Kill Them All and Come Back Alone (1968): The Dirty Half-Dozen of the Spaghetti Western (Review)

Released to Blu-ray on Studio Canal’s Cult Classics label comes a rip-roaring Spaghetti Western from 1968, Enzo G. Castellari’s wonderfully titled Kill Them All and Come Back Alone starring Chuck Connors, the rangy former basketball and baseball player and star of popular Western TV serials The Rifleman and Branded and Frank Wolff of classic Spaghetti’s The Great Silence and Once Upon a Time in the West.

Connors stars as the laconic mercenary Clyde McKay who, in the middle of the American Civil War, finds himself hired by Wolff’s Captain Lynch of the Confederate Army to launch a daring raid upon a Union stronghold. The objective: to steal a million dollars in gold that has been hidden in boxes of dynamite. If captured, the Confederacy will refuse all knowledge of him and he will die a thief rather than an agent of the South. To undertake this dangerous mission, McKay comes with a band of brothers whose particular skillsets match their unsavoury natures. There’s Deker (Leo Anchóriz), an explosive expert armed with a kind of multi-functional rocket launcher; Blade (Giovanni Cianfiglia, credited here as Ken Wood) a half Mexican/half-Native American who – you’ve guessed it – has selected the knife as his weapon; Hoagy (Franco Citti), the skilful gunman with a conscience; Kid (Alberto Dell’Acqua) whose baby-faced handsome features belie his viciousness, and Bogard (Hercules Cortez) a strongman who possesses brute strength and little intelligence. The catch? As Lynch advises, only McKay must return with the gold: “Kill them all and come back alone” and to ensure the job is done, Lynch comes along for the ride. Needless to say, it isn’t long before betrayals from the most unexpected of quarters grip the band. In a war that famously set brother against brother, the bloodiest of double-crosses begin to play out.

The secret to the success of Italian cinema was to give the public what they wanted. By the mid-1960s, the Western was the single most popular genre for Italian moviegoers with directors in this particular Filoni (or cycle) imitating not only the Hollywood Westerns but also mining other film genres to whet the audience’s appetites, keep the Western fresh and broaden its horizons. A good example of this is how Sergio Leone took influences from the James Bond movies and disseminated them into the character of Lee van Cleef’s Colonel Mortimer in his sequel to A Fistful of Dollars (which was heavily influenced by Yojimbo), For a Few Dollars More.

When watching Kill Them All and Come Back Alone it is impossible not to see the impact that WWII ‘men on a mission movie The Dirty Dozen, released a year earlier and subsequently imitated more explicitly by Castellari with his The Inglorious Bastards a decade later. Likewise, comparisons can be drawn closer to home with The Magnificent Seven, whose sequels were still being rolled into production in Spain, the home turf of the Spaghetti and increasingly taking on much of their Bolognese flavour too. However, the duplicitous characters here are more like the anti-Magnificent Seven, beating Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight by some decades. Like The Dirty Dozen, the characters of Kill Them All and Come Back Alone are a rogues gallery of misfits and miscreants who delight in their individual expertise in violent conduct. And just like those men of The Dirty Dozen, they are all pretty doomed from the off. Where this film differs from that one, or indeed most ‘men on a mission’ flicks, is that McKay’s team has already been assembled before the credits commence, meaning that their subsequent treason against one another feels all the more fatalistic given they have clearly shared some times together.

One of Enzo G. Castellari’s great gifts as a genre filmmaker was his flair for action, it’s what saw him work in all the major, popular Italian film cycles, from the Spaghetti Westerns to the WWII actioners known as Macaroni Combat, from the Giallo films and the Poliziotteschi, to even cash-ins of Jaws (The Last Shark) and Escape from New York (1990: The Bronx Warriors and Escape from the Bronx). If you’re looking for action, then you’ve come to the right place with Kill Them All and Come Back Alone. If you’ve come for narrative depth or character development. Hmm, maybe look elsewhere. Kill Them All and Come Back Alone is a colourful live-action comic strip of a movie that moves from one fist fight, shoot out or acrobatic setpiece to another. It’s a feast for the eyes of any aficionado of explosive spectacle, but its lack of substance – strikingly narrow-minded for a film requiring double-crossing twists and turns – means it can become a little tiresome long before its hundred minutes are over.

Personally speaking, I like my Spaghetti Westerns to have something to say, something allegorical beyond the gunplay and Old West trappings. Whilst you could argue that its themes of traitorous disloyalty are a searing indictment of capitalist greed and perhaps (at a stretch) echo many of its countrymen’s experiences in the uncertain dark days of WWII, it’s fair to say that the biggest development for the characters are their routine switches from a tough-guy scowl to a laconically beaming, pearly-white-toothed smile. It’s frustrating because this is something of a rarity in the Spaghetti Western; a film which puts its protagonists on the side of the Confederacy. Usually and somewhat predictably fitting for Italian cinema with its primarily left-wing filmmakers, the Spaghetti’s – unlike their American counterparts – had little interest in depicting the Confederates either in a positive light or as a sympathetic lost (and therefore somehow nobler) cause. They had experienced fascism in living memory, they knew what the ‘Stars and Bars’ ultimately represented. In the Spaghetti Western, the Union are the good guys and the Confederacy are the villains. Kill Them All and Come Back Alone breaks free of that norm, only to have zero commentary regarding it. You could claim that, as our protagonists are mercenaries for hire, with services offered to the highest bidder, sides mean little to them. Except McKay’s Southern drawl makes it all too clear at one point what he thinks about the uniform – and therefore the values and stance – of the Union soldier. With such flat characterisation, it’s near impossible to get a handle on any of the protagonists or indeed feel much for them.

Back in 1968, the casting of Connors in the lead role of McKay ensured that audiences familiar with his screen persona would simply root for him anyway, but the passage of time robs all but the most ardent Western fan of any such affinity. With such distance, it’s easy to see that the camera loves him, but there’s nothing here that sets him apart from any other visiting Hollywood genre star looking to broaden or capitalise upon his international appeal, catch a little Spanish sun and pocket some Italian lira along the way. What makes it all the more frustrating is that Castellari could deal with weightier themes, as evinced by the same year’s Johnny Hamlet which transplants the Bard’s ‘rotten state of Denmark’ to the Spaghetti Western, but here he’s just required for muscle.

Kill Them All and Come Back Alone has been given a stunning 4K restoration which really showcases the deep tans of the main players and the beads of sweat that break out as they traverse the Spanish plains. The Blu-ray is also packed with several special features, including an audio commentary from filmmaker and Spaghetti Western expert Alex Cox, a newly filmed interview with Castellari and Italy’s Cult Auteur of Action Cinema, a featurette serving as a critical retrospective of his career, plus a further featurette from Romolo Guerrieri entitled Shoot-Outs in the Old Spaghetti West. Finally, an exclusive series of art cards round out this attractive package that is surely a must-have for horse operas, Italian style.

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