Back to the Batcave
By Adam West
June 6, 1994
The so-called spaghetti westerns were starting to boil in Italy and Spain, and I decided to go to Rome to try and wrangle and audition for a film Lew had heard about and knew I’d be right for. I checked into a small pensione near the Parco Borghese, in quarters that required me to walk up six flights of marble stairs to my small room with a bed. But that didn’t discourage me: I was in love with la dolce vita and determined to make it as an overseas cowboy.
Through Lew, I found an agent who arranged a meeting for me with the director, and within a month I found myself starring in Los Quattros Implacables. We shot the film in Italy and in Spain, and it was a lot of fun. I spoke my lines in English, the rest of the cast members spoke in Italian and Spanis, and it was all fixed in the dubbing, In fact, acting that way isn’t as difficult as you might think; these films rely a lot on the posturing of the actors, and it’s easier to react to that than to some of the English dialogue I’ve had to speak.
The one event from that time that really stands out in my memory occurred when we were shooting the last scene. The director had scheduled it for last because it involved dynamite. I suppose they were thinking that if they blew up, they blew me up, they could still finish the film. As it turned out, the explosion went off just fine. In fact, the director got a far more dramatic shat than he bargained for. I was riding along a dry riverbed; toward the cave the special effects crew had rigged to blow up. When the dynamite went off, a leathery black cloud swept over me as thousands of bats hurtled out of their home. As the cameras captured the swarm, with me in the foreground, I reared my horse to a stop and watched as the creatures moved swiftly this way and that, scattering frantically into the daylight.
It was to be the last shot I did before playing the role of Batman. The symbolism was chilling and strange. All Bruce Wayne had was one bat flying in through a window. I had a caveful.
Los Quattros Implacables was a hit overseas and did alright in the U.S. as The Rlentless Four. As a result, I was offered several other foreign films of the same genre.
I felt good about that. The Italians treated me with respect, the fans in Europe had a reputation for being loyal, the pictures had goo production values (even if the scripts were on the thin side), and the money was good. I was inclined to accept. Other actors were going abroad: not just Clint, but the likes of Nick Adams and Russ Tamblyn, who went to Japan to appear in science fiction films, and Jeffrey Hunter and Lee Van Cleef, who were also doing spaghetti westerns. The drawback, of course, was that once you left Hollywood it was tough to return. European commercial films don’t count for much here. And actors who do them can lose status at home.
But that was Hollywood’s problem, not mine. I enjoyed getting out in the morning, working with people I liked, and seeing my work on the big screen.
[Submitted by Michael McQuarrie]
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