THE EL HEAD FILMOGRAPHY
DEVIL OF THE WEST
A PRICE ON THE HEAD
HEAD HUNTERS OF THE WEST
THE VENGEANCE OF EL HEAD
EL HEAD AND LIZARD BOY
DEMONS AND DESPERADOS
WEIRD, WEIRD WEST
DIRECTOR: William Nigh
PRODUCER: Larry Darmour
SCREENPLAY: Warren Fitzroy
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Roy Winslow
MUSIC: Sid Mantell
CAST: Richard Dix (POUL/PATRICK ICHABOD) Ralph Bellamy (DOC RYAN) Bela Lugosi (DAVIDOVICH) Ralph Forbes (IRVING) Tom Tyler (BEAR MARKS) Movita (SENORITA CARITA) RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes
SYNOPSIS: Five strangers in a posse ride into a strange valley in the middle of Nevada desert. They find a small amount of gold. When it comes to splitting the gold, four of the partners, while in a drunken rage, decapitate the fifth, Poul Ichabod and cut off his arms. Then they ride off.
A day or so later Ichabod's twin brother who had been searching for him runs across four men. When he hails them they flee. Following their backtrail he finds his brothers body. He immediately vows revenge. Using the phosphorescent clay of the valley, he fashions a bust of his brother and comes up with a plan.
He trails after the four men who had split into three directions. He finds Doc Ryan peddling patent medicine outside of Redemption Utah. He rides around the Doc's Camp for several nights Dressed in black from head to toe and holding the head above his head. Doc Ryan was sufficiently spooked to telegraph someone. Ichabod bribed the telegraph operator and found out he had wired Davidovich at Last Chance, Nevada.
That night Ichabod wore his disguise and rode into Ryan's camp as he peddled some patent medicine. His arms came out of his black cloak as if they floated in the air. Ichabod shouted, "You killed me so die!"
He then rode off to Last Chance, Nevada. Davidovich had dismissed Ryan's claims and stayed where he was. He had used his share of the gold to open a saloon and gambling den. Ichabod took to riding through the town late at night wearing his black outfit and carrying the glowing head. He called for Davidovich to give himself up for having killed him. He took to doing some mischief in the town stealing clothes, turning horses loose, riding into houses and screaming at the top of his lungs.
Finally the townspeople were calling for Davidovich to leave. The final straw came when Ichabod, wearing a false beard played craps at one of Davidovich's tables. He planted several crooked die throughout the place and then accused Davidovich of cheating. The good citizens rode him out of town on a rail.
As Davidovich trudged alone in the desert, Ichabod rode up, tore off his beard and stared at Davidovich who screamed. Ichabod shot him, freezing the look of horror on his face.
Ichabod returned to Last Chance and broke into Davidovich's rooms. He found a letter than Davidovich had started it. The letter told how Ryan had wired him telling him of Ichabod's bodiless ghost and how he had seen a glowing head like Ichabod's riding through his town.
The letter was addressed to the Circle K ranch , Taos New Mexico.
Ichabod rode off. Once in Taos, he discovered that the Circle K ranch had been owned by Senor Lanza and his daughter Carita. Two strangers rode into the ranch seeking. employment. Senor Lanza stopped making his weekly trips to Taos. Then there was word that he had taken ill and died.
No one had seen Senorita Carita since.
Ichabod soon ascertained that Bear Marks and Irving had bought off the ranch hands, and killed those who opposed them. They had shot Senor Lanza and held his daughter captive.
Ichabod made sure his face was seen in town. Then went into his ghost head business at night. He scared off horses, cattle and ranch hands before Irving and Bear Marks worked up a posse to chase him at night. He charged right into the crowd of gunmen. Taking a couple of hits before, gunning down Irving as he hid behind Senor Carita and Bear Marks as he fled.
The final scene shows Ichabod in a sick bed, being attended by a grateful Senorita Carita.
COMMENTARY This film discards almost in its entirety all of the El Head Legend turning it into a formulaic western revenge story with some vigilante elements to it. Dix is as usual effective, if wooden. Bellamy as Doc Ryan shows early signs of a great talent. Lugosi, who as by this time relegated to the B Horror genre seems dazed and foggy. One might suspect increased morphine use during this period.
