Franco Nero

film, right?

There's quite a few of them, and there were ones that were made with Franco Nero and maybe one or two that had Lee Van Cleef.

Films like Pray for Death.

I forget.

is the title.

Oh, Franco Nero being in that mess.

Oh, the English title is Shark Hunter?

Shark Hunter.

main thing is Robert Shaw has been tasked with assassinating a spy.

who they believe is the character played by Franco Nero.

And ultimately, spoiler, is the character played by Franco Nero.

Before we get into it, though, I want to talk about...

I have

but then evidence shows we are shown it can be unawesome that's what's so confusing about all of this so here's my favorite here's my

favorite Here's my favorite part of the movie.

So it's about halfway through and we're introduced to the Franco Nero character who winds up, you know, he is the one Robert Shaw is sent to kill because he is a spy.

But yeah, Django originally is a fictional character from the spaghetti and western genre.

most famously portrayed by Franco Nero from 1966.

And he was played by a white dude.

It had nothing to do with Quentin Tarantino's version.

Are you trying to tell me there's

ninjas? running around there killing people in the 20th century this movie was also the second entry in canon's loose ninja run kasugi was far more popular and much more believable than franco nero and enter the ninja and this one would cement kasugi as one of the era's just signature big screen ninjas All right, now, we've lived in the shadows long enough.

Next up, we're going to step into something bigger, much more brighter, and more openly crowd-pleasing, the kind of 80s spectacle that plays like a mainstream event movie, even if the...

Crown Coins Casino!

I

don't like to be followed.

All right, guys, first up tonight is 1981's Enter the Ninja, directed by Menehem Golan himself and starring Franco Nero and Sho Kasugi.

In this one, Nero plays Cole, an American veteran and newly trained ninja who apparently maybe, I guess, went to the Ninja 101 class at the Learning Annex.

Obviously since then, the realities of what the Ninja really are in real life were all, or the fact that it was a very theatrical thing, not the real story and more on that another time.

the boom itself turned into films eventually, obviously thanks to Shogun and many other great, you know, films and so obviously the Japanese film industry itself pumped out heaps of those as well so you had this start in particularly in um the american film industry with enter the ninja in 81 with franco nero who's an italian playing a ninja big cinema shokasugi obviously had his start in that one in the villainous role in that one as asagawa and then kasugi just basically becomes ninja jesus pretty much like he's in every everyone revenge of the ninja ninja three the domination probably one of the better ones and canon films pumps out like 12 ninja movies a year of different types And then there's a heap of ones from Taiwan as well, which we've covered here before too, Ninja Terminator and more.

From there, you had also Lee Van Cleef became known for being a ninja in the 1984 show The Master.

And that's probably one of the better ones too.

So also in the Japanese version, his name is Jango, which is based off of a character from the 1966 spaghetti Western movie Jango.

who is played by Franco Nero.

He's not the one that was Unchained? I think I saw that Jango Unchained is based off of the original Jango.

Okay.

telling me that the Tarantino movie is based off an episode of Pokemon?

Yes, because Jango Unchained came out in the 2010s, right? Yeah.

So he was actually probably based off of Franco Nero, who played Jango in Jango.

OK, well, I feel another lore dump coming on as Poncho gives us his backstory, which Jeff is going to tell us now.

Starring

Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave.

It's incredible, totally delirious, psychedelic freakout of a movie.

And it's scored by Morricone with the Gruppo.

Common's character Cassian could be a reference to John Cassian, a Roman saint, or Cassius Dio, a Roman statesman and historian.

Uh, Franco Nero's character Julius refers to Gaius Julius Caesar, or Julius Caesar.

Uh, and Willem Dafoe's character from the first John Wick, Marcus, and Jo- John Leguizamo's character Aurelio combine to make Marcus Aurelius, obviously a Roman emperor.

Uh, even John Wick's late wife Helen could be considered a reference to Helen of Troy.

I'm gonna look that up now.

Yeah, sure.

Uh, my favorite line, uh, just because it's one of the moments of levity in the movie that, uh, I found was quite funny, is when, uh, John first arrives in Rome and, uh, Franco Nero's character says, "Just answer me one question.

Are you here for the Pope?" [laughs]