Killer Like Candy: Video Oddities #3, page 2

The king informs his new protectors that there's one room in particular they're not to go into, but Stone checks it out anyway since he plays by his own rules. He takes a peek inside and, just as we all suspected, this forbidden room is the cooling ground for the king's personal harem of scantily-clad, belly dancing sex slaves. In retribution the stoic ruler merely informs them: "You may be responsible for my life, but you should have some regard for your own. In my country, I would have you executed on the spot." That's one badass king.

Despite their seemingly incompatible personalities these crazy cops actually manage to do their job and get into all sorts of scrapes with foot soldiers of the man who hired the licorice-lovin' lone gunman. They get involved in a confrontation in a park full of old gigantic statue heads and come out on top after lots of gunshots and more than a few gratuitous barrel rolls. A brief fistfight in a slaughterhouse ensues during which a henchman gets tossed into a vat of what appears to be boiling blood, which leads to Costa quipping "After this, I’m a vegetarian!" Using their keen detective skills they discover the wax paper left at the sniper's nest; Stone declares "Our killer likes candy!" thus shattering any ambiguity over whether or not this killer is the one from the title.

The best part of the film is where they learn the killer's identity: he's Oscar Snell, former SS sniper and top international assassin. The agents watch as a print-out on Snell comes off the fax and discloses the following information: "Psychological Portrait: Introvert – Works Alone – Manic Depressive – Sadistic Tendencies – Obsessive Craving For Candy." So it turns out the killer doesn't only LIKE candy - the killer CRAVES candy! He needs it! And as an introvert with manic depression, the candy is probably his only friend! It's at this point the title itself comes into question: is it enough to claim the killer likes candy? It might not even be enough to say the killer loves candy (just as "baby loves head rub"): it's right there in the profile, The Killer Obsessively Craves Candy!

It was at this point that the film once again threw me for a loop: I expected Stone and Costa to somehow use this information to their advantage. The candy he so craves could have been used as bait for the sugar-addled crook: they could have set up a piece of taffy that explodes, like the gum in the first Mission: Impossible, or announced a phony candy convention similar to the one Homer and Marge attended on "The Simpsons" and laid an ambush. Come on guys, he's got a "fixation on candy," he wouldn't be able to help himself! I thought at least it would come down to a final showdown with the killer and Stone atop some heightened structure; Stone pulls out a Snickers bar and hurls it to the ground, Snell plunges after it to his death. If they could set the climatic fight in a candy factory so that he could plunge into a giant vat of caramel, all the better.

The filmmakers don't go the absurd route with the climax, but it's still pretty enjoyable. It's revealed that the king has a serious heart condition that requires emergency surgery – in light of this development Stone and Costa learn that, if he dies, a mysterious regent will take over. Snell disposes of his employer by spraying him with gas and lighting him on fire (I guess the guy forgot to run a background check that would have revealed his killer’s sadistic tendencies) and, in a really good move, kidnaps the mother of the king’s anesthesiologist, forcing him to make sure the operation is not a success. One of the movie's best moments is when the poor bastard enters a church to find Snell banging pipes behind the altar (the killer plays organ!) with an evil smirk on his face. The king pulls through, the scheming regent is revealed (it’s some guy!) and it all leads to a satisfying chase that goes from catacombs beneath a church to a quarry outside to the top of a hovering mining car. The film ends with a classic rimshot moment where Fidel Castro arrives in Rome and Stone playfully states "Let's hope they never call me in to look after him!" The Commie Likes Cigars!

So my main question is: does this killer really like candy? We see him eating some at the beginning and are constantly reminded that he's a candy-craver, but he doesn't seem to lose his head over the stuff. In addition his reputation as a killer isn’t absolutely solidified: he really doesn't end up killing all that many people, just one by mistake, a few of his own allies and an unfortunate canine in the wrong place at the wrong time (the killer hates dogs!) So is he really the killer of the title? Maybe it's actually a reference to Stone? He kills more people, and his preference of dessert is left ambiguous. No that's crazy talk: he's the fit and dashing "Angel Eyes." He goes undercover as a hip, happenin' fashion photographer – his only vice is his own gorgeousness. It's the hitman who likes/loves/craves the stuff, but they could have taken it further: his bullets should have been dum dum pops with lemonheads.

