I Bastardi (aka The Cats; aka Sons of Satan; aka The Bastards) (1968) - Review.

Rita Hayworth in I Bastardi

The family that kills together simply can't stay together. It's a familiar refrain, and one that is at the core of the flawed but interesting 1968 Italian-French film I Bastardi.

Giuliano Gemma plays Jason, a young, naive assassin (an odd mix) who starts the film on a killing spree taking out his partners in a jewelry heist. It turns out that Jason is on the payroll of his brother Adam, played by Klaus Kinski. The killing is designed to take out Adam's criminal rivals. Jason keeps the jewels as payment for the killings, but Adam double-crosses Jason, takes the jewels, and cuts the younger brother's tendons to end Jason's career as a shooter.

Left to rot by his brother and without the woman he loved, Jason finds himself at a ranch, nursed by a rancher played by Claudine Auger. In an odd twist of plot, Jason spends time recovering and falling love with the Auger. Eventually Jason recovers his movie senses and his haunted pride means it is time to leave Auger and seek revenge on Adam and everyone else that has betrayed the young killer.

Jason double-crosses Adam and takes the money from an armored car heist, then tracks Adam down to Mexico. Only just as Jason and Adam are about to clash for the final time, a handy little deus ex machina intervenes in the form of a massive earthquake. While the plot device is jarringly odd and seems like it will deny the audience the resolution they've been seeking, it actually is designed to amp up the confrontation and to bring even more characters into the mix for the classically tragic ending.

The plot of I Bastardi is a bit all over the place, and it isn't surprising to learn that the film has received various cuts to trim it down (the version I saw was 93 minutes, which, if IMDB is to be believed, is missing 9 minutes from the full cut). Just as you think you're about to see a stock action movie, it detours in a lengthy and strange courting by Jason of a mysterious rancher (who seems to have fallen in love with Jason at first sight). I kept expecting something to come out of this rancher's evasiveness, and her courting of Jason, but it just turns out that she's mostly a prop to demonstrate how Jason can't let go his love for another woman - a woman he should hate. The earthquake scene near the end is also oddball and, until you learn why the device is used, you're likely to be thinking, "Are you kidding me," more than anything else.

Director Duccio Tessari tries some things visually in the first act of the film, suggesting he had aspirations for something bigger than a B-movie revenge drama, but he calms down considerably as the plot gets underway and, until a pretty over-the-top visual montage at the very end, the film isn't terribly visually ambitious overall.

It's a modestly entertaining family revenge drama - definitely second-rate, except there's just one little added bit that I have so far avoided: Rita Hayworth. Hayworth plays Adam's and Jason's mom - a spaced-out alcoholic who is aware of her sons' criminality but she seems to mostly leave it to the boys, except to the extent she actually emotionally manipulates them. It is an early prototype, perhaps, for the mother character in David Michôd's excellent Animal Kingdom from 2010. Hayworth is outstanding, playing the role to the hilt, and she seems to have been having a good time. You can get a decent sense of Hayworth's performance in the clip below.

Hayworth saunters around as a drunken,  fading beauty. She giggles and acts oblivious while occasionally sneaking in fatalistic reflections on her past or on events around her. She darkly remembers how the two fathers of her boys died on the same day - one from the electric chair and the other gunned down. After acknowledging the tragedy she shrugs her shoulders and moves on, looking for another swig of whiskey. She drunkenly demands that her son agree that she's still beautiful, then turns to her old pictures on the wall and admits to herself that she isn't any longer. She's a mess but a fascinating one.

Hayworth and her character are the engines that take this film from barely passable to truly interesting and worth seeking out. Her character also appears at the end of the film to drive the tragedy. While the mother dutifully plays the role of clown to appease her gangster sons, she's as responsible as anyone for burning down the circus tent.

I Bastardi is fairly flawed, yes, but owing to the nearly always interesting Kinski and particularly to Hayworth's charismatic, intriguing performance, it's definitely worth seeking out as a little B-movie gem. If you're from Albuquerque, New Mexico you may also enjoy the plentiful shots of the area from the film.

Screened on Warner Archive Instant. As mentioned the cut on Warner Archive is 93 minutes, and IMDB lists the original run-time as 102. It is not clear to me what has been cut in this version. Warner Archive's print includes Italian language credits and titles (using the title I Bastardi, although Warner uses "The Cats"), with dubbed English dialogue.