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Our
feature this week wastes little time as
we're barely past the opening credits
before our professed hero is being hassled
by the authorities. Pulled over and asked
to step out of his truck by Sheriff Jesse
(David Canary), a wary Johnny Firecloud
(Victor Mohica) complies with this
seemingly tired routine. Finding no
violations with the vehicle, Jesse makes
one by kicking out the taillight. Fed up,
Johnny, who knows who really is behind
this constant harassment, scoffs at Jesse,
telling him he has "the balls of a
mouse" and is nothing more than a
paid stooge for Old Man Colby (Ralph
Meeker) -- a local fat-cat rancher whose
influence is like a malignant tumor on the
community, and whose hatred for Johnny knows
no bounds.
Seems
that before Johnny went off to fight in
Vietnam, he and Colby's daughter, June
(Christina Hart) were lovers. Being the
bigot and all around no-good-nik that he
is, unbeknownst to the couple, Colby
intercepted and destroyed all
communications between the two after
Johnny left. And after several letters
went unanswered, both broken-hearted
parties assumed the relationship was over.
Unaware of her father's treachery, June
has been wallowing around the bottom of a
liquor bottle ever since, and after
Johnny's hitch was up, he returned home to quickly find
out that Colby was still holding a massive
grudge and determined to make the
returning veteran's life miserable.
The
only reason Johnny sticks around at all is to be
near his father, White Eagle (Frank
DeKova), the chief of the local
reservation tribe. But Johnny seems embarrassed
by his old man and constantly refuses to
acknowledge his heritage. It doesn't help
matters that his father spends most of his
time in the local bar, perpetually
snockered, and will do almost anything to
get himself another drink. Colby's goons,
who are full of suggestions, take sadistic
pleasure in embarrassing the elder,
smearing his face with lipstick for
"war paint" and making him dance
for another shot of whiskey. When Johnny
tries to stop this and take him home, Colby
gives the signal and the goons turn on the
son. Outnumbered, Johnny takes a
beating, and while they wait for him to
dance, they don't realize that all Johnny
is doing is using the respite to get his
second wind...
"Nobody
ever went broke underestimating the
taste of the American public."
--
H.
L. Mencken
Like
a lot famous film-exploitationeers,
producer Dave Friedman learned the tools
of the filmmaking trade in the Army Signal
Corps. After getting out of the service, he got a job
promoting for a carnival, then owned and
promoted his own side-show, and then landed a
job as a press agent for Paramount
Pictures in Chicago in the early '50s.
That lasted until the carnie saw-dust in
his veins lured him away from the
mainstream to Modern Films and Kroger Babb -- the ultimate
cinema-barker of his generation. It
was Babb who pioneered the art of
Road-Showing: where the featured forbidden
film was only a small part of the
production. Coupled with a round-table of speakers,
Q&A's, live demonstrations (including
incidents of shooting audience volunteers
to prove the effectiveness of bullet-proof
vests), and pamphlets and how-to
guides sold in the lobby, it was a P.T.
Barnum type atmosphere brought into the
theaters. Using blitzkrieg tactics, agents
went in first to inundate the venues with
propaganda and ballyhoo. Then ringers were
sent in to stir up controversy, and some
producers even swore out injunctions to
stop their own shows to amp up the
publicity. It was all about the tease. And
the tease was all about getting more butts into the seats.
Friedman
got in on the tail-end of this type of
road-show, and when Babb decided to call
it quits after touring an Italian version
of Uncle Tom's Cabin (that had the
production design of Gone with the Wind
but a soundtrack where everyone sounded
like Chico Marx), Friedman bought him out.
Needing a new film to distribute, enter
fledgling filmmaker Herschell Gordon
Lewis. Together, these two hit the ground
running by turning out several cheap and
profitable "nudie-cuties" like Lucky
Pierre and
Boin-n-g.
Sensing the end of the nudies was nigh with
the advent of the "roughie", the
duo switched tactics, kept in the nudity,
and added gallons and gallons of fake gore
for their Blood Trilogy -- Blood
Feast,
2000
Maniacs,
and Color
me Blood Red.
Eventually, though, all that blood started to
curdle and coagulate and the partnership hemorrhaged
out over creative differences --
Friedman thought their product needed more
polish to compete for the dwindling
exploitation markets, while Lewis didn't
see the need to lessen the profits by spending any more money on
these no-frills productions.