Tyler and Forbes are effective as always. The beautiful Movita is under utilized.
As far as reviews go, if you run across it, watch it, but don't go out of your way to find it.
A PRICE ON THE HEAD Alcatraz Productions 1967 DIRECTOR: Sydney Pollack
PRODUCER: Burt Lancaster
SCREENPLAY: Harry Whittington, based on the novel by Grant Faust
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Richard Moore
MUSIC: Lionel Newman
CAST: Burt Lancaster (EL HEAD), Nick Cravat (LIZARD BOY), Rip Torn (REV. RYAN) Richard Anderson (LUCIFER MALICE), Werner Klemperer (DAVIDOVICH), Albert Salmi (JEFF JUSTICE BOLANE), Shelly Winters (MAGGIE THE MOUTH) Ken Curtis (HYENA)Hugh Marlowe (JACKAL) Ralph Meeker (BLACK BISHOP) Tina Chen (JHONG MAI) RUNNING TIME: 122 minutes
SYNOPSIS: An ex-Confederate Soldier Paul Ichabod and four strangers find gold in a odd little valley. After the gold is played out Ichabod's companions, believing that he had been cheating them, dismember and decapitate him and steal his gold.
Yet he does not die, the radiation imbues the decapitated Head with an undying life and give it strange mental powers. His arms and hands although detached also remain mobile. He is able to summon his horse and ride out after his companions. Along the way he is given a hunchbacked Mexican dwarf whose face and scalp had been hideously burned giving him the appearance of a lizard.
The two villains of this film Rev. Ryan and Davidovich has also been affected by the radiation. Ryan develops a stigmata of thorns on his scalp and bleeding palms which he quickly uses to start up a medicine show. He meets up with Jeff Justice Bolane, a gunslinger with an affinity for snakes. He had been bitten by a radioactive snake hand had grown two snake eyes in back of his head. In one of their first attempts to proselytize they angered a town of Mormons. The Mormons had tarred and feathered them.
Using his radiation spawned powers Ryan melted the tar off of him and Bolane and created a superheated cloud that burned the Mormon town to the ground. After this Ryan creates an elixir from his blood that brings people under hypnotic control. They form what he calls the Army of the Apocalypse. He has a plan to wrest Salt Lake City from the Mormons. Ryan's elixir has the effect of turning its addicts into freaks. Two men so changed, the Hyena and Jackal becomes his bodyguards. Also joining his entourage is an overly talkative prostitute named Maggie the Mouth. Ryan believes her to be the Whore of Babylon in Biblical prophecy.
Along the way El Head and Lizard Boy come across a burnt up town. The town is black with carrion crows. Smelling El Head's rotting flesh the crows attack him and find themselves bound to El Head's will.
El Head and Lizard Boy eventually catch up with Ryan and are defeated in their first foray against the preacher. Bolane shot El Head out of the saddle with a silver bullet. Dropping him to the ground. His horse fled taking his body with it. El Head dropped into a catatonic state when his body was more than twenty yards from him.
El Head and Lizard Boy are forced to act in Ryan's Medicine Show. El Head as a supernatural oddity and Lizard Boy as an aerialist. Lizard Boy eventually causes a riot and he, El Head and a man resembling a Tarbaby escape in the confusion.
El Head and his companions flee into the desert coming to a town named Purgatory. Here El Head commissions a blacksmith to created two fiendish devices for him. Here also is where they are joined by another man, an albino gunslinger named Lucifer Malice. It is this town that the Tarman reveals himself to be the man who had directed Ryan to be tarred and feathered. He was Bishop Walsh of the Jeziah stake.
Near the city of St. Lake Ryan has assembled an army with which he plans to invade and sack the Mormon stronghold.
In an epic battle El Head and his companions ride into the midst of the Army of the Apocalypse. Lucifer Malice's guns cut huge swathes through the enemy lines and the Black Bishop hardens and plows over any the opposition in his path. Lizard Boy and El Head seem to have an endless supply of ammunition.
