FULL REVIEW

There have been a number of books written on the Spaghetti Western in recent years. Not a mountain of them, but at least a few worthy tomes which have given the genre serious analysis and made up for the fact that they were ignored as unworthy for many years. Christopher Frayling's excellent academic studies based predominantly around the life and works of Sergio Leone are an obvious case in point. As are Marco Giusti's comprehensive Dizionario Del Western All'Italiana and Ulrich Bruckner's impressive encyclopaedia, Für Ein Paar Leichen Mehr. What we have not had is a chronological study written from a film maker's perspective who also happens to be a life long fan; a close reading of a large number of films from a very personal but professional eye. That is until now. Alex Cox's 10,000 Ways To Die: A Director's Take On The Spaghetti Western covers all the obvious films from the Italian Western cycle plus a whole lot more with a strong emphasis on a directorial perspective. As such, it brings something refreshingly new to the table and will be of genuine interest to any serious fan.

Cox wrote a book with the same title around 30 years ago; a thesis compiled while studying at UCLA. It was never published, something of a blessing according to the author. In his own words it was 'full of half assed semiotics and other attenuated academic nonsense'. So, despite appropriating the title, this new work is a completely different piece and approaches the genre in a very different way. The theory behind his chronological method was that by following the films year by year a pattern of development might become more obvious. The journey from American style clones through more clearly European perspectives and finally open parody is a story followed far easier when we take the journey in the order the films were actually made. To this end Cox actually re-watched a couple of hundred Spaghettis in chronological order and found himself focusing naturally on the careers of two of the most influential directors in the genre - the two prime Sergios; Leone and Corbucci. Their divergent personalities and respective careers become a central core of the book and, in particular, Corbucci's bitter experience and wildly varying output becomes symptomatic of the genre as a whole.

10,000 Ways To Die is, above all, an entertaining read. Cox has never been shy about voicing an opinion and this book is no exception. Shooting from the hip in true gunslinger style his critical tongue is as sharp as ever and he is far from a slavishly forgiving fan. He is equally enthusiastic whether praising or damning and this highly personal aspect of the book becomes one of its most enjoyable features. As fans, there is nothing we like better than a good argument over a film's particular merits or faults and this book will provide plenty for everyone to agree or take umbrage with. This is all to the good and ensures that the book not only provides information but also discussion. The professional insider's perspective adds a unique touch too. Especially coming from someone who is not only a director but an independent one who has experienced many of the thrills and frustrations of the maestri whose work and careers he is discussing. Throughout the book Cox is 'thinking about what the filmmakers intended, how they did that shot, how the director felt when his film was recut by the studio, and he was creatively and financially screwed.'

The format of the book follows a similar form to the old Monthly Film Bulletin. Each film discussed has a list of credits, followed by a comprehensive synopsis and then analysis. Each is placed in order within chapters named for the year of production. Accuracy in terms of chronological order is, of course, problematic with a genre so steeped in confusion but Cox acknowledges this and has tried to work with the best information available to place each film where it belongs in the big picture. He has also chosen to base this order on time of production rather than release so we see films such as The Great Silence in the chapter for 1967 and Django in 1965 (bear this in mind if flicking through the book looking for a particular film). He also, like many of us, is dismissive enough of the films from the 1970s to lump them all together in one chapter. More importantly, as a personal study, he has selected those films he believes are of most interest for analysis. Not just his personal favourites but those which he believes exerted the most influence or were the most memorable; for good reasons as well as bad. As a result, there will inevitably be films which individuals will think should have been included which are not. But this book does not purport to be an encyclopaedia. Cox has not set out to review every Spaghetti ever made. What he has managed is to give his own slant on an impressive range of films, some discussed at length, others assessed more briefly and all with an entertaining and insightful angle.

Finally, in an interesting footnote to the book, Cox has included a chapter on the parallels he sees between the Spaghetti Western and the Jacobean Revenge Tragedy. Both, as the author points out in the introduction, exhibited a new creative form that 'led to works of exceptional brilliance, which were condemned by 'right thinking' critics as immoral and degenerate.' Both suffered ignominious ends, Jacobean Tragedy through legislation and war, the Spaghetti Western through 'self parody and uninspired genre-breaking'. This comparative chapter is an interesting inclusion to the work and, I think, adds a genuine historical context well worth exploring. The parallels between this genre and classical dramatic traditions has been raised before but this is the first time I have seen it included in a book and, hopefully, this will spark someone's interest to explore the subject further.

