It’s been action month at the Cinémathèque. That means lots of gunplay and great comical fountains of blood spilling, gushing and spraying, pooling on floors and splattering faces, walls and ceilings. 

  For me it started with Lady Snowblood on July 2nd, which rapidly dawned on me was bloody inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill:Vol’s 1 and 2. 

  I’ve never seen either of the Bills. In fact I’ve never sat through to finish a single film by Quentin. I simply cannot see the point in all that violence. 

  Is that where I want to go?

  I remember long ago walking out of an early screening of Reservoir Dogs, his breakout work. The clipped irreverent dialogue sandwiched between graphic bouts of savagery and killing actually enraged me. “What the fuck are we watching this crap for?” I fumed. 

  But Quentin, I’ve been told, is a film-making genius. 

  Perhaps, but I’ll sit his offerings out, thank you very much.

  Anyway, Snowblood told the tale of an alluringly beautiful Japanese gal stabbing, hewing and hacking her way to revenge for violence and murder perpetrated by a foursome of mid-nineteenth century baddies in rural Japan. Arms, hands, heads and whole torsos are lopped off while thick red gouts of blood firehose and stream down presumably slanted flooring. 

  I did make it to the credits and clapping though, more from inertia than anything else. 

  Having recovered my equanimity sufficiently after a week or two I braved Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The gushing blood wasn’t quite as ludicrous, but SPOILER ALERT… everyone dies. 

  Yah, ya, ya, I get it: a German made Spanish Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. The unbalanced bloodthirsty marauding Viking mania that has always inhabited the heart of Western man as we’ve fanned out across the globe to bring our brand of Christian peace and ‘liberal democracy’ to the benighted masses. 

  I get it.

  But I no longer want it. 

  Nor does the world….