When they are near to capturing Ryan and his cohorts a huge black crowd arrives from the sky, it is a plague of locusts that Bolane has summoned. The air becomes as night so thick are the locusts. Another black cloud appears composed of crows which feast upon the locusts.
Irritated Bolane calls out for one of them to face him like a man. Lucifer Malice answers the challenge. He and Bolane draw. Lucifer falls to the ground, shot through the head. Bolane falls to the ground also dead.. The locusts fly away. Ryan tried to flee. The Army of the Apocalypse flees.
El Head commands one of his hands to fire and nails him with a shot to the gut.
Ryan bleeding but not dead. Lizard Boy and the Black Bishop unload one of the two devices that El Head had had constructed. They feed Ryan into the thresher looking device and with a great flurry of flesh and blood being minced and fed into a bin. A large bottle of Dr. Ryan's Sure Fire Tonic is produced.
The Black Bishop leaves El Head and Lizard Boy who travel onto San Francisco. Davidovich's radiation spawned gift is a strange one. When he had lived in Russia the Tsar's secret police had hung him on a meat hook by his calf leaving his leg with a puckered scar and a permanent limp. The radiation had reopened the scar tissue and inside the ulcerated flesh had grown a tendril like organ. The organ had a stinger. Davidovich discovered that one sting made someone suggestible, two stings made them totally controllable and three stings were fatal. He also discovered that once stinging someone he could take on their appearance for a few hours. Using this ability he set the underworld of San Francisco in a civil war. And stood by to pick up the pieces. To further cement his base of power he took as his mistress the daughter of the most powerful Tong leader.
Like Ryan this power was only a means to an end. His true purpose was to create a broad enough political and military base to allow for Alaska to secede from the Union with him as its permanent President.
By the time El Head and Lizard Boy had arrived in San Francisco, Davidovich was a member of the San Francisco City Council and had the Mayor and Chief of Police under his power.
Using the Chinese populations superstitious dread of disembodied head, El Head was able to turn the tongs against Davidovich. The final blow came when Davidovich, suspecting that his mistress Jhong Mai had betrayed him. stabbed her in front of her Father.
Davidovich fled into the desert with El Head hot on his heels. They caught up with him at the site where Las Vegas would be built. Using his second fiendish device, El Head froze Davidovich encasing him in a block of ice on the desert sands.
COMMENTARY Toned down yet still interesting adaption of Grant Faust's books HEAD OUT WEST and A PRICE ON THE HEAD. Whittington chose to discard much of the more fantastic elements of the El Head tales and concentrated on making a more plausible film, so all of the mythology about the Newest Testament and the Nine Horsemen were left out. And so as not to offend some religious groups, El Head's death device did not transform Ryan's body into a copy of the Newest Testament.
Interesting enough, the scene in the Faust book, HEAD OUT WEST, where El Head and Lizard Boy are attacked by a Giant Black Scorpion sent by Jeff Justice Bolane was filmed using one of the Phoenix Zoo's Black Scorpions that had been captured by the United States Army in 1956. However during filming a stuntman was stung and instantly killed by the barrel sized stinger and the Producers felt that using the animal was much too dangerous.
The special effects, especially that of seeing Lancaster bodiless for the majority of the movie were quite good for their time and utilized an early form of the blue screen process. The process was however not seamless and by today's standards seem quite crude. The creature make-up is to say the least, poor. The Jackal and Hyena look like bargain basement Halloween costumes.
Considering the volume of material used, the story should have been split into two films. The compressed second half seems quite anti-climatic.
Still since there is a dearth of films about El Head, this is probably one of the best.
THE VENGEANCE OF EL HEAD DIRECTOR: William Friedkin
Alcatraz Productions 1968
PRODUCER: Burt Lancaster
SCREENPLAY: Jim Thompson based on novel by Grant Faust
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Richard Moore
MUSIC: Andre Previn
CAST: Burt Lancaster (EL HEAD),Nick Cravat (LIZARD BOY), Ed Ames (BEAR MARKS),Eli Wallach (HALF A FACE), Tim McCoy (DOG SOLIDER), Arnold Stang (MUCHO MACHO), Richard Jaeckel (SILENT PETE) ,Jack Elam (CLOWN), RUNNING TIME: 145 minutes
SYNOPSIS:
This is the story of how El Head achieved vengeance of sorts on the last remaining partner who had decapitated and dismember him. It took place down in Texas, near the Mexican border.
