Five Bloody Graves

Dir. Al Adamson

88 Minutes

USA

1969

Staring: Robert Dix, Jim Davis, Scott Brady, John Carradine, Vicki Volante

**/*****

Al Adamson's Five Bloody Graves (initially written as The Lonely Man until another film with that title had copyright dibs) has him working with frequent collaborator Richard Dix (and the resemblance to his father is uncanny), with the latter starring and writing the screenplay for this weird mixture of western and exploitation horror that throws much material to the wall in the hopes that something sticks (or, at the every least, is marketable). Premise has Dix's Ben Thompson ("probably still alive because of his deadliness") wandering the Utah desert getting revenge on the Yaqui Indians whose chief murdered his wife years before. After reuniting with an old flame (and watching her and her husband being murdered by members of the tribe), Ben comes into contact with a varied band of members from a wagon train (including John Carradine, popping up for some credit prestige), working with them to exact his revenge on chief Santago. For good measure (and because why not?) all of this is narrated by Death Himself. 

The narrative feels less of a coherent and organic strand of events and more like an excuse to fashion together an ensemble of bizarre characters, bursts of violence (plenty of arrow fights to go around!), and, probably most importantly, an acceptable running time. Five Bloody Graves has some lore attached to it, including Adamson's alleged yearning for actress Vicki Volante (who plays Ben's ill-fated girlfriend), or Al needing to pick up some shifts on a paper route in order to employ Vilmos Zsigmond for director of photography (with some nice biting commentary on this subject by producer/distributor Sam Sherman who argues that Zsigmond only uses his experiences with Adamson as part of ridicule rather than acknowledging that it was a legitimate gig). And the film does have plenty of sleaze to make the exploitation fan happy, even with little style or competence on display. But there remains something interesting about the narratives in these films, which are controlled more by the chance for audience appeal rather than character or motivation. The events of Five Bloody Graves come more from expectation from genre, budget, and actor, allowing Adamson to fill the ninety minutes with as many chances for seedy pleasure as possible. And if it does not all come together in any way, there is still the next project.

Viewed on July 15th, 2020

Part of the ongoing Al Adamson Project.