artpf A middle-aged hired gun named Print (Aaron Stielstra) is obsessed with having style and poetry to his assassinations. He has been working with loyalty for his boss, Mr. Paul (Montgomery Ford), for years. But his latest assignment - the killing of a brothel owner (Dan van Husen) who mandates cruel abortions on his whores - presents two challenges. He must train a young understudy during the assignment, and he's been told to pull off the killing "quick and dirty" -- which may not leave time for Print's usual, obsessively imaginative methods.OK firstly, the only reviews for this movie are stellar. Guess what that means? They are written by shills who worked on the film.This move is absolutely horrible. Laboriously directed and no acting and poor writing. The hookers are hideous.Stay away.

jimywritz This effort by a band of six young cinephiles works well. Don't watch it expecting "High Noon" quality acting and scripting. But if you're looking for a highly original, yet true to genre Western, I recommend "The Scarlet Worm."It was released by "Unearthed Films" so I expected a 30-or-more year old film, literally dug up out of old B movie archives. But this is a new effort, made in 2010 and released in 2011. The setting is the early 1900s, and plot is complex, including traditional cattle rustling, revenge killings and more. It's dark, gritty style is evident in the gunfight sequences and in the sympathetic, non-sensationalist treatment of the girls in the brothel. It held my attention right to the last as it unfolded.A couple of things to note: First, it has some pretty violent scenes so I wouldn't make it a family-night movie. Second, it features some classic Western movie stars whose heyday was decades ago but whose names you might remember, like Montgomery Ford and Dan van Husen. They and their young compadres give this low-budget movie panache. Enjoy, pardner.

sgroyle Nowadays I reckon we're lucky if we get a great western every decade or so. This doesn't qualify for great, but it is good. If you're expecting "Hollywood" - raise your expectations... this is better.The action in the movie plays well. With influences of Peckinpah mixed with ("early not quite there yet") John Woo; credit where it's due, it didn't get unreal.The dialog could have been tweaked better, I reckon, there was ample opportunity through the settings which were done well. The scene in front of the barber shop is an example of where the script could have gone deeper, and pushed this movie into great. Overall I liked the pacing, the arc and the various spread of characters. It didn't get overly deep into the characters, but neither were they shallow - there's an edge to all of them. I thought Montgomery Ford did a fine job.One thing I really liked about this western? It treats the audience with a bit of respect - allowing me to draw my own conclusions; meeting with my expectations in terms of credibility, there were no "cop outs" in plot. What happened was a logical, if whacky series of events.If you really like westerns, I don't think you'll be disappointed. I am very surprised by the low rating the movie seems to have - strange; maybe good, hard-boiled westerns are just out of style...

HughBennie-777 Director Michael Fredianelli's western shows a lot of guts to present characters this unlikable, yet still insists you empathize with their ickiness. Of course, none of this would be achieved with B-movie actors, and, luckily, the principle cast here is exceptional. One look at the plot, involving an unstable gunfighter who trains a young killer to rid a town of its delusional brothel-owner, dismisses any idea that the subject matter is going to be modest, and the actors evoke the kind of natural weariness and cold-blooded fury often "corrected" in more conventionally moral westerns. Most of the graphic, stylized content here comes in the form of gargantuan, spurting gunshot wounds and a lot of buck-naked prostitutes. Screenwriter David Lambert allows his often sociopathic characters to speak in dialogue both realistic and humorous, and with leads like Aaron Stielstra (as the shootist Print) spaghetti western veteran Dan van Husen, and the commanding presence of Montgomery Ford on screen, there's more than enough brooding on screen to sustain both sarcasm and menace for the film's 90 minutes. The vivid cinematography gives a blighted look to the many seedy locales, this despite a low budget. $25,000? A western made for that today in Hollywood could barely improve on an interiors-only moral fable like Randall Heller's "Tolerance". Again, the film-makers overcome most production obstacles, though in a few places the pacing is draggy. But considering the plot deals with a talkative villain (van Husen) who co-stars alongside so many other talkative villains (Print even has his own deranged voice-over), the action-packed gunfights and ass-kickings make up for it. Solid soundtrack by Stielstra features traditional folk music as well as demented instrumentation, both creating the proper ambiguity and dread which support the movie's ending. Film also features great cameos by a jellyfish and a giant sow.