As El Head and his Head Hunters, men who rode with him as a band of vigilantes and do-gooders, traveled towards Mexico they heard tales about a masked avenger who rode along the border.
This avenger was a stout man who dressed all in black leathers and wore a black hood with small pointed ears at the top. The apparition had reddish eyes and sharp fanged teeth carried a black bullwhip and a huge roan horse named Petirrojo. It was Murcielago by the border people upon hearing this, El Head knew he had found his man. Bear Marks was living out his fantasy of being El Murcielago.
El Head heard many good things about this El Murcielago and how helped various crimes and right various wrongs. El Head rode into Gotico Aldea, a town near El Murcielago's usual route of travel. El Head devised a plan that would lure El Murcielago to him but without revealing his true identity or true motivations.
El Head sent a few of his minions muscle in on various criminal operations in several nearby towns and villages with the ultimate goal commandeering and expanding these operations.
The three men were Jacob Nathony also known as the Clown because of his previous involvement in a circus. Denby Sovell also known as Half-A-Face because of a war injury left the right side of his face as a massed clump of scar tissue and the Dog Soldier, a man who used war mastiffs as enforcers.
The Clown became head of a protection racket over the three towns, Half-A-Face came to control the gambling and numbers rackets, whereas Dog Soldiers took over the Vice and fencing operations in the three towns. Soon after getting a taste of illicit success the three criminals rebuked to their ties to El Head and to each other and became involved in a tripartite war to control all the rackets.
El Murcielago and El Head were drawn into this criminal war. El Murcielago in his role as self appointed defender and vigilante and El Head as he attempted to rectify the situation he had caused to get his vengeance back on track.
El Head and his Head's Hunter's eventually teamed up with El Murcielago.
The two Head's Hunter's were Silent Pete and Ron Staiks also called Mucho Macho by the Hispanics. Silent Pete could move rapidly, almost twice the speed of a normal man yet the radioactive blood had also left him with a spastic, flighty nature. He was also prone to spells of massive mucuoid production so vast he nearly drowned on his own snot. He described it as having a funny wet feeling in the back of his throat.
Ron Staiks on the other hand was physically deformed by his blood sharing. His left eye twitched constantly, his mouth drooled and stuttered when he spoke and his hips were so twisted so that he seemed to always be walking sideways. Yet he had also gained superhuman strength and a nearly impervious skin.
Eventually the Clown and Half-A-Face were driven away and killed by Head's Hunters.
In Apice, Texas a final showdown came between El Murcielago, the Dog Soldier and El Head.
Dog Soldier's army of criminals and prostitutes had surrounded El Murcielago and Silent Pete in a small adobe cantina and were moving in for the kill. Down the street was the newly built Apice Opera House which was giving a performance of new works from Europe.
To the background music of Wagner's "Siegfried's Death and Funeral March", El Head rode down the street bouncing atop Brimstone, his palomino horse suffused with a blue glow, like the burning of his name. Reins in his mouth, severed arms lashed to the saddle sides and grasping blazing six shooters, El Head rode deep into Dog Soldier's men and scattered them.
People fled from the apparition of a disembodied Head wearing a U.S. Cavalry slouch hat and gripping horse reins in his mouth, upon the rear of the horse was tied a mouldering, aromatic corpse.
El Head was face to face with Dog Soldier and out of ammunition. Dog Soldier sicced his war mastiffs on El Head. In an agonizing use of his powers, El Head plunged deep into both canine minds and set them against the other. The two dogs tore each apart in front of their master.
Dog Soldier watched silently as his pets devoured one another, silently he worked his mouth and a deep, thick white foam formed on his lips and flowed down his chin. With a wolfish cry he bared his teeth revealing that he had all canines. He dove at El Head. So quick was the attack that El Head did not have time to subdue him mentally.