Or is the meaning of the title deeper? Oil politics come into play: is the consumption of candy a metaphor for the world's depleting of natural resources? The king's stripper harem make for some pleasing eye candy, maybe there's something to read there? There are infinite possibilities, but I for one would have appreciated a more surface, candy-oriented plot that us common folk could easily understand. Maybe someday I'll borrow the title, Tarantino-style (except spell it correctly), and make a film about a sniper whose insatiable lust for the sweet stuff sends him on a cross country mission to eliminate top candy manufacturers and CEOs. The product endorsement possibilities in this day and age are limitless

The first thing I learned about this film is that it apparently inspired a song by the douchy, My Chemical Romance-type band I Am Ghost. I listened to it on Youtube and it. is. awful. Sample lyrics include "A velvet tongue demur is cast and melted" and "Let the music glow." Unfortunately almost every link under the film's title is about the song, not the movie, so I learned very little from the internet about the movie itself.

The second thing I discovered was that I'm an idiot: this film preceeded Day of the Jackal by five years! So it stands on its own legs, it wasn't just a cheap imitation of a big Hollywood production. Both movies were based on books, Killer on the novel Face D'Ange Chasse le Tresor by Adam Saint Moore (pen name for prolific pulp writer Jacques Douyau) and Jackal on the best-selling thriller of the same name by Frederick Forsyth from 1971. So Killer, while probably not the very first story about government agents tracking down an assassin, does predate even the Jackal novel. Interestingly, "Face D'Ange Chasse le Tresor" I think translates to "Angel Face Hunts the Treasure," so I guess there was some sort of treasure to be found in the plot of the book? Where did the killer come into it? Does the killer like treasure? The film's German title is Zucker für den Mörder (Sugar for the Murderer), and the French released it under the irresistible name Le tueur aime les bonbons.

It was released in 1968, at the end of the Golden Age of Spaghetti Westerns. At the time director Maurice Cloche was a forty-year veteran of espionage thrillers like FX 18 (not the seventeenth sequel to FX) and Lay Off Blondes. He worked solely in TV after this film while co-director Federico Chentrens would go on to beat another US production to the chase by making a Judge Roy Bean movie one year before the John Huston-Paul Newman film came out. Composer Gianni Marchetti was not nearly as prolific as Ennio Morricone, though he did score a pair of films called Die Slowly You'll Enjoy It More and Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold. His last credit is from 1991.

Wisconsin-born Kerwin Mathews, who plays Stone, is best known for playing the title role ten years earlier in the Ray Harryhausen classic 7th Voyage of Sinbad. He also played Gulliver in Harryhausen's 3 Worlds of Gulliver and Jack in Sinbad director Nathan Juran's Jack the Giant Killer. He had previously played Agent OSS 117 in a film with two great American titles, Panic in Bangkok and Shadow of Evil. Venantino Venantini, who played Costa and was a staple in the Euro-Emmanuelle series of the 1970s, still pops up in Italian genre pictures such as 22 Bullets and I Always Wanted to Be a Gangster (some of his best US titles: No Sun in Venice, Nude Odyssey, The Sucker, You Die...But I Live, Hatred is My God, Are You Engaged to a Greek Sailor or an Airline Pilot?, There's a Spy in My Bed and Crazy Underwear - I still think The Killer Likes Candy is my favorite.)

And sadly, yet ironically, Bruno Cremer (Snell) choked to death on a piece of butterscotch taffy only five years after the film was released... Just kidding, he's alive and well, a full-time actor who went on to co-star in William Friedkin's brilliant Sorcerer (recently destroyed by the villianous Eric Pfriender) and Francois Ozon's Under the Sand.

Kafiristan has been called Nurestan since 1896, so unless this is the most anachronistic film ever made (or it takes place in a future where they've changed the name back, or an alternative reality where they never changed it in the first place), the name is liberally applied.

COMING SOON...

THE DEAD PIT!