#543: Sergio Corbucci’s The Specialists
Sergio Corbucci brings us another mud-soaked tale of revenge
Initial release: November 26, 1969
Director: Sergio Corbucci
If the American Westerns of the 1950s were a romantic picture of a violent frontier past, the European Westerns of the 1960s — and, indeed, an increasing number of American ones — were perhaps truer to what the American frontier was really like: violent, lawless, pitiless. If Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” was a cynical take on the Western, Sergio Corbucci’s looser “Mud & Blood” trilogy was even more cynical; Django wallowed in its own filth, but Corbucci brought a deeply pessimistic, even apocalyptic vibe to The Specialists.
The film opens with a gang of bandits robbing some local townsfolk as well as bullying a group of strangely dressed youths — some might call them hippies, despite being nearly a century early. It’s an odd opener, with the bandit captain forcing the hippies to fight in the mud for his own amusement (there’s Corbucci’s trademark mud again) before having most of his crew killed by handsome gunslinger Hud (played by French rocker Johnny Hallyday.) Hud’s appearance causes some consternation at the nearby town of Blackstone, Nevada, up in the mountains. It seems the sheriff has outlawed guns recently, confiscating everyone’s firearms in the wake of an unsanctioned lynching of an accused bank robber — who so happened to be Hud’s brother Charlie. Everyone is terrified of Hud, who may be out for revenge against the whole town, and nobody knows where the money Charlie allegedly stole has been stashed.
The Specialists — known in some markets as Drop Them or I’ll Shoot — is a strange, subversive film, with subtle political undertones that reflect the realities of late 1960s Europe. Corbucci intended the film as a political one; the entire town is complicit in the murder of an innocent man in their venal greed, spurred on by a corrupt banker who subtly controls the town via sex, money and power as a means of expressing her contempt. The hippies are cruel bullies who harass the locals, seemingly worship Hud as a god (presumably because they believe he’ll kill the whole town) before turning on him, and in the film’s shocking final moments, force the entire town at gunpoint to strip and crawl naked through the mud before Hud runs them off. The bandits are led by a former Mexican revolutionary turned thief and robber, and the sheriff’s anti-gun law is reinforced by him carrying his own rifle around with flowers in the barrel. And Hud himself, when he finally gets his hands on the cash, ultimately burns it in front of everyone — his revenge.
In spite of all that though, it’s a pretty uneven film. While the cinematography is pretty inspired, characterization is thin; Hud sits in a sort of weird middle ground where we never really learn much about him beyond his desire for revenge, but Hallyday is a charismatic enough actor that he manages to carry the role — and the film at large — as a sardonic anti-hero who with his black hat and his chainmail vest is coded as a villain in a film full of villains. Really, the only virtuous characters here are the women at the brothel, and the meek, abused young lady living in what used to be Charlie’s house. The plot about buried money only complicates what’s otherwise a fairly ordinary revenge tale. The film, much like Django, mostly coasts along on atmosphere and vibes; certain scenes — especially the ending — will stick out, but very little else does. Even the title is an artifact of the film’s production, when it was intended to be a very different kind of film (I’m guessing a war movie.)
But in the end, perhaps that’s what Corbucci wanted. It can’t quite pull itself together for a coherent film, but Corbucci probably never intended for it to be so; rather, it’s a hodgepodge of ideas and themes. It’s an impressionist painting of a western, intended as a political statement. It’s got an apocalyptic vibe — aided by a subtle score — that carries throughout the film; it’s like a dream of failed revolutions and a half-remembered commentary about the corruption of greed and contempt for your fellow man. In the end, we’ll all crawl through the mud.