Dog Solider was nearly upon El Head when El Murcielago broke loose from his captivity and shot him down.
El Head felt grateful to El Murcielago and so tempered his vengeance by allowing Bear Marks to live with the knowledge that he had caused so much suffering.
COMMENTARY Fairly truthful adaptation of Grant Faust's VENGEANCE OF EL HEAD Although, Producer Lancaster seemed to have balked at portraying El Head as the anti-hero that legend has it that he was.This would have been considered the best of the El Head films for its basic faithfulness to the legend but cannot because it violates the spirit of the legend.
At the end of the film El Head forgives Bear Marks for his part in El Head's mutilation. When in fact he embarked on a campaign to destroy Bear Mark's reputation to such an extent that Bear Marks committed suicide. This was indeed his most cruel revenge
The sanitizing of the character of El Head is not surprising, considering that just about every Western badman had gotten it, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Sam Bass, Luke Short etc. The character was further sanitized in the follow up film, Head Hunters of the West
A very good cast makes this film very entertaining viewing but only as a western film, as El Head lore it suffers.
The special effects budget for this film spent more on make up so the mutated characters were fairly good. However there were less shots of El Head as a disembodied Head. Lancaster said it was to make the appearances as a disembodied head all that more effective.
The film instead drew on the legend that El Head could project an illusion of being full bodied, as a normal man. So they used this illusionary body throughout most of the movie. The scene were El Head charges down the street riding his horse, guns blazing is quite well done.
HEADHUNTERS OF THE WEST DIRECTOR: Robert Aldrich
Alcatraz Productions 1969
PRODUCER: Burt Lancaster
SCREENPLAY: Roland Kibbee
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jack Massie
MUSIC: Charles Gross
CAST: Burt Lancaster (EL HEAD), Nick Cravat (LIZARD BOY), Tuesday Weld (MISSY KARAN),John McGiver (LINK), Iron Eyes Cody (WAR LANCE) RUNNING TIME: 125 minutes
SYNOPSIS:
As El Head and his Head Hunters travel north to start a ranch, they encounter a plethora of criminal activity which they put down whenever possible. They discover that the criminal activity is centered around on ranch, the Circle K. The elderly gentleman Rancher, Link and his daughter Missy Karan are terrorized night and day by masked marauders. El Head offers to drive away the marauders by using Head's Hunters as a security force..
Upon becoming the security force of the Circle K, El Head finds himself pitted against a ruthless land baron, the mysterious Dennis Paulsen, who no one has seen but everyone remembers. Paulsen acquires more and more land, usually by terrorism and by forced buyouts. His ultimate goal however is to acquire the Circle K ranch because of the Glowing Spring which be believes is a fountain of youth He becomes a law unto himself checked only by El Head and his Head Hunters. With a nod to the old serials . Paulsen is seen giving instructions to his henchmen wearing a black bandana over his face and wearing a huge sombrero. Paulsen even hires a local Indian tribe, the Hikowa to help drive out the ranchers. While the land grabs and gunfights went on, El spent much of his time tinkering with various machines coming up with some he felt certain would turn the tide.
. El Head settled the dispute with the Hikowa by challenging the Hikowia champion, War Lance to personal combat El Head used many advanced technological tricks to win against War Lance but killed him and instilled a superstitious dread in the Hikowa.
Next he turned his full attention to Dennis Paulsen. His Head Hunters attacked his ranches, killed off his night riders and finally assaulted his main house on the Paulsen ranch, using what can only be described as a steam driven tank, ringed with several cannon. After his ranch house was in flames, Paulsen, wearing his outfit of black sombrero and face mask fled .
El Head, Lizard Boy and Missy Karan followed. They saw Paulsen draw and fire at El Head. El Head emptied his guns into Paulsen and the villain fell to the ground dead.
A grateful Missy Karan made El Head a full partner in the Circle K ranch.
