THE SCARLET WORM: A Defiant New Wave In The Old West

If you were mak­ing a list of the least com­mer­cially viable gen­res in cur­rent cin­ema, the west­ern would inevitably be either the top pick or very close.  Younger view­ers don’t relate to them, older view­ers can’t be relied upon to seek them out and for the most part, stu­dios don’t want to touch them.  In other words, you have to be excep­tion­ally dri­ven to pur­sue mak­ing a west­ern in this day and age.

And dri­ven is the per­fect word to describe the aes­thetic behind The Scarlet Worm.  Not only is it a west­ern made on a bud­get that wouldn’t cover the craft ser­vices bud­get of a Hollywood film, it’s a defi­antly uncom­mer­cial west­ern full of grim plot ele­ments, gory vio­lence and odd char­ac­ters.  It also hap­pens to be a hell of a lot of fun if you like west­erns, par­tic­u­larly those of the 1970’s revi­sion­ist and spaghetti varieties.

The Scarlet Worm starts with the spine of a premise that would have worked as a mid-to-late 1960’s spaghetti west­ern and amps it up with a mod­ern atti­tude and some 1970’s-style adult con­tent.  Print (Aaron Stielstra) works as a hired assas­sin for wealthy ranch owner Mr. Paul (Montgomery Ford, a.k.a. Brett Halsey).  Paul made his for­tune on stolen cat­tle so he’s hated and plot­ted against by many but Print gets by with sur­pris­ing ease thanks to supe­rior gun-slinging skills and a unique view of life that is well suited to his hos­tile surroundings.

Things change when Mr. Paul gives Print his lat­est job: he is hired to kill Heinrich Kley (Dan Van Husen), an eccen­tric Dutchman who owns a local whore­house and gives his pros­ti­tutes abor­tions when­ever the clients acci­den­tally impreg­nate them.  To make things more com­plex, Paul simul­ta­ne­ously asks Print to train Lee (Derek Hertig), a cal­low young gun­man who needs tutor­ing. Print tells his only real friend, a retired gunslinger-turned-barber named Hank (Kevin Giffin), that he wants out of the game… but he duti­fully accepts the dual gigs.

Print decides the assas­si­na­tion of Kley as a chance to “paint his mas­ter­piece” and manip­u­lates his way into a job as the secu­rity man at the whore­house.  As he stud­ies his prey, he also trains Lee and incor­po­rates him into the scheme.  Unfortunately, greed, duplic­ity and human emo­tions rear their ugly heads and make Print’s ele­gant plan unwieldy — and lethal.  Before the cred­its roll, the land­scape of the town will be changed per­ma­nently and every­one will have blood on their hands.

As the involved syn­op­sis above should reveal, The Scarlet Worm has the kind of nar­ra­tive com­plex­ity you don’t nor­mally asso­ciate with low bud­get film­mak­ing.  David Lambert’s script rises above the film’s lim­ited resources by invest­ing depth and tex­ture into the char­ac­ters, their rela­tion­ships and the ser­pen­tine his­tory they all share.  He also invests much time in crafty dia­logue, bring­ing a wordsmith’s touch to the expected pro­fane, macho insults but also weav­ing in exchanges that are shock­ingly philo­soph­i­cal.  The lat­ter is heard in Print’s nar­ra­tion but the best exam­ple might be a con­ver­sa­tion between Print and Kley where they dis­cuss the Bible and the nature of man in rela­tion to the whore­house they’re work­ing in.  This exchange also involves the creepy yet ele­gant expla­na­tion of the film’s title.

That said, fans of gritty west­erns shouldn’t fear that The Scarlet Worm is a talk­fest.  In fact, the flip­side of the film’s philo­soph­i­cal bent reveals hefty doses of Grand Guignol blood­let­ting and casual sleaze that evoke the extremes that the west­ern genre found dur­ing the 1970’s.  Eye-opening high­light in this area include a grimly orches­trated abor­tion scene that intro­duces Kley to the audi­ence, a sur­pris­ing amount of casual nudity from the pros­ti­tutes and tons of splat­tery red squibs erupt­ing from tor­sos, limbs and even heads dur­ing the fre­quent scenes of gunplay.

This mix of the intel­lec­tual and the luridly vis­ceral could have gone awry in any num­ber of ways but The Scarlet Worm doesn’t fall prey to those traps thanks to a high level of dis­ci­pline.  Director Michael Fredianelli wisely goes for a time­less sense of style: despite the HD video pho­tog­ra­phy, it is old-fashioned in its use of cam­era move­ment and avoids hyper-speed editing.  He hits the right blend of unfussy style for the dra­matic scenes and care­fully chore­o­graphed kinetic flour­ishes for the action.  This care­ful touch allows the viewer to get invested in the film’s gothic vision of the Old West.

This sense of dis­ci­pline extends to the per­for­mances of the actors.  Stielstra cuts an intense fig­ure as our anti-hero, deliv­er­ing his plen­ti­ful dia­logue and nar­ra­tion with con­fi­dence that comes with being truly invested in the work.  Giffin pro­vides solid sup­port and a nice laconic con­trast to Stielstra’s turn as his friend.  However, the big scene steal­ers are a cou­ple of actual spaghetti west­ern vet­er­ans: Ford presents an oddly ami­able por­trait of amoral­ity as the film’s “evil boss” arche­type while Van Husen is intensely creepy in a dead­pan, con­trolled way as the whorehouse’s overlord.

The film’s bud­getary lim­i­ta­tions show up in spots — the use of computer-animated muz­zle flashes for the guns, a few raw line read­ings from bit play­ers — but Fredianelli and crew have pulled off a minor mir­a­cle here.  This is a film for the true believer, aimed squarely at the sen­si­bil­ity of mod­ern west­ern fans who embrace the genre’s exper­i­men­tal, non-traditional outer edges.  This is because it was made by those fans — and the blood, sweat and tears invested in the project shine through in every frame. Its nervy sense of gusto deserves the atten­tion of cult film fans, espe­cially the west­ern lovers.