Leaving
his former partner and Chicago behind
after an amicable split, Friedman moved to
Hollywood and found himself a niche in the
late '60s and '70s in the Soft-X market
with fellow sexploitationeers like Russ
Meyer, Lee Frost, and Harry Novak. And if
a major studio needed any kind of X-rated
inserts for their films, Friedman was the
first one they called. But as hardcore
started to catch on and draw less heat
from the authorities, and mainstream films
started to push well past certain
boundaries of decency to never look back, the
specialized markets for Friedman's films
quickly dried up. The writing on the wall
was obvious, and after enduring a particularly unpleasant
experience with the financiers of Ilsa:
She-Wolf of the SS,
so much so that he had his name removed
from the credits, Friedman knew the days
of the Soft-X were numbered.
 Needing
a new
genre to exploit, Friedman ultimately
decided to cash in on the popularity of
the hicksploitation classics like Walking
Tall,
and combine it with the counter-culture
ass-kicking delivered by Billy
Jack.
Tom Laughlin's tale about a half-breed
Indian who defends a commune of hippies
against a corrupt sheriff and a bunch of
rednecks was an exclamation point to a
rash of revisionist films that began to
question the anglo-centric version of the
wild, wild west. More highbrow fair like Little
Big Man
tried to tell both sides fairly, while
films like Soldier
Blue, which
kinda plays out like a long episode of F-Troop
until the concluding Peckinpahesque-like
massacre of a Native village,
when
it suddenly becomes an atrocity picture as
the camera seldom flinches during the saber-skewering,
raping and pillaging,
are
a little more scathing with their message
about who were the real savages. The 1970s
saw a glut of these films, but it was
nothing new. You can trace the Redman's
Revenge genre as far back as the silents,
the most famous being Alan Crosland's Massacre
that
really set the template for all that
followed:
Debuting
in 1934, it was the tale of Joe
Thunderhorse, who had denounced his
heritage by exploiting it for fame and
fortune. Making his way home of the
funeral of his father -- the chief of the
local tribe, he sees the deplorable
conditions of life on the reservation and
the exploitation of the people by the
entrenched corruption by the bilking
government officials (played by
Charles Middleton -- Ming the Merciless!,
and Sidney Toler -- Charlie Chan!).
While trying to put a stop to this legally
with the "White-Man's Law",
Thunderhorse is thwarted at every turn.
And as things escalate, his sister is
brutalized and branded by the bad guys.
That's the last straw for Thunderhorse,
who reclaims his birthright and exacts a
bloody, pre-code revenge. Alas, there is
no happy ending. For as the movie ends,
Thunderhorse, wanted for murder, is a
fugitive from the law and disappears into
the wilderness.
Screenwriter
Wilton Denmark doesn't stray very far from
that template for Firecloud, but
adds a few tweaks of originality to
seriously muddy the waters on a few
characters. For the director, Friedman
turned to long time collaborator William
Castleman -- who scored almost all of Friedman's
features. And for the grue F/X for the
massacre that was the centerpiece of this
morality play, Friedman borrowed Joe
Blasco from the Ilsa production,
and for a guy known mostly for doing
make-up for situational comedies, he sure
knew how to tear up a body and slather on
the blood. Striking a deal with 20th
Century Fox for the foreign
distributions rights -- Friedman's Entertainment
Ventures Inc. would handle it
domestically -- the budget swelled to
$200000, easily the largest budget for any
EVI produced project and it shows on
the screen, most obviously in the quality
of the veteran cast members and the
expansive Cinemascope.
Turns
out Johnny
Firecloud
was to be Friedman's first and last shot
at legitimacy. Seeing how badly his
contemporaries were being treated by the
major studios, EVI seriously cut back on
production, and even though he still has
an office in Hollywood, the producer has
since "retired" back to Alabama.
According to John McCarty's interview in The
Sleaze Merchants,
Friedman claimed he got out of the
business because there was no business
left to be in. "The whole secret to
exploitation...was the carnival tease:
'Boy, we didn't get to see it this week,
but next week they're really gonna show
us,'" Friedman says. "With
hardcore, they give away the third act the
minute the curtain is raised; and after
you've seen the guy ejaculate and the girl
fellate him, what else can you do?"
Friedman considered all of this bad show
business, and with the burgeoning X-rated
video market, all the X-rated theaters
closed up, marking the sad end to this
type of filmmaking and promotion.
Was
Firecloud a worthy capper to this
storied exploitation career? Well, while
it is definitely offbeat, and it has a few
moments of brilliance, you can already
tell that the magic, if not already gone,
was rapidly dwindling away...
Back
in the bar, Johnny manages to get a few
good licks in before the odds overwhelm
him. But then, strangely enough, Sheriff
Jesse breaks it up and safely escorts the
bloodied Johnny and White Eagle out of the
bar and lets them go. Taking his
apologetic father back to the reservation,
the bitter Johnny isn't listening. Once
there, Johnny gets more abandonment grief
from Nenya (Sacheen Littlefeather),
an old friend who came back to the
reservation to help her people. When she
asks Johnny why he came back, he simply
states that he had no where else to go.