El Head and Lizard Boy stayed behind to bury Paulsen saying that even varmints deserved burial. The others left as Lizard Boy began digging. After the others had left, Lizard Boy filled in what he had dug up. The body of Paulsen vanished into thin air. Leaning on his shovel he looked at El Head and they both laughed heartily.
Lizard Boy remarked that it had worked beautifully.
El Head replied, It did indeed. El Head then told Lizard Boy to take this down for the memoirs. El Head related how he had heard about the Glowing Spring and wondered if it were related to the glowing dust of the Blue Valley. One of his Head Hunters had brought him a sample This sample had negated his metal powers. Believing this was a danger, he tried to acquire the ranch peacefully. They had refused. Since his mental powers did not work on the ranch he could not persuade them to sign over the land to him. Even off the land, they seemed immune to his mental powers except for that of illusion. El Head had become obsessed with obtaining the ranch so he had created the character of Paulsen, played for the most part by Lizard Boy cloaked in illusion. And he had hired Western ruffians to act as night riders. The last ride of Paulsen had been totally illusionary.
Having acquired a taste of power El Head was reluctant to give it up.
El Head said once he had achieved total dominion over the west he would eradicate most ruthlessly any sort of lawlessness.
Lizard Boy nodded. He pulled the Paulsen mask out of his saddlebag and dropped it on the empty grave.
COMMENTARY The last Lancaster El Head is for the most part a formulaic western, with the addition of anachronistic inventions. The Character of El Head seems totally sanitized which makes the end all the more interesting.
There are various stories about the ending. Some say that th ending was tacked on because Lancaster was tired of making El Head films and was tired of accusations that he had ruined the character so decided to return to the true spirit of the legends at the very end.
Other stories insist that Lancaster never intended to sanitize the character of El Head that all three films should be seen as a three part story, in which El Head grows gradually more corrupt and cunning.
Storyline is very good but the acting is quite lackluster, as if everyone was tired of the entire series. Entertaining but only mildly.
EL HEAD AND LIZARD BOY Zoetrope 1973 DIRECTOR: Francis Ford Coppola
PRODUCER: Francis Ford Coppola
SCREENPLAY: Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo,
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Dean Tavoularis
MUSIC: Carmine Coppola
CAST; Jay Robinson (EL HEAD) Michael Dunn (LIZARD BOY), John Marley (JAKOB WALZER)
RUNNING TIME: 123 minutes
SYNOPSIS:
Odd version of the El Head legends. Concentrates on the relationship between El Head and Lizard Boy. Starts out with El Head meeting some Apaches who give him their captive, a hunchbacked, scarred dwarf. El Head communicates with Lizard Boy telepathically. Their past histories are shown to one another. Film then dwells on El Head's past and Lizard Boy's past.
El Head's southern upbringing, his years at West Point, his service in the Confederate Army, his term in a Union Prison, his joining of the Union 'Army as a Galvanized Yankee. His service against the Indians, his life as an itinerant mining engineer, his joining of a search party that ending up being massacred by some Comanche, his finding of gold in a mysterious blue valley and his betrayal and mutilation by his partners.
Lizard Boy's life is shown His earliest memories are of taunts, rebukes; fast, hard fists and a long hellish childhood. Being a dwarf caused his parents to look on him with disgust. They beat him constantly, one such beating resulted in a broken back which healed crookedly, giving him a crookback.
His only pleasant contact with was the village priest Padre Juan Carlos. who taught him to read and write and urged him to leave the village at my earliest opportunity.Down on the Gulf coast he attached himself to a circus. Despite the crookback he became a acrobatic dwarf known as El Pulgo, The Flea. During a tour throughout in Texas, at a town called Yellowdog, in a local local barber shop getting a haircut, a drunken cowboy and his cronies took offense to his presence. They drove the barber away and dumped a bottle of tonic water on Dio's head. One of the three cowboys lit the fluid on his face.
His head a lit torch, Dio ran screaming out of the barbershop, tripping and falling headfirst into a horse trough, extinguishing the flame.
Out of friendship and duty his fellow circus performers nursed him through the agony of the burn. The fire had permanently seared away all the hair on his head, leaving his face and skull a mass of scaly red scar tissue. Never pretty, He am now a horror to look upon.
