Pasquale Squitieri directed Klaus Kinski

Pasquale Squitieri: I did some Westerns, signing them as was the custom with an American name, William Radford: DJANGO SFIDA SARTANA (aka DJANGO AGAINST SARTANA) and LA VENDETTA E UN PIATTO CHE SI SERVE FREDDO (aka VENGEANCE IS A DISH SERVED COLD, aka VENGEANCE TRAIL, aka DREI AMEN FUR DEN SATAN). I did them for two reasons: first of all for the money, and second - I'd never gone to film school and I needed the experience. That was the moment of one of the great men of Italian film, another great cynic, who nonetheless delivered, and how! In the wake of Sergio Leone, Italian Cinema truly could have inaugurated the great era of the adventure film, but instead they missed the bus. LA VENDETTA was a film seen from the Indian's point of view. Though it was just a little film, it did have one unique twist: namely, I used seven or eight authentic Indians, who were young men studying at the university. Klaus Kinski acted in it - at the time he was making tens of Westerns per year. Back then Kinski was a crazy character. He was an excellent actor, not recognized as such by the public. He came from East Germany, and he had a great desire for money; to get rich. These two ambitions created a tremendous frustration: he hated what he was doing, but he couldn't afford not to to it. I rememeber that he insisted on being paid every day; he didn't trust anyone, and he lived in a spacious trailer, with a bed covered by black sheets and surrounded by grand candelabras. He lived like an American film star of the thirties, but in a squalid suburb of Rome, where everyone assumed he was a bit cracked.