The
next day, when Johnny gets word that June would
like to see him, in not the wisest
of moves, he heads out to Colby's
ranch, alone, to find out why she dumped him. They
meet up in the barn, they fight, but
there's still a spark between them and
they do their best to rekindle it by going
for a roll in the hay. Unfortunately,
Colby catches them in the act. He orders
his men to tie Johnny to a fence and then
proceeds to whip him bloody. Again, Johnny
is saved by the timely intervention of the
Sheriff. But it is Johnny who is arrested
on a trumped up trespassing charge and
thrown in jail. While treating the
prisoners wounds, Jesse confesses that
everything Johnny has said about him was
true but there's nothing he can do to stop
Colby. Seems the rancher found out Jesse
was dishonorably discharged from the army
for being a homosexual -- caught in the
act the day the conflict ended, and the
fear of exposure keeps him turning a
blind-eye on Colby's vendetta. Jesse also
tells Johnny it was Colby who intercepted
all the correspondence while he was away,
and worse, turns out June was pregnant but
lost their baby. He doesn't come right out
and say it, but Johnny's perceived
abandonment and her father's constant
abuse caused the miscarriage.
With
that harsh revelation, Johnny's problems
quickly go from bad to worse when White
Eagle finally sobers up. Donning his
ceremonial gear, he goes to Colby to try
and negotiate his son's release. Colby
laughs him off at first, but the Chief's
persistence ticks him off to the point
that he's suddenly in the mood for an old
fashioned lynching. Horrified, Johnny
watches from his jail cell window as his
father is stood up in a pick-up bed and
noosed to a tree. A deputy (Jason
Ledger) tries to stop it, but he's
too late as the truck rolls away and the
rope snaps taut. Of course, Colby will
have this written off as an accident,
despite the deputy's protests to the
contrary. Back in the jail, when Johnny
offers his hand in thanks for trying to
save his father, he uses the ruse to knock
out the guard and make his escape.
Fairly
certain that Johnny will come looking for
him, Colby sends out his goons to find him
first and put him in the ground. Figuring
he'd hide out at the reservation, they
don't find Johnny there but do find Nenya
at the school. When she refuses to help
them, things quickly turn sinister as all
six men encircle her, their intentions
clear as they start tearing her clothes
off, and then the gang rape begins in
earnest...
After
Johnny finishes off the customary funeral
rights by cremating his father, he finds
what's left of Nenya and she fingers
Colby's men before she dies. That's the
last straw for Johnny, who swears a blood
oath of vengeance, and the day of deadly
reckoning with Colby is now at hand.
He
starts out by taking care of Colby's
goons, and dispatches them most
gruesomely. The first, the one most
directly responsible for his father's
death, is scalped. The second captured has
a bag filled with rattlesnakes tied around
his head. Another gets a tomahawk facial,
while yet another, who initiated the gang
rape, is tied up with a lit bundle of
dynamite strapped between his legs. Boom.
And then there was the guy who appeared to
be masturbating while watching a bunch of
Indians being massacred on the TV. Weird,
weird scene. Anyway, he winds up buried up
to his neck with a mouth full of gravel --
and I'm fairly certain the circling
vultures have already plucked out his eyes
as Johnny leaves him to die.
Experiencing
an extreme amount of pleasure watching
Colby squirm as his men are picked off,
Sheriff Jesse makes a token effort to
track down his fugitive. And that's why
he's nowhere near the ranch when Johnny
catches Colby in the barn alone. Before he
knows what hit him, Colby is strung up by
the neck, and as he tries to keep
breathing, Johnny alternates between
whipping him bloody and punching him in
the junk. But before Johnny can deal a
deathblow, several hired hands stumble
upon them and run Johnny off.
Humiliated,
Colby orders Jesse to bring Johnny in or
else he'll let out his little secret.
Unsure of what to do, Jesse takes the time
to escort June, who has denounced her
father, to the nearest bus stop. She
offers to return and do whatever she can
to help bring her father down; all Jesse
has to do is ask. But will he? Now
completely torn, Jesse presses on and
tracks his fugitive into the familiar
looking desert near Vasquez Rocks (ya
know, where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn),
and when he finally catches up to him, the
two men trapped in Colby's web of hate face off for one final showdown...
The
End?