The circus owner wanted to showcase him as the Flying Red Lizard.
Despite his gratitude to them He could not bear that indignity and so left to wander in the American Wilderness. He was fifteen.
For two years He wandered through Texas and the Santa Fe territory on a stolen horse. Eventually He was captured by a band of Comanche and made a slave of theirs, valuable because of his oddity.
His sojourn with the Comanche lasted eight years. They were happy times as learned their ways and gained some measure of respect among them. They honored him by making him a fire-carrier and inviting him to go on a horse stealing raid against the Kiowa.
It was on this horse stealing expedition that his friends were killed by the Apache. Two of them were left alive and tortured to death. He remember their names. Five Coup Man and Stolen Thunder, they died bravely and not too quickly, proving the strong medicine of the Comanche and of themselves.
The Apache had decided to save him for a special ceremony in which their entire village could torture him. That was until they met El Jefe, El Head, the Head Man of the Plains. They were the first to encounter this being who would become a legend of horror, fear and awe in the West. The Apache gave him to El Head, hoping that he would in turn give to them some of his great medicine.
In a series of vignettes the film shows the career of El Head and highlighting their encounter with the Lost Dutchman, the Custer Boys, the acquisition and loss of the Circle K ranch, El Head being hunted by Bounty Hunters, Wounded Knee and the final destruction of El Head as witnessed by Lizard Boy when, El Head mounted his horse and rode into a cyclotron of his devising to have his atoms scattered
COMMENTARY In many ways the best of the El Head films so far as El Head lore is concerned. However since there is no strict internal chronology, memories flow from El Head in a stream of consciousness, taking places flashbacks, flash forwards, dreams and illusions. You are never quite certain when the events are taking place or even if the events are real memories or false ones, or whose memories they are, El Head's or Lizard Boy's.
I have been disputed on my statement that there is no internal or discernable chronology maybe there is but you have watch it several times to get it.
The film works best as a surreal western, as an exercise in mutant psychology. The visualization of El Head lore is interesting but you have to be pretty close to an expert on it to pick out authentic bits of lore and the Director's embellishments
DEMONS AND DESPERADOS DIRECTOR: David Lynch
Lynchpin Pictures 1977
PRODUCER: David Lynch
SCREENPLAY: David Lynch
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Freddie Francis
MUSIC: Vangelis
CAST: Dennis Hopper (DONEGAL RYAN) Tex Cobb (JEFF BOLANE)Jack Nance (EL HEAD) Herve Villacheze (LIZARD BOY) Arch Hall jr. (DUNG BOY) Marsha Jordan (HALF AND HALF HOLLY) Erica Gavin (COLD HEARTED SUSIE)Mara Corday (MAGGIE THE MOUTH) Darby Jones (BUSHMAN)Robert Forster (LUCIFER MALICE) (INDUSTRY) (GREED) Ben Stein (SECULAR EDUCATION) Warren Oates (JOHNNY APPLESEED) Christopher Lee (MERLIN) Royal Dano (ST. PARSIFAL) Oliver Reed(THOMAS THE DOUBTER) (BARABBAS) Stacy Keach (JUDAS THE SICARIOS) John Hurt (JOSEPH OF ARIMITHEA ) Mark Forest (BLACK BISHOP)
RUNNING TIME: Theatrical release 225 minutes
Directors Cut 602 minutes. (Yes, folks that's ten hours) SYNOPSIS:
El Head takes a backseat as the career of Donegal Ryan, the Last Prophet of the End Times is shown. Starts out in Epiphany, Kansas where Ryan is a ne'er-do-well printer gradually going insane from mercury poisoning. After he burns his shop to the ground and goes west, he meets up with four strangers in Cairn, Nevada. He joins a search party searching for a lost prospector. Chased by a band of Comanche, they took refuge in a small valley.
One of the members finds gold, Ryan insists that they become blood brothers. Blood is drawn and mixed in a cup and each one drinks. After the gold is all found Ryan convinces the others that Paul Ichabod is an instrument of the devil and should be killed. Ryan decapitates him with a shotgun blast.
