Once Upon A Time in Nazi Occupied Paracinema...

Oh boy! Enzo G. Castellari is really on the mind - first off, the entire month of September has been dedicated to the films of the prolific director over at Assorted Loaf, and there are a ton of great reviews to check out covering a wide variety of Castellari's film work. That would be a perfect segue into my very own review of Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards which can be found over at Paracinema...The Blog! How exciting! I've been dying to watch this film forever and even though there are a slew of reviews for the film written about the movie across the blogosphere recently, I still could not resist tossing in my .10 cents.

Castellari has made some fantastic films, and he is a director that should be a little more championed for his work outside of The Inglorious Bastards and the Tarantino connection. He has covered a slew of genres, genres that we all love, or should love at least! Westerns, Apocalyptic films, Euro Crime, War films...Hell, he even covered the Animals attack genre with his film Great White (L' Ultimo Squalo 1980) which made a bit of a "splash" for being pulled from theaters as it was a blatantly obvious rip off of the Steven Spielberg classic, Jaws!

Castellari is technically a very skilled director, and I would be hard missed to not suggest checking out some of his Euro Crime films, and most notably for me would have to be The Big Racket (Il Grande Racket 1976) staring the sexiest Italian guy named Fabio alive, Fabio Testi! First of all, the movie has some crazy cool music in it, but I don't want to get off track here - there is one scene in particular where Testi's character is attacked in his car by a group of thugs, when they all join forces to flip his car over a ledge. As the car roles over, the camera is in the car focused on Testi's face as he is being rolled down this hill in the car and it makes for one hell of a slow-motion reaction shot with his hair flipping around, and glass flying everywhere. In addition, you have to consider that this is a low budget Italian film, so you know that it is all real and done without the concern for safety found in today's cinema. You can see a portion of the shot starting at the 40-second mark of the trailer I provided below.



What'd I say? Pretty cool right?! So, I would love if you all spent a few moments to head over to Paracinema...The Blog and read my review of Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards. Also make sure to check out Pickleloaf's blog for a dozen or so Castellari film reviews that would make for a great guidance tool for any film fan new to the filmmakers work.

You can read my review at Paracinema by clicking here! So easy!