The absurdist Western comedy Dead Souls begins with a solitary stranger walking the desert we’ve seen in spaghetti westerns. That reference is intentional, because director Alex Cox filmed Dead Souls near Almeria, Spain, in the Andalusian expanse used repeatedly by Sergio Leone. But we see right away that Dead Souls is more parody than spaghetti western – with the hotel clerk’s exaggerated twitching and the mayor sporting massive sideburns, each the size of Angela Davis’ Afro.
The stranger (played by Cox himself) is named Strindler, and his purpose is mysterious. He is up to something, and the locals can’t figure out what it is, even when they see him buying something of no apparent value.
We see the familiar western tropes, from the poker game in the saloon to the gunfight in the dusty street. There are homages to A Fistful of Dollars, High Plains Drifter, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and even Greaser’s Palace.
Strindler is guided around the ranches and mines by the town drunkard (Zander Schloss), whose sense of his own nickname is very funny. There’s a clever running gag whenever Strindler is asked if he has played poker, ridden a horse or fired a pistol. And there’s an outrageous pun on the name Strindler.
It turns out that Strindler’s scheme would monetize American institutional racism. And that’s what Dead Souls is ultimately about – mocking the hardwired, guileless, shameless, open racism of America’s 19th century, that leaks into the present. Dead Souls even takes us into the Trump version of ICE, which I didn’t find funny; (maybe Too Soon?)
In 1994, writer-director Alex Cox made one of the all-time great cult movies – Repo Man. He followed that with the arthouse hit Sid and Nancy, and not much since that I recognize.
There’s a famous scene with Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles that made us laugh at outrageously racist characters – and I think it still works. But Dead Souls beats that dead horse too repeatedly. I found the absurdity amusing, but the entirety of Dead Souls just isn’t funny enough..
Dead Souls is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV and Fandango.