Shortly after splitting off from the others, he finds a crown of thorns growing out of his skull. Realizing his mission, Ryan attempts to convert a group of Hopi. When they reject him he calls a hail of fire upon them.
He met up with a gunslinger Jeff Bolane in Flatbed, Utah and they embark on a revival career. Ryan is forced to destroy two more towns before seeing any progress in his conversions.
Using his blood he creates a Sure-Fire Tonic that is mutagenic as well as addictive. With this he creates the Army of the Apocalypse.
I'll not detail the rest of the movie since that would take pages. However this film is the only one to delve into the theology and eschatology of the Army of the Apocalypse. All of the religious figures that Ryan gets revelations are charactered as are the Nine Horsemen of the Apocalypse and El Head's relationship to them.
COMMENTARY Two versions of this film exist, the theatrical version which is three hours and forty five minutes long and the Directors Cut which is ten hours and two minutes long. The theatrical version is entertaining although quite confusing in that there is little character development and rapid time compression. Several important scenes are left out, including Ryan's dialogues with Johnny Appleseed, Saint Parsifal, Merlin, Judas and Thomas the Doubter. The ending seems rather abrupt and tagged on. El Head is hardly in the theatrical version showing up only in the beginning, in the middle where he is shown to be one of the Nine Horsemen and at the end when the Nine Horsemen ride against Ryan.
Hopper does a good job as Ryan but as the film drags on you can see his enthusiasm for the part wane.
This film has an unusual history. Originally one of the networks, rumored to me American Broadcasting, wanted Lynch to make a miniseries based on the El Head character, sort of an expansion of the Lancaster films with a modern flair. When they saw the direction he had taken the film in they withdrew funding.
Lynch talked a foreign producer, some English-Arabs into putting up some money to revive the serial format of film. They sold their rights to Orion. Orion pressed Lynch to finish the film and edit it as a feature film. Lynch continued filming until they cut off his funds. He then used funds from several sources to finish the long version of the film.
A court battle ensued. Orion won rights to distribute and profit from the footage that had been shot under their contract. Hence the theatrical release. They also got a restraining order, that prevented Lynch from releasing the film for ten years.
Lynch took the time to edit the long version. The long version is truly an epic film, but remained centered on Donegal Ryan which is why although we highly recommend you find and watch this film we cannot call it a really great El Head film.
WEIRD, WEIRD WEST DIRECTOR: Wes Craven
Wes Craven 1980
PRODUCER: Wes Craven
SCREENPLAY: Wes Craven
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ernest Filmore
MUSIC: Angelo Bandini
CAST: Robert Englund (EL HEAD), Mitch Pileggi (REVEREND RYAN), Lou Diamond Philips (BEAR MARKS), Yakoff Smirnoff (DAVIDOVICH), Samuel L. Jackson (IRVING) Vic Morrow (LOST DUTCHMAN)
RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes
SYNOPSIS:
Prospector killed by his four partners for his share of the gold by decapitation and dismemberment, becomes an avenging ghost. Using his new powers (which include flying!) He tracks down and kills the four partners. Since the radiation that gives him his powers also affects his partners, El Head is prevented by confronting them directly because their radiation fields negates his.
He is forced to use his mental powers to manipulate people around the partners, turning entire towns against them Eventually they have a falling out and begin hunting one another egged on by El Head When only two are left, Davidovich and Ryan El Head floats above them, his dismember arms floating below him a few feet. He calls them out. Davidovich and Ryan fire at the same time. El Head flies out of the way. Davidovich falls shot dead by Ryan.
Ryan fires blindly and wildly at El Head. El Head bobs and flits avoiding gunfire. Then he empties both guns into Ryan.
El Head flies off into the sunset
COMMENTARY El Head gets the Wes Craven treatment. The legend of El Head goes out the window and this becomes a vengeance movie with a western theme. A poor effort that suffers from internal logical inconsistencies. If El Head could fly and challenge the four to a gun fight why did he have to drive them away from the towns by entering the minds of others!
The performances are pretty good but the story was a confused mess.
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