 When
Marlon Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather
to refuse his Academy Award for The
Godfather,
he wanted to draw attention to the
American Indian Movement's current efforts during
the Siege
at Wounded Knee and protest Hollywood's
propagating the mistreatment of Native
Americans in film. His sentiments
might have been genuine, but his chosen representative was not. In
fact, it only added another sad chapter in
Hollywood duplicity. Ms. Littlefeather,
whose real name is Maria Cruz, was an
actress/model of Hispanic descent, and her
showbiz debut came when she was a finalist for the Miss American Vampire
contest held by Dan Curtis to help promote
House
of Dark Shadows,
the feature film version of his gothic
soap opera. And less than six months after
her abbreviated Oscar appearance in '73, Hugh Hefner had her posing nude
for a pictorial in the October issue of Playboy.
That, a few bit parts in several features,
and one hideous, gravity-defying boob-job,
brought her to Friedman's attention, who
had no qualms about exploiting her notoriety
to promote his film -- even though her
role, when not counting the pivotal
rape/murder scene, is probably less than a
minute of screen time.
As
I said before, Johnny
Firecloud
almost succeeds as an offbeat gem on the
evils of bigotry -- but that's mostly due
to the homophobic aspects, thanks to
Canary's understated performance, and not the
racial hatred. On the Native American
front, it makes no great strides and
ultimately sputters and fails, falling
into the same old genre trappings; the
Natives here are played by a Puerto Rican (Johnny), a Mexican
(Nenya), and an
Italian (White Eagle) -- and come to think
of it, I'm almost positive that these are
the only three "Indians" we ever
see during the entire film. I mean, is
Colby just picking on Johnny or what? And
the whole revenge angle is stretched a
little thin because, frankly, after your
lover has been abused and brow-beaten into
miscarrying your child, your father has
been humiliated and lynched, and your best
friend has been brutally raped and
murdered, and then, and only then, after
all of that sequentially happens,
do you take the law into your own hands
for a little biblical payback, as a
viewer, you might have a little trouble
rooting for the guy because you have to
wonder out loud -- What in the hell
took you so long?
For
the record, I have this same
justification problem with almost all
revenge flicks. Seriously, Mr. Kersey,
did you have to wait until your new
girlfriend died, AGAIN!, before taking
out the local kingpin?
And
then there's that abortive ending. Most
people hate it because the vile Colby is
still breathing when the end credits roll.
Myself, though I found it a bit
anti-climatic, I really didn't hate it but I
wasn't really sure what they were shooting
for, either. After one last heated exchange,
Jesse, feeling guilty and culpable, winds
up letting Johnny go. Now, there's a lot
left to your own interpretations as these
two oppressed men shake hands and part,
and the fugitive Firecloud disappears into
the mountains, but I'm fairly certain that
Jesse is gonna come out of the closet and
call in the Feds, and then turn evidence
on Colby for all the wrong he's done. And
yes, Colby is still alive, but he's been
beaten and humiliated -- by an Indian! a
fate worse than death to him, his only
child has left and disowned him, and his
cronies are all dead, leaving him to take
all the heat when the authorities come
a-knocking, so his suffering is just
beginning. And in the end, Johnny will
probably get one more lingering death to
notch on his tomahawk. Maybe -- but with everything
we've seen, probably not. Which leaves us
with the distinct possibility that this
massacre was all for nothing. So nobody
wins. Uhm...Yay.
Like
always, Something Weird Video's DVD
for Johnny
Firecloud
is jammed packed with bonus material;
trailers, shorts, and exploitation art is
all there just waiting to be cued up. Saddled
on a double-feature disc with the aptly
titled Bummer!
-- whose tagline screams "You don't
have to assault a groupie...You just have
to ask!" that's the cinematic
equivalent of chewing on a piece of
aluminum foil, the DVD also contains a
commentary by Friedman, Mike Vraney, and
Frank Henenlotter for Johnny
Firecloud.
And thanks to the efforts of the
commentators, it is filled with a lot of
insider information by Friedman -- on
Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S.
E'yup, about 90% of it dealt with the
German Über-[rhymes
with twitch]. Informative, yes, but kinda
of a wash for this particular disc. The
only interesting bit about Firecloud
was the revelation that in all probability
-- the 20th Century Fox logo and
opening fanfare instead of the Entertainment
Ventures Inc. title card being the
dead giveaway -- that SWV might
have accidentally released the tamer,
International Fox cut of the film by
mistake. Several times Friedman claims
there are some skin-shots missing, and
some of the violence appears to have been
altered slightly or abruptly abbreviated
in spots.
Whatever
version, in the end, Johnny
Firecloud
is probably nothing you haven't seen
before in a standard revenge flick. But,
with all due respect to Mr. Friedman and
EVI, it is a lot better than it probably should
be once you consider who was behind it.
Faint praise? Well, just
try and sit through Bummer!
and you'll see what I mean. It's rare when
a feature can escape its schlocky
trappings and achieve to something far
beyond its limitations. Johnny
Firecloud's
ambitions probably weren't that high, but
they were definitely met and exceeded.
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