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ACTOR
Aaron StielstraDan van HusenBrett HalseyDerek Hertig
DIRECTOR
Michael Fredianelli
SYNOPSICS
The Scarlet Worm (2011) is a English movie. Michael Fredianelli has directed this movie. Aaron Stielstra,Dan van Husen,Brett Halsey,Derek Hertig are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2011. The Scarlet Worm (2011) is considered one of the best Western movie in India and around the world.
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The Scarlet Worm (2011) Reviews
Gritty, off-beat - worth your time
Nowadays I reckon we're lucky if we get a great western every decade or so. This doesn't qualify for great, but it is good. If you're expecting "Hollywood" - raise your expectations... this is better. The action in the movie plays well. With influences of Peckinpah mixed with ("early not quite there yet") John Woo; credit where it's due, it didn't get unreal. The dialog could have been tweaked better, I reckon, there was ample opportunity through the settings which were done well. The scene in front of the barber shop is an example of where the script could have gone deeper, and pushed this movie into great. Overall I liked the pacing, the arc and the various spread of characters. It didn't get overly deep into the characters, but neither were they shallow - there's an edge to all of them. I thought Montgomery Ford did a fine job. One thing I really liked about this western? It treats the audience with a bit of respect - allowing me to draw my own conclusions; meeting with my expectations in terms of credibility, there were no "cop outs" in plot. What happened was a logical, if whacky series of events. If you really like westerns, I don't think you'll be disappointed. I am very surprised by the low rating the movie seems to have - strange; maybe good, hard-boiled westerns are just out of style...
Remarkable Western Surpasses Big Budget Efforts With Talent
A low film budget, especially one attached to a period film as demanding as a western, doesn't have to reflect what can be brought to a movie when gritty acting and a hard-nosed storyline are both unafraid of controversy, or breaking archetypes. Here, the film-makers make that their saving grace. WORM may lack sweep and grandeur, but it compensates for its meager funding by creating a world of believable, albeit strange, characters, who are caught in writer David Lambert's bleak narrative and poetic dialogue. Both make their mark in a tale of a cynical killer hired by a cattle-baron to sterilize a town of its brothel owner. The killer Print (played excellently here by Aaron Stielstra) can see the brothel-owner (a chilling Dan van Husen) carries an unhealthy amount of Biblical fury about sin, but Print comes to learn the man is far more dangerous for his own philosophies and this soon leads to Print encountering (and unleashing) an enormous bloodbath. All divided into cinematic chapters and told in a bold and muscular style by director Michael Fredianelli, cinematographer Michael Martinez also create a claustrophobic wilderness out of the luckless town and its inhabitants. Complementing this is the cast, which one doesn't see in a big budget western. More reflective of 60s and 70s westerns, the characters show damage and hard-lifestyle, this further reinforced by the shocking circumstances and violence that erupt in a moments's notice to often punish the innocent. The movie additionally benefits from Aaron Stielstra's somber score, complete with strangled electric guitars, ominous Morricone outbursts of noise, and a memorable finale. Though thought-provoking, WORM is troubling movie and one without pandering resolutions to its good guy/bad guy scenario. Like equally morally conflicted westerns like Peckinpah's "PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID", "RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND" or the savage "THE HUNTING PARTY", here men are compromised throughout by their own codes of conduct and the brutal instinct to survive. Without the film's superb acting and direction, here both strong enough to make one forget the large scale adventuring to appear in something as banal as "COWBOYS AND ALIENS", the movie might have never surpassed its economic limitations and played out like an exploitation flick. Instead, WORM is a harrowing and unforgettable alternative to shoot-'em-ups or the kind of popular western entertainment that asks no questions of its audience. Prepare to be be impressed.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
This movie was quite a surprise. Here we have quite a few ingredients for a complete failure; very low budget, a period film, lots of physical violence and action and a medium sized cast of mostly inexperienced actors (and a few well-worn veterans). On top of that the screenplay wasn't content to be just some genre template; I think it really wanted to be about something. The fact that they pulled off anything with those obstacles is a plus. I have to applaud the filmmaker's ambition even if he effectively shot himself in the foot because of it. A western might seem to be a simple type of period piece to do but if you are attempting it with limited resources you need to either scale your film down to maximize them, or really stay on top of your game and be attentive to all the details. Mr. Fredianelli did neither. I wonder what he would have created if he had? It is a bit of a tough slog to get through if one cares only for the quality (or lack of it) on display. The screenplay, although it rises above the vast majority of low budget screenplays - in what it attempts - is still repetitious and frequently awkward. No doubt it's heart was in the right place but you don't film your "intention", you polish your darn screenplay and make it acceptable! It tries to provide interesting character "bits" but because the exchanges seem unrehearsed (or like poor quality improv) they don't feel believable and the film stumbles to a stop again and again. Dialogue veers from a conscious attempt to sound "period" to almost casual modern profanity while dropping anachronistic phrases and attitudes left and right. Much of it's serious aspects seem neither developed nor even well thought out. Particularly deadly for a period film that wants to be seen as something other than neighborhood kids playing cowboys, there doesn't seem to be a clear grasp of the time and place while at the same time I got the impression the director knew there should be one: people are not as