Painted Warhansa Western And Fantasy Emerge From The Work Bench production Line.
I just had to have the Warhans character figures of Conan, Xena and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. They are beautifully sculpted figures and I enjoyed the Conan comics and films although I haven't read the original novels. (Incidentally, Conan now officially enters the marvel universe with The Avengers). Xena was always a little too corny, anachronistic, hammy and also feminist for my tastes - the Hercules series of which Xena was an offshoot, was bad enough.
As for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly that was always one of my favourite films. I was always a Western fan but Serge Leone's film was ground breaking for bringing the Spaghetti Western into the mainstream. Unlike the traditional American Western the characters were usually ambiguous. The Man With No Name character played by Clint Eastwood was mercenary and ruthless but also had a nice side (hence The Good). I mean he gives a dying soldier a cigarette, whether to give him a last pleasure or to hasten his death is not explained. In Leone's films the very dirty looking people and scenery, the close ups (of often very ugly) faces and long periods of silence, lingering filming of flies or eating baked beans etc were all very Leone.
This was the iconic film which made it for Clint. He was best known previously for playing a cowhand in the TV series Rawhide. (I was watching this recently and saw him being threatened by Spock - well actually an Indian played by Nemoy).
Angel Eyes, played by Van Cleef was a big break for that actor too. In fact, he had been in High Noon but missed out on the major good guy part because he refused to have nose surgery. He nearly always played bad guys because of his thin hooked nose and high cheek bones. After TGTBATU he did occasionally get to play good guys.
Van Cleef was a WW2 US naval hero but the tip of one finger was lost in an accident when he was building his daughter's cubby house. At one stage he was in a car accident which made it painful to ride a horse, something not good for acting in Westerns. He died of cancer in his early 60s.
I haven't read as much about Eli Wallach - Tuco. However, two other memorable films he was in were The Misfits (which included Marilyn Monroe) and The Magnificent Seven where he was the bandit leader. In fact his characters in The Good The Bad and The Ugly and the Magnificent Seven sound and look very similar.
Some interesting facts about TGTBATU is that it was filmed in Spain and that the main characters chose their own clothing for their parts. There was also some adlibbing in the film, notably in the scene where Tuco robs the gun shop.
As for the Warhansa figures they are obviously based on the climactic gunfight in the cemetery. There are some exceptions: Tuco did not have his hat or a bandoleer in that scene. (In fact bullet loops were really a later period because at the time of the ACW (when the film is set) most firearm ammunition was paper cartridges that would not last well if so exposed to the elements. However, the gun fighters do have the classic cowboy looped cartridge belts rather than ACW period cap and cartridge boxes. The clothes of the two other gunfighters match the scene.
I have painted the figures to match those worn in that scene; the clothing did change through different scenes in the movie with Tuco having white clothes and sombrero early on and a Stetson and brown clothes later. Blondie's hat also changes from a light coloured one to a dark coloured one and the poncho is acquired towards the end. Tuco had closer fitting trousers at the end rather than the 'flares' shown on the figure, intended to represent leather chaps, I guess, although they are trousers rather than chaps. Angel Eyes had a black shirt and no tie in the final scene, unlike the figure which has a tie so i painted the shirt white.
Robert E Howard wrote the Conan books (but not the Sherlock Holmes books as I mistakenly previously wrote) in the early 20th century. Conan the Barbarian has black hair although Arnold Schwarzenegger did not always have black hair in the film versions. The horns in the helmet I have seen in the films were steel rather than natural horn colours.
Twins. At some point I might sell my spare Conans and Xenas.
Comments
Post a Comment