Highly Original Western 'The Scarlet Worm' Hits Home Video Same Day As 'Cowboys & Aliens' - Proves The Genre Doesn't
Need To Resort To Outrageous Hybrids
DVD available December 6
On
December 6, two competing Westerns hit store shelves, and they offer
two very different possibilities for the genre's future. Cowboys & Aliens
is a big studio Western that mixes in sci-fi, CGI and noisy blockbuster
elements, seeming distrustful that today's audiences will accept a
straight-ahead Western.
The Scarlet Worm (on
DVD and Blu-Ray from Unearthed Films/MVD), on the other hand, is a
glowingly reviewed independent Western that proves a horse opera can
still capture the public's imagination - even on a low budget - as long
as its story offers something fresh and original within the traditional
framework.
"We
feel there is still new ground to break with an old plow," says the
film's associate producer Mike Malloy. "But if you look at the recent
major-release Westerns, they have either been remakes like True Grit and 3:10 to Yuma or genre hybrids like Jonah Hex and Cowboys & Aliens.
We wanted to make a film that resorted to neither extreme. Plain and
simple: Make a straight Western with a story you haven't seen before."
Exactly how original is the Scarlet Worm
story? "It's the first Western ever to center around abortion, insofar
as we know," says screenwriter David Lambert. But he's quick to add,
"This is not an advocacy
movie that makes any generalizations about the abortion controversy. I
wasn't interested in writing a message movie."
The plot of The Scarlet Worm
has a gentleman assassin named Print (Aaron Stielstra) hired to rub out
a cruel brothel owner (Spaghetti Western veteran Dan van Husen) who
mandates abortions on all his whores. Considering himself an artist,
Print normally has style and flourish to all his killings, but this
latest job presents two challenges: He is being told by his employer to
get it done "quick and dirty," and he is forced to train a young
understudy while working.
While
it's a story set-up that allows for crowd-pleasing traditional elements
of gunplay (replete with real practical squibs) and romance (which
includes some whorehouse nudity), the film also has plenty of room for
highbrow prestige elements, as introduced by the intelligent, highly
original script.
And
those elements are getting noticed, both in the form of festival
selections and advanced praise. With this press and word of mouth, The Scarlet Worm has cut through the throng of other low-budget Westerns, which are mainly just direct-to-video shootemups.
Although Scarlet Worm's
cast includes a fistful of veteran Spaghetti Western actors - Dan van
Husen, Montgomery Ford, Mike Forest and Ted Rusoff - the film is not a
Spaghetti homage. It instead seeks to recapture the gritty realism of
the early '70s American Westerns - films like Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid or Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
"We aspired to be like those intelligent Westerns," says Lambert, "And while The Scarlet Worm
delivers plenty of traditional genre excitement, we're so pleased that
we're not being lumped in with the low-budget action Westerns coming out
these days."
Judging by the latest advanced review, the Scarlet Worm filmmakers hit their mark:
"Lambert's
script rises above ... by investing depth and texture into the
characters, their relationships and the serpentine history they all
share. He also invests much time in crafty dialogue, bringing a
wordsmith's touch to the expected profane, macho insults but also
weaving in exchanges that are shockingly philosophical." (Schlockmania.com)
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