THE LAST REBEL

 

THE LAST REBEL is a 1971 Euro Western that features professional football star quarterback Joe Namath as the leading man--and that's the most noteworthy thing about it. 

Somewhere in Missouri in April, 1865, Confederate soldiers Hollis (Joe Namath) and Matt (Jack Elam) are at a lonely outpost when word comes in of General Lee's surrender in Virginia. Hollis and Matt fear they will be sent to a prison camp, so they head for the hills. During their flight they prevent a black man named Duncan (Woody Strode) from being lynched, and the now-trio bring in a runaway stagecoach to a nearby town. While there Hollis wins thousands of dollars from a pool shark, inciting plenty of scoundrels to go after the sum, including Matt, who has turned against his fellow Confederate. 

Despite the fact that it was shot in Italy, THE LAST REBEL was produced & directed by Larry G. Spangler and written by Warren Kiefer (THE CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD), who were both Americans. This may account for the film's underwhelming tone. THE LAST REBEL is rather tepid compared to the usual examples of low-budget spaghetti westerns. There's not all that much action, at least until the climax, and even the amount of money that everyone in the story covets is far lower than the average pile of Euro Western loot. THE LAST REBEL could have even been mounted as a TV movie with just a few trimmings. 

Joe Namath is no Clint Eastwood, but he does have a low-key, laid-back type of charisma, and he does appear comfortable in front of the camera. There isn't all that much to the character of Hollis, however. He seems to be an amiable fellow that wants nothing more than a good time, and other than the fact that he's played by Joe Namath, there's nothing that really makes a viewer want to know what's going to happen to him. The title of THE LAST REBEL is a misnomer--it makes one think that Hollis is a true-blue son of the South, committed to the cause, but he doesn't have any major convictions one way or the other. If Hollis is so much of a "rebel", why did he risk his life to save a black man from a lynching? That incident never gets fully explained in the film, and neither does the bond that develops between Hollis and Woody Strode's Duncan. Namath's "Broadway Joe" playboy image gets a lot of play here, as every major female character swoons over Hollis as soon as they first lay eyes on him. 

There's an attempt to inject a racial element in THE LAST REBEL, but it's handled in a very clumsy manner. At one point Jack Elam's Matt and some of his goons go after Hollis and Duncan while dressed as Klansmen, and Duncan forges an alliance with a young orphan black child. This attempt at social commentary feels out of place, and there should have been much more development of the characters instead. 

Jack Elam and Woody Strode are always welcome in any Western, but they don't have much to work with here (Elam's transition from being Namath's sidekick to wanting to kill him is very abrupt.) Ty Hardin plays the sheriff of the town, and his character acts inconsistently as well. The rest of the supporting cast, even the ladies, are very generic types. 

I have to mention the music score, which was provided by Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord and British musician Tony Ashton. To say that it is eclectic is an understatement--it's one of the most unusual scores I've ever heard for a Euro Western (if you're a fan of this genre, you know that's saying something). The score changes tone constantly, and there's even a few songs, and they sound more fitting for a contemporary drama. 

THE LAST REBEL was an obvious attempt at using the fame of Joe Namath to attract moviegoers. At the time Namath was a huge pop icon--in some ways, he still is--and he had already made a splash with the biker film C.C. & COMPANY, which paired him with Ann-Margaret, to the delight of gossip columnists everywhere. Namath could have picked a much more interesting spaghetti western to appear in--THE LAST REBEL meanders along until the climax, which seems set up just for the excuse of the main characters to engage in a shootout. 

Joe Namath didn't have much of a movie career after THE LAST REBEL--he certainly didn't make as much of a mark on the big screen as his contemporaries Jim Brown and O.J. Simpson did. Namath's best role was playing himself on all sorts of TV shows and commercials, where his cool-guy persona was able to come through best. You know there's a problem with THE LAST REBEL when it isn't even able to let a dynamic personality like Joe Namath shine.