Quentin Tarantino has rather selflessly goosed the careers of a half-dozen actors and raised the profile of innumerable obscure films. His stamp of approval on a DVD case is equivalent to Stephen King’s classic “I’ve seen the future of horror” quote… and about as reliable. But in the case of Enzo Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards (Severin Films, 99 minutes), he’s actually performing a public service.

While it’s far from Castellari’s best film, it’s easily his most ambitious, full of elaborate miniature work and matte paintings that create a believable WW2 backdrop for his Dirty Dozen rip-off about US Army prisoners caught behind enemy lines who wind up accidentally turning the tide of the war. For an Italian exploitation flick, the story is surprisingly chaste: plenty of bullets, only a few drops of blood and one glorious skinny-dipping scene. But it’s easy to see why QT identified with the film enough to steal the title for his next project (as well as sit down for an interview with Castellari on the DVD extras): It has the typical band of bad guys; characters with a cinematic self-awareness that they are characters, determined to one-up the celluloid creations that came before them.

The three-disc set (one for the remastered film, two for the extras, and three for the soundtrack CD) includes the aforementioned interview and a lengthy documentary that revisits the shooting experience with input from everyone from Fred “The Hammer” Williamson to German Soldier #2.

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.