This book is a refreshing addition to the growing range available on the Italian Western genre. It offers a new approach and for its 'insider' perspective from the view of a working director alone is well worth reading. It also happens to be very funny in places and will, if nothing else, give us all plenty to talk about. It is unfortunately light on images, there only being 16 pictures bunched together in a slim eight page section of the book, but this failing is well compensated for in other areas. I heartily recommend it to all fans of the genre and to any film buff considering sticking their toe into the fiery waters of the Spaghetti Western for the first time.

Phil H.

Spaghetti Western DataBase website

FULL REVIEW

There's not supposed to be such a thing as a free lunch. And anyone who thinks he can short circuit the process and grab a free copy of film-maker Alex Cox´s new book might be in for a bit of a surprise.

Wirral-born Cox´s fascination with the Italian-made "Spaghetti Westerns" of the 1960s and 70s is well documented.

He wrote a substantial and slightly academic history of the genre, entitled 10,000 Ways To Die in the late 1970s, and anyone who wants a copy is more than welcome to download it completely free from the internet.

But reader beware. There´s a new version of 10,000 Ways to Die about to hit the streets. And it´s more than just a revised edition of the survey 30-odd years ago.

Alex Cox is quite mischievous about it. "The old one I wrote as a sort of thesis," he explains. "It´s full of the jargon of the 1970s, words like semiotics and that kind of stuff, but that was the way you had to talk in those days."

When the first version was completed, Cox, now 54, was a young film-maker who´d just finished a stint at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

He was just embarking on a life as an independent film-maker, with the highly thought-of Repo Man still in the pipeline.

"It did seem that when I became a film-maker that that didn't have much too do with anything, really," he admits. "Except perhaps the psychology or the psychosis of a film maker. But it wasn´t something you thought of in any practical terms when you were constructing a story."

Three decades on, and Cox is an experienced film maker and writer and commentator on films. The original idea had been to re-title the new book Massacre Time, but his publishers insisted in keeping the old title as he surveys the genre from its beginnings in 1963 to the 3-D Comin´ at Ya, in 1983.

It all goes back to schooldays at Wirral Grammar School in the 1960s.

Cox has written of the testosterone-charged atmosphere of a boys-only school and the appeal of the violent fantasies and near-anarchy of the Italian Westerns. It was a time when the American originals seemed to have lost their creative impulse, subsiding into a series of, in Cox´s words, "ponderous Technicolor bores" and their TV series clones.

He had been brought up in the safe and inoffensive suburb of Bebington to a family with its roots mainly in Liverpool. They had come up in the world, and, like many a family with aspirations to better things, had decamped to the opposite side of the Mersey.

Despite the fact that "you´re never accepted as a Scouse if you´re a Wirral woolyback", it was back to Liverpool for the young Cox when it came to nights out. "I suppose what I really learnt in Liverpool was to go to the pictures," he recalls. "There was the Scala, the Futurist, the Gaumont, the cinema in Birkenhead which I can't remember, and there was a cinema in Bebington."

For a time, though, Cox had his eyes on other things when it came to a career. He secured a place at Oxford to study law, but somehow the prospect of becoming a lawyer became less and less attractive.

"To be honest, my law studies led me nowhere except to knowing some lawyers," he admits now, sounding slightly puzzled that someone would even want to know about this time of his life. "It was interesting because it kind of demythologised things, studying something in which you´re not interested. It also encourages you to do a lot of extra-curricular stuff."

In the end, the extra-curricular stuff won. Those were the days of grants rather than loans for students, and the absence of a financial sword over a student´s head could be a liberating experience. "I could afford to be frivolous in my university days, not concentrating on my degree, I could go to a lot of plays and things."

That took him first for a year at Bristol University to study radio, film and television studies, and then a Fulbright Scholarship to go to UCLA, in California.

His career since then has taken him though a series of highly thought-of independent films, starting with Repo Man and the doomed and drug-fuelled tragedy of Sid Vicious, the Sex Pistols´ bassist, and Nancy Spungen, Sid and Nancy.

Cox has a fairly sharp put-down to those who ask if the film crew had been off their heads in an effort to get into the spirit of the height of the punk era of 1978 and 79.

"No. Did John Wayne really shoot the Indians off their horses? Did Orson Welles buy a newspaper business to prepare for Citizen Kane?"