clean and neat as modern counterparts, however the effort to achieve this is comically bad - very specific smudges on cheeks and brows that seem only to have come from contact with a make-up artist. And how do you explain the town's barber who always wears chaps, unless they were part of a western costume he borrowed? And the town's hookers with their modern underwear and lingerie? The fabric of the shirts and the modern styled jeans? The lead character wears an anachronistic suit, but they knew he should have a different type of tie. Of course the fabric, fold and cut of the tie looks like it belongs to a last minute available resource, not the period, but at least there was the attempt. The actors perform as if they are still in the process of learning their lines - nothing else could excuse the halting, labored way sentences slowly stumble out of actor's mouths. But, having said that, at least the performers were not encouraged (or allowed) to be unnaturally over-the-top; the sort of hammy theatrical style so common amongst wanna-be actors only experienced with the community or collegiate stage. So again, a big plus tempered by a big negative. The director was wise enough to know he needed his frame filled with texture and dressing however this only translates into a wide disparity between the appropriateness of props and set dressing. A more experienced (or talented) visual eye could have also shown how to better compose shots so that the environments seemed real; as it is 90% of all interiors look as if they were shot in the same place, slightly - and unimaginatively - re-dressed. They are also shot in such a way that it looks like they could only dress one wall, and a corner, per "location" - I'm sure moving the camera would reveal things we shouldn't see. Because of this limitation more than half the film is visually flat and stagy. Obviously the director aspires to be a Peckinpah or a Leone - and he is to be praised for aiming high - but the number of shootouts and violent confrontations require the ability to pull them off. In this he only achieves a fifty percent success rate, which is commendable; but if he'd had fewer of them he could have spent twice the time and effort to get them perfect. One can see him straining to recreate a Peckinpah blood-bath vibe, but when half your violence is rather embarrassingly staged and shot, you're not doing your film any favors. Unfortunately it strikes me as the work of a film fanatic who is happy enough just to attempt something, and is far less concerned with whether he is doing it well. I'll give him respect for using blood squibs but why settle for such poor consistency blood? Or the over reliance on the terribly cheesy digital gun flash effect (when we'd be seeing much more smoke than flash from period firearms)? And if he wants his films to be good, as opposed to just ballsy, he should do some research (or recruit people with the appropriate skills and knowledge). The production reeks of enthusiasm over ability, and fosters the concern that he might not know the difference. And if there had only been more polish to the poorer parts, it wouldn't be so difficult to sit through. I found myself curious, and mildly optimistic, to see what this filmmaker would do with future projects but a quick search reveals he's made another 29 of these little films in the past seven years so I'm wary the optimism, however slight, might be poorly placed.
In the not-so-olden-days West
This effort by a band of six young cinephiles works well. Don't watch it expecting "High Noon" quality acting and scripting. But if you're looking for a highly original, yet true to genre Western, I recommend "The Scarlet Worm." It was released by "Unearthed Films" so I expected a 30-or-more year old film, literally dug up out of old B movie archives. But this is a new effort, made in 2010 and released in 2011. The setting is the early 1900s, and plot is complex, including traditional cattle rustling, revenge killings and more. It's dark, gritty style is evident in the gunfight sequences and in the sympathetic, non-sensationalist treatment of the girls in the brothel. It held my attention right to the last as it unfolded. A couple of things to note: First, it has some pretty violent scenes so I wouldn't make it a family-night movie. Second, it features some classic Western movie stars whose heyday was decades ago but whose names you might remember, like Montgomery Ford and Dan van Husen. They and their young compadres give this low-budget movie panache. Enjoy, pardner.
A superior and startling indie Western knockout
1909. Philosophical middle-aged dandy assassin Print (a terrific performance by Aaron Stielstra) gets assigned by his boss Mr. Paul (Brett Halsey in fine form) to kill wicked, yet scrupulous brothel owner Heinrich Kley (superbly played with chilling calm by Dan van Husen), who regularly performs abortions on his whores whenever they get impregnated. Moreover, Print has to show crude novice Lee (well played with scruffy conviction by Derek Hertig) the ropes. As the unusual premise alone suggests, this is anything but your standard shoot 'em up oater. Those expecting a clear-cut delineation between the good boys and the bad guys will be sorely disappointed; instead we get several fascinatingly complex and flawed individuals who aren't exactly endearing (Lee in particular at first is pretty odious and unlikable while Kley isn't entirely hateful because of his strongly felt religious beliefs and stance that his brothel serves a useful purpose for the community at large), but manage to be interesting just the same. In addition, the turn of the century old west shown here is an extremely harsh and grimy place. Director Michael Fredianell's brings a dazzling cinematic style and a fiercely uncompromising gritty sensibility to the dark material while David Lambert's bold and edgy script offers an intelligent and idiosyncratic meditation on style, manners, and morality. Granted, the expected shoot outs are bloody as all hell and staged with real rip-roaring brio, plus there's a handy helping of inevitable nudity from the prostitutes at the bordello, but it's the way this picture subverts basic genre conventions and squeezes a maximum amount of surprisingly polished production value from its modest budget that in turn gives it extra substance and resonance. Further enhanced by Stielstra's moody eclectic score and Michael A. Martinez's striking cinematography, this film overall rates as one powerful and provocative pip.