The Scarlet Worm (2011)

Aaron Stilestra is Print, a hired assassin in the early 1900s.

But Print isn’t your average hired killer who just guns down his adversary. Nope, he turns his killings in poetry, works of art that send a message, like stuffing a cattle rustler’s body, naked, inside a dead cow.

Now a rancher known as Mr. Paul has a new assignment for Print. He wants him to kill Heinrich Kley, who runs a bordello and keeps his whores working by aborting their unborn babies.

In fact, Paul wants the place burned to the ground and everyone inside killed as well.

Tiring of the killing game, Print views the job as his final masterpiece. He’ll land a job at the whorehouse, earn Kley’s trust, then plot out the best way to accomplice his mission with as much style as possible.

Print takes on a young man named Lee as his understudy at Paul’s request as well.

That leads to one of several complications — Lee falls for a pretty whore named Annabelle and warns her of what’s about to happen.

The other complications: Kley turns out to be a much more complex man that Print imagined; he’s even quite religious.

And Paul hasn’t been exactly truthful about why he wants Kley dead.

Aaron Stielstra as Print, a hired gun who turns killing into art in The Scarlet Worm (2011)

Derek Hertig as Lee, Print’s new pupil in the art of killing in The Scarlet Worm (2011)

Review:

The plot’s intriguing enough that, with the right budget and the right director, this could have been a fine Western. Clearly, this film had neither.

So we’re left with a movie in which a little mud-splatter on everyone’s face is apparently supposed to transform them into log believable actors and actresses. And in which the gunfights are horribly choreographed … or else the gunmen were incredibly horrible shots.

Aaron Stielstra pulls off his role pretty well. So does Dan Van Husen. The same can’t be said for most of the rest of the cast.

Yep, that’s Brett Halsey of ol’ Spaghetti Western fame in the role of the aging rancher. In fact, according to Imdb, he’s wearing the same hat he wore for “Roy Colt and Winchester Jack” some 40 years earlier.

Dan van Husen as Heinrich Kley, owner of the whorehouse in The Scarlet Worm (2011)

Rita Rey as Annabelle, the whore Lee falls for in The Scarlet Worm (2011)

Directed by:
Michael Fredianelli

Cast:
Aaron Stielstra … Print
Dan van Husen … Heinrich Kley
Brett Halsey … Mr. Paul
as Montgomery Ford
Rita Rey … Annabelle
Derek Hertig … Lee
Kevin Giffin … Hank
Dani Estenger … Gertie
Amber Rowe … Caroline
Emily Amezcua … Josie
Patricia Liu … Molly
Eric Zaldivar … Gus

Runtime: 93 min.

Brett Halsey as Mr. Paul, the man who wants a whorehouse destroyed in The Scarlet Worm (2011)

Kevin Giffin as Hank, a former killer fr Mr. Paul in The Scarlet Worm (2011)

Memorable lines:

Hank: “I don’t know how you ain’t hangin’ from a telegraph pole.”
Print: “Style. It’s all about style.”

Hank: “The way I see it, you can’t keep pluckin’ hairs off the devil’s ass and not expect him to turn around and bite you.”

Mr. Paul: “If it helps with the killin’, you two can dress up like circus clowns for all I care … You two are god-damned strange.”

Heinrich Kley, of his brothel: “I think of this place as a slight incision to bleed out a swelling infection.”

Eric Zaldivar as Gus, whorehouse assistant to Heinrich Kley in The Scarlet Worm (2011)

Emily Amezcua as Josie, fearful her pregnancy will mean another forced abortion at Heinrich Kley’s whorehouse in The Scarlet Worm (2011)

Michael Forest as Judge Hanchett, finding Print innocent in the death of a rustler in The Scarlet Worm (2011)

Aaron Stielstra as Print, about to paint his masterpiece in The Scarlet Worm (2011)