Alongside the radical and independent film making, he has also presented the television anthology of cult films, Moviedrome, and become a prolific writer and commentator on films for the heavyweight newspapers.

There´s been a party political broadcast for the Green Party, a daring Liverpool-oriented version of John Middleton´s The Revenger´s Tragedy, written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and starring Christopher Eccleston, and his latest film Repo Chick, bringing the Repo Man story up to date.

It´s been entirely shot digitally, something of an advantage in the short term, even though there is a new set of problems in the long run.

"Because everything is digital, it all goes down the phone or is put on DVDs and put in the post. The film I´m making now has components in Liverpool, components in Los Angeles, components in San Francisco . . . and it all goes to a big hard drive."

The downside is that even hard drives wear out and can develop faults, possibly losing their entire content.

In theory, it can be copied back on to film - in which case it may as well have been shot on film in the first place.

Home now is in Oregon - his wife, Tod Davies, is American - and he has few family members left on Merseyside, but there are still the occasional trips home.

It´s interesting to speculate what would have happened had he taken a break from film making to throw himself into Capital of Culture year. For all his good nature and bonhomie, he has strong opinions and would have trodden on a few toes to interesting effect.

"Liverpool is this incredibly cultural city, but it´s all cultural from the ground up. It´s all the local artists, the local painters, who are so poorly served by the council and the national entities.

"In Liverpool, it´s true that Culture is something brought in from outside, up from London, not something that´s generated locally. Yet the only stuff that´s of interest in Liverpool is the locally-generated culture.

"Everyone knows that except the bureaucrats - and the bureaucrats are so second rate they think that because they´re there, and they´re second-rate, then everyone else must be second-rate, too, and all that´s good comes from London."

William Leece

Liverpool Daily Post

FULL REVIEW

Once upon a time Alex Cox was rather famous - his Repo Man and Sid & Nancy were sporadically thrilling punk-flavoured parables, his deliberately anachronistic western Walker split the critics and appears to have made him pretty much unemployable in America - with a persona as engaging as his witty, sometimes shapeless films. His documentaries (on the likes of Kurosawa and the Emmanuelle movies) have always been fun, as were his left-field introductions to cultish films for BBC2's early '90s Moviedrome strand, and with 10,000 Ways to Die he proves just as engaging on paper.

Spaghetti westerns have always been one of his big loves - Cox made his own in 1987, the fairly shambolic Straight to Hell - and 10,000 Ways to Die is a fascinating, very individual look at the genre, from 1963's Red Pastures ('half-hearted and half-assed') to assorted late '70s efforts like My Name is Nobody and the brilliantly titled A Genius, Two Partners, and a Dupe. The glory years, of course, were the late '60s, in particular '68-'69, which gave us the slow, self-important, magnificent likes of Cemetery Without Crosses and, of course, Sergio Leone's brilliant Once Upon a Time in the West.

Though Leone looms large, his great rival Sergio Corbucci is perhaps the real hero here: he made some crap, but his lean, operatic Django is an 'impressionistic, cruel, anti-clerical, pop-cultural stew' while the little-seen, snow-bound The Big Silence is a film 'to which the word 'genius' can be applied'. Cox loves the likes of Klaus Kinski, has little time for Clint Eastwood, feels 'stars' shouldn't helm their own films (they're too 'intrinsically shallow, isolated and self-pitying'), and can't help getting in his digs at Thatcher, US foreign policy or the folk who finance movies and insist on 'sympathetic' characters.

10,000 Ways to Die is a complete top-to-toe rewrite of an unpublished, more academic book Cox worked on in the '70s, and is perhaps most fascinating - though it's diverting throughout, despite the repetitive nature of much of its subject matter - when he brings a director's insight to exactly how these films must have been made.

Matt Bielby

FilmStar Magazine

FULL REVIEW

Taking in the good (Django), the bad (Red Pastures) and the really stupid (kung fu western To Kill Or Die), cult director Alex Cox unravels the Spaghetti Western in a fascinating film-guide-meets-rant. He's great on influence and anecdotes, with plenty to chew on for spag-buffs. Four Stars.

Empire Magazine

FULL REVIEW

‘Brutality piled on brutality,’ complained one when the spaghetti western rode into town. Yet for Alex Cox, that’s the appeal. This tour of the genre offers Cox’s perspective both as critic and filmmaker. The fanboy of Moviedrome lauds radical politics and surreal bloodletting, champions auteur Sergio Corbucci and shreds the reputation of Clint. But Cox the director also delivers analysis of why these movies still enthral. Rigorous in thought yet unruly in spirit, it’s hard to think of a more apt guide to the Italian West. Four Stars.

