The beautiful Scella Pezzata (Spotted Pits), daughter of Palla Pezzante (Heavy Balls), head of the Cefaloni tribe, is betrothed to Cavallo Pazzo (Wild Horse), but is in love with Arrapaho, the son of Mazza Nera (Black Club), head of the Arrapaho tribe. However, Luna Caprese (Capri Moon) of the Frocheyenne tribe is also in love with Arrapaho. Originally defined as “childish vulgarity (with sound effects” (Oreste Del Buono), “the worst film in the history of Italian cinema” (Morando Morandini), and “a masterpiece of trash cinema” (Roberto Poppi), Arrapaho is a crazy, deranged, gay musical immediately embraced by the bad kids of the 1980s, which eventually grew into a cult along the lines of trash, low-budget, Monty Python-style cinema. It was all thanks to a meeting between Neapolitan director-producer Ciro Ipploito, a big name in popular cinema following Alien 2: On Earth and the films starring Mario Merola, and the music group Squallor, which was very active at the time and comprised Daniele Pace, Toto Savio, Alfredo Cerruti, and Giancarlo Bigazzi, proper musicians and music industry executives, who played wacky music and had released the album Arrapaho just one year earlier. Nobody had ever tried anything like it before and no producer – including Titanus’ Goffredo Lombardo, who would go on to produced Squallor’s second film with Ciro Ippolito, Uccelli d’Italia – wanted to produce or distribute it. Shot over 15 days near Rome, with some stock footage recycled from other westerns, it boasts a cast led by the Swiss actor Urs Althaus and the Greek Tini Cansino, who had already starred in Italian television sketch comedy variety show Drive In, together with Pace and Cerruti, character actors from westerns, Fellini films and the Neapolitan scene. Distributed by Ippolito himself and released during the Ferragosto summer holiday weekend in Viareggio and other beach resort towns, it was an immediate hit, despite the dreadful reviews, and over time went on to become a genuine cult. It offers proof of the talents of Pace and co, who created fabulously vulgar monologues about the habits of the Arrapaho and Frocheyenne Indian tribes. The Arrapho’s phallic totem pole is great too. The film abounds with parodies of adverts from the period and fake TV clips, which anticipate the later TV series Blob. The film’s tag line is also renowned: “Hi! Watch Arrapaho!”

Marco Giusti