For those who like their Spaghetti Westerns with a shot of strangeness, Keoma (1976) fits the bill. Enzo G. Castellari's experimental oater places a close second to Django Kill! on the Spaghetti weirdness scale, watchable in its overwrought perversity. Keoma Shannon (Franco Nero) is a half-Indian gunslinger returning from the Civil War. He discovers a mining town overrun by mine boss Caldwell (Donald O'Brien) and his goons, including Keoma's hateful half-brothers. Helped by his father William (William Berger) and childhood friend George (Woody Strode), Keoma takes on Caldwell, rescuing condemned damsel Liza (Olga Karlatos) in the process.
Keoma came near the end of the Spaghetti boom, seeming both familiar and singularly strange. Franco Nero could play his mysterious avenger in his sleep, with an introduction and industrial-scale gun downs worthy of Django. The town overrun by crooks is a familiar Spaghetti story, with a subplot about quarantined plague victims similar to the vagrants in The Great Silence, scapegoats for the murderous baddies. Guido and Maurizio De Angelis's soundtrack, overwrought hippie ballads sung in phonetic English by Italians, is more laughable than compelling.
Yet Keoma isn't quite like other Westerns. Castellari's style verges on surrealism, with slow motion violence, elliptical flashbacks and flashy long takes. Keoma wears hippie-style clothes and hair while suffering crucifixion on a wagon wheel. There's also a mysterious witch (Gabriella Giacobbe) who materializes periodically to save him. Between its gun battles Castellari ham-fistedly evokes American racism, with Keoma suffering "half-breed" taunts and George enduring epithets. But the weirdness resonates more than the message.
Credit Castellari at least for originality. Nowhere else will you hear an Italian Tom Waits sound alike repeatedly crooning "Wanna die?" on the soundtrack. Or a gunfight scored to a woman's birthing cries. Only Keoma offers these singular delights.
