SPAGHETTI RUNS THICK
Movie Review – Let the Corpses Tan
Review by Ray Schillaci
I am a huge Giallo and Spaghetti Western fan. Needless to say, I have a huge collection of the two Sergio westerns (Leone & Corbucci), and a library filled with the eerie and tawdry works of the Bavas, Fulci, and Argento. If you are not familiar with this genre you’re missing out on some wonderful cinema that has inspired at least a handful of great directors including John Carpenter, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino.
The Belgium filmmaking team of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani join forces once again after demonstrating their love for the Giallo genre with Amer, The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, and the Orgasm segment in The ABC’s of Death. This time they bring the ultimate homage to Spaghetti Western cinema with Let the Corpses Tan. The film is as lurid as its title, highly stylized, steeped in the requisite closeups, and filled to the brim with a melodramatic score by the infamous Ennio Morricone. It’s not a western per se, but it has all the earmarks of the two Sergios.
After a notorious heist of a truckload of gold bullion, the thieves hold up in a remote village set on the cliffs of the Mediterranean. They join a hyper sexual artist and a bohemian writer until the heat dies down. But, it only gets hotter when the writer is visited by his ex-wife and child along with an alluring nanny. Add to that, two French motorcycle cops to fray everyone’s nerves, and we end up with a powder keg of double-crosses and a perpetual blood bath with hallucinogenic twists and turns.
For the average viewer, Cattet and Forzani’s film will be over-the-top (notice I did not say “maybe”). The film capitalizes on excessive violence and use of close-ups of eyes, sweat over the lips, and just about everything else to emphasize the melodramatic mood and taut suspense. It is a phantasmagoria of sight and sound that will either carry you away or leave you wondering what it is all about. Those cinephiles growing up in the ’70s, and those who’ve discovered the joys this off-beat genre will be able to easily appreciate the bizarre goings on.
If I were to take one film from the ’70s and compare it, Mario Bava’s Rabid Dogs would be the first to come to mind with the dysfunctional gruff gang that can barely keep things together. Each member of the gang feeling more dangerous than the next. Bava’s film was also the inspiration for Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
If there were to be a comparison to one of my favorite characters from Tarantino’s film, Elina Löwensohn as the searing sexual artist with a very dangerous demeanor would be our Mr. Blonde which was played deliciously nasty by Michael Madsen. Löwensohn as Luce is a force to be reckoned with. This actress/director/writer from Bucharest, Romania has such a dynamic presence. She’s nearly frightening at every turn. Luce makes the rest of the gang look like peasants at a picnic. The directors and the actress have brought something inherently deadly to this character that can make us squirm with a mere look.
Let the Corpse Tan is having an all too brief limited run on the arthouse circuit. But, we can thank Kino Lorber for acquiring it and recognizing the talent behind this very special film. They have promised a SVOD, VOD, and physical media release this fall.
Directed by: Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
Release Date: August 31, 2018
Run Time: 92 Minutes
Country: France/Belgium
Distributor: Kino Lorber
