Subject: Trigger Fast
Well, just toss this directly onto the Prochnow freakazoid pile.
It's not the movie itself, which is a no-show - if you had 90 seconds to write an outline for a western off the top of your head, this movie is what you would come up with. It stems from some western hack novel series or other. The problem is that Trigger Fast is to Jürgen Prochnow what Psycho is to Janet Leigh, although as I recall Janet lasted considerably longer. Prochnow gets croaked at the 20- minute mark. In all seriousness I didn't buy it for quite some time; I thought his friends were hiding him from the bad guys because he was crippled from being shot up. I persisted in this naive theory because he got top billing in the film - in the actual credits as well as on the video box. Okay, it's a new one on me, but now I know. Normally this sort of appearance is heralded by putting the actor's name LAST on the screen credits, but in bigger letters and accompanied by "as [Character]." Then you know what you're in for. Oh, well. Since you already know how the movie went if you tried the 90-second exercise mentioned above, I'll just cover the first 20 minutes:
Jürgen's name is Jack Newman and there is no explanation for why a German named Jack Newman is a cowboy. Possibly it was "Neumann" or, if you prefer, "Neuman," as in Alfred E.
The bad guys are harrassing him for taxes so he makes arrangements to sell some cows. Then he shoots a cow in the head. Then he and his sidekick Martin Sheen (who got second billing, wasn't onscreen any more and didn't do a damn thing in the movie) fight off some bad guys who are harrassing a young, pretty cowgirl for taxes. So that night a pack of bad guys head out to Jack's house with torches, initiating the dumbest, worstest film fight I have ever seen.
First of all, Jack is asleep in a chair hugging his rifle, which might make you think he's expecting trouble. When the dog starts barking, Jack gets up, opens the door, stands there fully outlined in the light from inside the house and peers out... at the 12 riders holding torches who are, oh, say, 20 feet from the porch... and when he sees this, he just stands there. They shoot the dog; Jack shoots at them; and not having made the slightest effort to jump back or duck, he gets a blast in the gut and is blown back into the house.
Now he's on his back on the floor; the bad guys move in; and one of them tries to hurl a torch through the window and misses, so the glass shatters but the torch doesn't go inside. Since the director was too cheap to replace the glass and do another take, this gets ignored and the next thing you see is Jack crawling toward the torch INSIDE the house (and on the wrong side of the room, incidentally).
The chief bad guy comes in, gloats, shoot Jack in both legs (I hope it was his legs, anyway - you don't actually see... oh, let's not get into that), and takes off. Two other guys who heard the racket show up and drag Jack out of the burning house before he gets charred, but it's too late. He's dead, even though he didn't look dead to me, but you know I still say there's lost footage from Das Boot someplace where the final scene is the whole crew back in the saloon with bandaids on their heads.
Well, at least they didn't have him spittin' terbacky juice outten the side of his mouth or anything. (My, that WOULD be sexy!)
[Later, in reference to Jack's German shepherd, Boris]
"Boris?" Where'd this thing take place, on the plains of Transylvania?
Hey, YOU figure it out. Jack is an American Civil War veteran-turned-rancher and he has a German accent but says stuff like "don't you fret" and "if I was you" - and Jürgen has NEVER misused an English conditional in any other movie - you know that was just "cowboy talk" straight out of the brilliant script of Trigger Fast... and he has a German shepherd named Boris. And you're asking me questions? What am I, the Great Karnac? Ok you're right, it IS Transylvania. And he DIDN'T get killed. The whole thing is a setup for the sequel, where you find out he "disappeared" because he turned into a vampire and went into hiding with his trusty companion Boris the wereshepherd. In the next installment they come out and kill everybody, Jürgen biting them in the neck and Boris biting them in the butt, starting with "Mr. Malik" the villain and ending with THE PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR OF THESE HEINOUS WESTERN FILMS!
HAPPY NOW?!
Yes. Yes, I am.
Subject: Trigger Fast
See Trigger Fast.
See the cowboy.
His name is Jack.
Jack sounds like a cowboy,
and yet he doesn't.
He says things like "Don't you fret,"
but I zink he iss vorking der back forty behind Berlin.
See Jack asleep in the chair.
Sleep, Jack, sleep.
Jack is holding a rifle.
Do you think Jack is expecting trouble?
Me too.
See the dog bark.
Bark, dog, bark.
Jack jumps up and opens the door
and stands there framed in the light.
The bad guys shoot the dog.
Jack shoots the bad guys.
And gets a blast in the gut.
Maybe Jack should have ducked
when he saw the twelve bad guys
with the torches and rifles.
Now it is too late.
The bad guys shoot Jack in the legs.
The bad guys burn Jack's house.
Now Jack is dead.
No one is left
but the twelve bad guys
and Martin Sheen
and Christopher Atkins
and a cowgirl with a bad Texas accent.
There is an hour and fifteen minutes left of the movie.
Click.
[Prochnow makes a swell cowboy up to a point. He looks right for it. As Linda said when he first showed up in Trigger Fast, "He moseys good." He also did some subtle little things in this role that we noticed and liked. But...he's German, dammit! We are more than willing to suspend disbelief for Jürgen Prochnow, given half an excuse, and who knows - maybe there's a good reason out there somewhere for all this. But we doubt it. What we are sure of is that Prochnow is not comfortable riding a horse or holding a rifle. (Sorry, Jürgen, but it shows.) So why...? Jürgen's westerns are our favorite unsolved mystery. -ed.]