The Inglorious Bastards

Quentin Tarantino has for years been saying his next film will be a massive WWII action epic entitled The Inglorious Bastards. He's been saying this for so long, he has managed to actually make a couple of other "next" films while Bastards remained seemingly forever on the horizon. With the recent leak of what is alleged to be Tarantino's screenplay for the thing (long enough for two films, and riddled with spelling errors some claim are signs of its authenticity), it is fascinating to return to the inspirational source text: Enzo Castellari's 1978 original. Never released theatrically in the United States and given the recut-n-rename treatment on low-end VHS (Counterfeit Commandos, Deadly Mission, and G.I. Bro), this Italian-issue Dirty Dozen knock-off is one of the sharpest and most entertaining exploitation actioner of its era. It is easy to see what drew Tarantino's interest-the thing already plays like one of his. The story involves a ragtag bunch of convicts and deserters in WWII who manage to evade discipline only to find themselves behind enemy lines, stumbling from calamity to calamity in their efforts to slip across the Swiss border to freedom. Along the way they are mistaken for a skilled commando squad on a suicide mission (whom they mistakenly killed), and sent in to finish the job. Bo Svenson and blaxploitation megastar Fred Williamson topline, supported by a colorful ensemble cast that includes Tom Savini lookalike Michael Pergolani and Peter Hooten as a racist gangster-the closest thing this movie has a to a romantic hero. Not only is this a study of bad guys redeemed by violence, but the plot is little more than a framework on which to hang a series of outlandish set pieces and dense patches of character-building dialogue. If Tarantino had never seen this movie, he certainly would have dreamed it. Like loftier predecessors like Catch 22,