Home > Western >

The Scarlet Worm

Watch Now

The Scarlet Worm (2011)

August. 27,2011
|
5.1
| Western
Watch Now

An aging killer trains a young hired gun in a plot to assassinate a meek brothel owner performing barbaric abortion acts on his prostitutes.

...

Watch Trailer

Cast

Similar titles

Reviews

GamerTab
2011/08/27

That was an excellent one.

More
FirstWitch
2011/08/28

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

More
Lucia Ayala
2011/08/29

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

More
Bob
2011/08/30

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

More
artpf
2011/08/31

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.

More
jimywritz
2011/09/01

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.

More
Woodyanders
2011/09/02

1909. Philosophical middle-aged dandy assassin Print (a terrific performance by Aaron Stielstra) gets assigned by his boss Mr. Paul (Brett Halsey in fine form) to kill wicked, yet scrupulous brothel owner Heinrich Kley (superbly played with chilling calm by Dan van Husen), who regularly performs abortions on his whores whenever they get impregnated. Moreover, Print has to show crude novice Lee (well played with scruffy conviction by Derek Hertig) the ropes. As the unusual premise alone suggests, this is anything but your standard shoot 'em up oater. Those expecting a clear-cut delineation between the good boys and the bad guys will be sorely disappointed; instead we get several fascinatingly complex and flawed individuals who aren't exactly endearing (Lee in particular at first is pretty odious and unlikable while Kley isn't entirely hateful because of his strongly felt religious beliefs and stance that his brothel serves a useful purpose for the community at large), but manage to be interesting just the same. In addition, the turn of the century old west shown here is an extremely harsh and grimy place. Director Michael Fredianell's brings a dazzling cinematic style and a fiercely uncompromising gritty sensibility to the dark material while David Lambert's bold and edgy script offers an intelligent and idiosyncratic meditation on style, manners, and morality. Granted, the expected shoot outs are bloody as all hell and staged with real rip-roaring brio, plus there's a handy helping of inevitable nudity from the prostitutes at the bordello, but it's the way this picture subverts basic genre conventions and squeezes a maximum amount of surprisingly polished production value from its modest budget that in turn gives it extra substance and resonance. Further enhanced by Stielstra's moody eclectic score and Michael A. Martinez's striking cinematography, this film overall rates as one powerful and provocative pip.

More
twolanebl
2011/09/03

The Scarlet Worm: Finally! Wild Dogs in mass-release! Longtime fans had a lot to get salivating over: Fredianelli free from starring and cinematography and able to focus on directing, Lambert writing (after his wildly successful two previous outings with Fredianelli), Stielstra starring, special guest stars, and a solid, sordid grindhouse set-up. Everything was in the right place, but with all of these elements, the final product ends up feeling a bit too restrained, a bit too tame to live up to its premise and the promise of all involved. If the earlier Fredianelli efforts sometimes felt a bit slapped-together or a bit rough around the edges, this effort feels a bit too pretty and concerned with professionalism (a gambit that seems to have paid off in some ways). A perfect point of comparison is A Habitation of Devils, Lambert's previous collaboration with Fredianelli. That movie is super rough around the edges, with a script that barely manages to bounce between generic stereotypes and digital video cinematography sometimes so underlit to the point of indiscernibility. However, it manages these hiccups due to a sense of what, for lack of better terms, I'll call "going for it." This same "going for it" mentality is all over other WD pics like The Minstrel Killer and even the recent Apocrypha. Why then does even Stielstra, normally a maniac when facing the camera, play it so cool? Why can't the genre kings (Fredianelli and Lambert) deliver on some of their promises? Why does Print have a reputation for being such a dirty bastard and such a merciless killer but never show us why? Why can't we see what makes his work such poetry to him (as he says over and over and over again)? Even the flick's abortion subtext feels pretty inoffensive and tame (unexpected, consider the distributor Unearthed Films, generally known for stuff like the Guinea Pig and Slaughtered Vomit Dolls). Money was well-placed to grab Dan van Husen, who provides most of the flick's best scenes, but even his work and the (as- expected) excellent shoot-outs feel bogged down by a laborious execution of the basic genre steps. There is a nice father-son dynamic between van Husen and Stielstra, but even that seems to too frequently be displaced in favor of other beats and concerns. I wanted to love this one so much, but in the end, I just can't find as much to love about it as in the cast and crew's other various projects.

More