SK

Total Film

FULL REVIEW

Those of you whose primary (and in my case, only) language is English are probably well aware of the dearth of good English-language books about the genre. So, naturally, when one comes out, it's a big deal. In the case of director Alex Cox's 10,000 Ways to Die: A Director's Take on the Spaghetti Western, it's a very big deal; as this is a fantastic book.

Some of you may be familiar with a thesis Cox wrote around thirty years ago by the same name (and downloadable for free, here). I read it a while ago, and although an interesting read at times, it's very academic and heady (it's a thesis, why wouldn't it be?). Cox himself has said, 'The old one I wrote as a sort of thesis,' he explains. 'It’s full of the jargon of the 1970s, words like semiotics and that kind of stuff, but that was the way you had to talk in those days.' It had several thematic analyses, covering a wide array of the genre's films. Interesting, but wouldn't have made for a very good book for general release.

This version, however, a completely different work, is a treat, not just for genre fans, but for cinema in general, for those who like to 'get under the hood', so to speak, of the cinematic process. Cox starts off with some personal recollections of his youth and westerns, and then dives right into the subject matter. The chapters are broken down by year, until we get to the seventies, of which the genre was in marked decline and hardly worthy of year by year chapters at that point. Cox covers films of note (both good and bad) with a critical eye and a dry, almost sarcastic wit that I found highly entertaining.

He covers the obvious classics, and although he sees the art to be had in many of them, he is no uncritical fanboy, as he takes down the sacred cows that many fans hold dear. I've often found that writing about these films can be extraordinarily difficult, as I watch a lot of them, and I find that many of them, even some of the favorites, to be utter crap. For every ten I watch, there's one great one, two or three passable ones, one or two mildly entertaining but forgettable films, and it goes downhill from there. I found myself agreeing with Cox on many things, such as the sheer and utter lack of talent of Tony Anthony, or the fact that with all the reverence fans give to Sergio Corbucci, he's only made two exceptional films, Django and The Great Silence, with his others ranging from passable to terrible. And just as often, I'd find myself in disagreement, such as over the quality of Django the Bastard, or Price of Power. But it's often said that a good book challenges the reader's perspective, and Cox most certainly delivers the goods in that regard. He also looks at some of the films from a political perspective, differentiating the ones that do it with a great degree of substance (such as Damiani's ¿Quién Sabe?) and those with a certain inconsistency or shallowness (such as a few of Corbucci's films such as The Specialists).

He really gets into the meat of some of these films, in terms of deconstruction and analysis, putting both his historical and first-hand grasp of the films, as well as his unique perspective as a director, often tying together the connections between films within and without the genre, even providing us a two-and-a-half page chart comparing the similarities between Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. His 'director's take' often gives us a clue into the mindset of the filmmakers themselves, as he did when talking about Parolini's Sartana film, which he feels was a big turning point in terms of the declining quality and increasingly formulaic direction the spaghetti was heading for:

'Sartana wasn't short of money, judging by its many extras, elaborate costumes, and specially constructed sets. It looks like it was shot in a quarry for the same reason that the Elios Films set looks like a second-rate, recently painted cowboy set: Parolini didn't care.... Parolini didn't give a damn. He threw this heritage of visual beauty and innovation out the window. He wasn't making a Western, he was making a James Bond rip-off, and that meant a change of location every five minutes, brief subplots involving sexy women, and a narrative punctuated by rapid-fire, repetitive action.... I can think of few other westerns in which so much effort was expended to so little purpose.'

Even Leone's masterful Once Upon a Time in the West does not escape criticism, although Cox most certainly gives it its due for the high art that it really is. He then closes out the book with a rather unexpected coda, a comparison of the spaghetti western to the Jacobean revenge tragedy, a most unique perspective.

All in all, I can't recommend this book enough, not only for fans of the genre but for those who appreciate a critical eye for films and filmmaking.

