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Enzo Castellari's Inglorious Past
Italian drive-in king gets royal treatment for cult classic
When cult moviemaker Enzo G. Castellari, hailed as the “70s Italian Drive-In God” by L.A. Weekly, embarked on his 1978 World War II adventure, Inglorious Bastards, he had little idea that, 30 years later, his film would still be loved and appreciated by a new generation of enthusiastic fans. Starring football player-turned-blaxploitation legend Fred “The Hammer” Williamson and equipped with the classic tagline “Whatever the Dirty Dozen did they do it dirtier!,” the bloody war saga was not a breakout hit when originally released into theaters. But it definitely made a mark on an impressionable young Quentin Tarantino, who recently announced his next film will be an Inglorious Bastards remake. Now, Severin Films is releasing a three-disc, 30th anniversary DVD edition of the film, packed with DVD extras. One of the most memorable features of the new DVD is a conversation between Castellari and Tarantino on the making of the film.
MM spoke with Castellari about the cult phenomenon surrounding Inglorious Bastards, including the origins of the film’s classic title.
Kyle Rupprecht (MM): You’ve worked in a multitude of genres—from spaghetti westerns and gritty crime dramas to sci-fi fantasies and war sagas. Which genre is your personal favorite to direct and why?
Enzo Castellari (EC): I grew up watching all American movies—I saw all kinds of genres, from war and police detective films to science-fiction and musicals. But the genre that I absolutely love, and which gave me great and wonderful emotions, is the western genre.
The western genre was born together with the birth of the cinema. Therefore, after almost 100 years of honored service, the “western” is a bearer of deep mythology which sinks into the history and into the popular traditions. Conciseness of story, richness of movement, long suspenses and then the collective or individual “crash” between the two fighting parts. These are the immmortal themes of this genre of which I loved so much and I still love profoundly today.
MM: This year marks the 30th anniversary of your 1978 cult classic, Inglorious Bastards. How did you get involved in the project? And where did the film get its very distinctive title?
EC: The production company called me to direct this movie, because I was always considered one of the best action directors and realizer of uncommon and singular special effects sequences—especially due to my ability to employ the best stuntmen. For this “war movie,” the producers selected me due to these specific abilities. [But] during the shooting the movie, a stupid law was passed that it was illegal to use real weapons during the making of a film! Without knowing that the weapons used in the films cannot shoot real bullets—because all the weapons had been modified to shoot blanks—I therefore found myself directing a war movie without weapons. My inventiveness worked right away; before the weapons were confiscated, I made all kinds of copies—from wood to plastic. The weapons were illegal, but not explosions and squibs, so I used very little explosions inside the weapons. During the rest of the movie, I invented a number of solutions to not see and use weapons. This released in me a great freedom of fantasy… creating, like everbody recognizes, the “originality of the film,” in that the death scenes of many soldiers [looks] as if they were slow-motion ballets.
The original title of the movie was “Mission something.” I do not recall the exact title, but during the first days of the shooting, when I was explaining the characters and final plot to the actors, I told them: “You are inglorious bastards!” This thrilled everybody. From that day on we used Inglorious Bastards as the title of the movie!
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