‘The Specialists’ or — An Alpine Spaghetti Western?

The hills are alive with the sound of gunfire?

To call Sergio Corbucci’s ‘The Specialists’ (1969) an odd Euro-Western (it was an Italian/French/West German co-production) would be a bit of an understatement with the initial hit of incongruity being an opening alpine landscape setting Julie Andrews would be more at home centrifuging about in more than coming across gun-totting bandits. Throw in revenge, left-wing politics, violence, nudity, criticism of left-wing politics, capitalism and the bourgeoisie and there’s a lot of ingredients for a very heady cocktail. The only question is — how does it taste?

First up the alpine cinematography makes ‘The Specialists’ one of, if not the most, gorgeous looking Euro-Westerns I’ve seen. This mountain back-drop of the Dolomites, along with Corbucci’s directing style, helps give the film its own unique look; there’ll be very few points you’ll be mistaking any of this visually for Leone. If you enjoyed the opening mountain scenes in Red Dead Redemption 2 then there’s a lot in ‘The Specialists’ that’s reminiscent of that.

After that it settles down into your typical out-for-revenge tale as gunslinger Hud, played by Johnny Hallyday, rides into the town of Blackwater looking for those who lynched his brother, a brother who had not long before robbed Blackwater’s bank. But is Hud here to avenge his death or to locate the stolen loot… or maybe some other reason entirely?

With a pacifist sheriff (played perfectly by the ever excellent Gastone Moschin), a group of hippies, a bank owner imbued with weaponised sexuality along with a one-armed bandit named El Diablo who is constantly dictating his exploits for posterity and there’s more than enough in Blackwater for Hud to contend with even before he can locate the stash.

So there are gun-fights, double-crosses, secret maps and heaving bosoms aplenty. Corbucci keeps the action scenes tight, violent and exciting and even though there are no real stand-out set-pieces or truly memorable moments (until the climax that is) there’s enough invention going on here to satisfy. The only real issue is the film’s tendency to meander when it should be reigning things in; you can tell why Tarantino is a Corbucci fan. This slack means ‘The Specialists’ often works better for its curiosity value than its ability to fully entertain, the viewer often having to balance too many disparate elements in their head for full immersion.

And any sense of immersion threatens to be jettisoned entirely at the film’s climax with an ending that so left-field and borderline surreal it feels more like a precursor to Jodorowsky’s ‘El Topo’ (1970) than any Spaghetti Western I can think of. Not only that it’s an ending to an Italian Western I can imagine John Wayne approving of with the real enemies being not the capitalist townsfolk, although they get their comeuppance too, but the radicals who let down the cause of the Left and betrayed the spirit of revolution. The Left is tearing itself apart. By this point the only other Western I could think of was Godard and Gorin’s ‘Le Vent d’Est’ (1970) and ‘The Specialists’ isn’t that far behind in terms of craziness.

‘The Specialists’ is a truly bizarre movie. It’s not quite successful enough to warrant an enthusiastic recommendation to any but the most ravenous of Euro-Western fans but there’s also so much — the cinematography, Corbucci’s visual flair, a host of eccentric characters — of interest that if you fancy something a little different and unique this is worth knocking back.