J.D. Ryan

fistfulofpasta.com

FULL REVIEW

One of this summer's most curious films was Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which the trailers depicted as a straightforward Dirty Dozen (maybe Kelly's Heroes would be a better comparison) type picture, but can in fact be best described as a Spaghetti Western populated with Nazis -- substituting a suave Nazi for Lee Van Cleef's ruthless killer, hidden Jews for missing Confederate gold, and setting it all to a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. (One could also call it a meditation on the power of cinema, a thank-you letter to the French for their appreciation of the auteur, or a kosher snuff film, but I digress.)

Whether you buy into QT's cinematic bouillabaisse (steeped specifically in the films of Sergio Leone) or not, there is no denying that long past the genre's heyday, an apotheosis arguably reached in 1968 with Leone's Once upon a Time in the West, Spaghetti Westerns continue to fascinate and influence viewers and filmmakers alike.

One such filmmaker is Alex Cox, director of Repo Man and Sid and Nancy. In 1987 he made his own Spaghetti Western pastiche Straight to Hell, and, more recently, has written an assessment of the genre in 10,000 Ways to Die. To this task, Cox brings a lifelong appreciation of all Westerns, as well as experience behind the camera, both of which give him a unique perspective to the genre.

Instead of going for the academic approach (such as that typically exercised by film scholar Christopher Frayling), or exhaustively thorough (see Howard Hughes's Once upon a Time in the Italian West), Cox takes a more cut-and-dried approach, presenting a chronological listing of films, cast and crew, and synopses, along with his critical appraisals. This more laid back style frees Cox to give his opinion and to point out shortcomings while finding enjoyment in these films that were dismissed as vulgar trash when first released (one critic, on Fistful of Dollars, wrote that "Brutality is piled unskillfully on brutality in what appears to be a blatant plea for the X-certificate the censor has awarded it.").

Cox's critical writings here are relaxed and conversational (even in his footnotes), and free from unnecessary jargon or posturing. What's appealing is that he contextualizes the films within the conventions of the genre, not in the larger scheme of cinema and its aesthetics. And Cox is not afraid to dissect what is good, bad, and ugly about a given film. When writing about $1,000 on the Black, he declares that it is a "Western of the highest order. It's visually stylish, bursting with effort, almost". A page or two later, however, he has not so many kind words for the film's heroic lead, played by Anthony Steffen, saying he "is not particularly strong or engaging. He's good in fistfights, but boring the rest of the time. He's literally wooden." (Things don't get better for Steffen. When examining a subsequent film he starred in, Cox writes, "Given its solid, uninteresting director and its routine leading man, Django the Bastard, is an extraordinary film").

What is most enjoyable about the book is that one gets the feeling that, for Cox, Sergio Leone is not the end-all-be-all in Spaghetti Westerns (notice the absence of "Squint" Eastwood on the cover). Here, Cox shines a loving light on two masters of the genre, Sergio Corbucci and Giulio Questi who directed some of the most explosive films in the canon: Django and The Big Silence (Corbucci) and Django Kill: If You Live, Shoot! (Questi -- the only Western he ever directed). Imagine the bloodless Westerns of John Ford filtered through an acid-tinged Grand Guignol spectacle. These were films where the villain isn't dispatched in a gunfight, he's burned alive while being drizzled with molten gold, and a hero drags a casket behind him through the mud. It's not that these are neglected directors; it's just that Cox's reverence for them is more palpable in this book than in other writings on the subject.

Ten Thousand Ways to Die is a welcome addition to the relatively small body of work (in English) on Spaghetti Westerns, not only serving as an exceptionally well-informed and accessible primer on the subject, but also providing some intimate insight to Cox's own creative processes by revealing the passions that inform his own films.

Gerry Donaghy

Powell's Books

FULL REVIEW

Spaghetti Westerns, which took shape in Europe in the 1960s, are violent, misogynistic, antiestablishment, and often in love with the idea of the American West´s wide open spaces.

Cox (X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker), maverick director of such films as Sid and Nancy and Repo Man, covers over 50 spaghetti Westerns in chronological order, providing extensive plot summaries and commentaries.

He pays particular attention to godfathers of the genre Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci, who revitalized the form with stylized languid silences and a highly developed visual sense, as well as Americans Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, who gave the steely-eyed, menacing face to some of the best Westerns.

Enlivened with humor, vivid descriptions, and an infectious enthusiasm, this book is an informative take on an offbeat, short-lived genre.

With its explorations of recurrent themes (some might say obsessions) found in the films and the enriching director-author anecdotes and insights to the craft and improvisation on the set, this book is likely to remain a standard reference for film buffs.

Stephen Rees

Library Journal USA