‘Whiskey and Ghosts’: when the spaghetti western meets the supernatural
Sergio Leone is considered the pioneer of the spaghetti western, a sub-genre of western films produced in Europe that was created after Leone’s 1964 film A Fistful of Dollars, sparking a long love affair between audiences and the dusty heels of cowboys and their dramatic feuds. Since then, film lovers all over the world have fallen for the machismo charm of Once Upon a Time in the West, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and Django, perhaps because of the heightened masculinity, anti-heroes or strained violence that makes for gritty and suspenseful tales of tragic proportions.
Compared to the traditional western, they are perhaps more concerned with a more immersive physical world that feels wild and untamed, adding to the idea of a completely uncontrolled world that is immune to rules and order, allowing for conflict to be settled with violence and chaos. But one film takes this to new extremes, with a spaghetti western that exists entirely outside of our normal universal laws, with supernatural entities and spirits that merge with the cowboy antics.
Antonio Margheriti was one of the most important filmmakers of his time, starting out as a screenwriter in 1956 before eventually directing his movies. While he tried his hand at the spaghetti western, he cannot be limited to one genre and also dabbled in science fiction, horror and action films, rising to fame with cult movies such as Cannibal Apocalypse, Castle of Blood and The Long Hair of Death. Funnily enough, he began using a pseudonym for the majority of his career after discovering that his real name translated to Antonio Daisies, believing it to be too effeminate for the types of movies he made, going by Anthony Dawson instead.
Despite the wide fan base for many of his films, there was one that wasn’t received in the same way that merged together many of the genres he had worked in.
Whiskey and Ghosts, released in 1974, follows a snake-oil salesman who is chased through the desert by a group of bandits but discovers he is being protected by the spirits of Davey Crockett, Pecos Bill and Johnny Appleseed. While it sounds like a whimsical and perhaps wonderful crossover between seemingly random story worlds, it, unfortunately, exists as a more painful viewing experience.
Margheriti had made a few more serious westerns, but this was his first foray into the surreal landscape, attempting to blur the line between multiple genres that he’d worked across in the past, bringing an element of horror and science fiction to the spaghetti western. The script is questionable, with an emphasis on the slapstick humour that doesn’t always land and a surprising amount of diarrhoea.
While some people enjoy the childish comedy of the film, for die-hard fans of the genre, it slightly crosses the line, breaching too many of the unspoken rules and taking the idea of creative license to new extremes. However, you can’t deny that the mix of cowboys and ghosts is an intriguing concept and perhaps something that would work if better executed.
