1976’s “Gone with the Pope” (originally titled “Kiss the Ring” OOH ERR) the former, more or less went without a hitch when it came to filming…it was afterwards that was the problem…y’see, in post; the money kinda sorta…ran out. Meaning the film remained unfinished and sat in storage for the best part of 34 years.

That is until the early 2000’s when Grindhouse releasing contacted the estate of Duke Mitchell to enquire about a release of “Massacre Mafia Style” but they were unable to locate the materials required for a restoration, the parties got talking and it was revealed that the footage for “Gone with the pope” was all still sat in a locker alongside a load of junk. Grindhouse offered to complete the film and release it and well…the rest they say is history.

It wasnt an easy restoration, What was found were all the original negatives (basically the raw footage) and a rough assembly cut that was missing reels 9 through 13 of 13. The audio was in various states of condition because Duke had fired his sound recordist early into the production because he didnt want to pay him and there wasnt even really a script to speak of. In place of a script there were notes, hundreds and hundreds of notes, scattered across notebooks, scraps of paper, envelopes and even napkins. It was…a mess to put back together. BUT! In 2010 they did just that, releasing via a swanky premier in Las vegas and then a DVD release shortly after in 2015. Bizarrely on the day of the premier an ACTUAL attempt to kidnap the Pope took place…once again proving that the universe DEFINITELY has a sense of humour… So; after 34 years. Was it worth the wait?

Well, the film follows Duke as Paul, a good guy in with the mafia currently behind bars, but due for release. On the outside some members of the mob discuss a “Situation” that they need sorting. They have 3 fellers in vegas and 4 in LA who have become a bit of a “problem”, and they need taking out of the picture. They cant think of anyone more professional than Paul to jump on it, So; when he gets out of jail he promises to set himself up ready to take care of some of his fellow inmates on their release and then heads out to reconnect with an old flame and it’s here that the offer gets made. $100k to whack 7 people in two states at the same time, any means necessary as long as no one can pin it on them.

Paul reluctantly agrees and heads out to Vegas to see his associate Georgiou, at first he has a spot of trouble finding him, but after snooping around the casino floors he eventually gets pointed in the right direction, Gorgieous not been doing so well as of late, but soon perks up when the offer of a bit of fun and 50k lands on his lap for taking out the 3 guys in Vegas. The plan is…a little bit of a stretch truth be told. Paul reckons the best way to avoid going back to jail and to get away with the whacking scott free is to get Georgiou to kill the 3 guys in vegas at the EXACT same time he kills the 4 guys in LA. with his arguement being “HOW CAN THEY PIN THE MURDERS ON ME! I CANT BE IN TWO STATES AT THE SAME TIME!”

Look, I don’t get it either, but the plan goes ahead and seemingly happens without a hitch, Paul gets away, splits the 100k evenly between him and Georgiou and heads back to spend some time with his partner. Later, the friends he promised to take care of get released and after a wild night to celebrate down at a local bar where they pick up a prostitute, pay her $400 and then don’t really do anything with her except be PHENOMINALLY Racist. Paul begins scheming for his biggest plan yet.

He asks his partner if he can borrow her late husbands boat, on the grounds of his friends being SO depressed and messed up that he wants to take them away from the city for a couple of months to clear their heads and set them on the straight and narrow. She agrees and Paul rounds up the guys, up’s anchor and they set sail. Initially planning to cruise around the coast of morocco.

What ends up happening however is they overshoot slightly and end up in Rome, and its hear that Paul reveals the REAL reason they’ve set sail in the first place. They’re going to kidnap the pope…stop laughing…they’re serious! The plan is to kidnap the pope and hold him to ransom, initially Paul wants to charge every Catholic $1 but when his friends say thats a bit excessive he revises it down to a mere 50 cents per catholic for the popes safe return.

His friends think he’s insane but Pauls deadly serious, and we get to see his plan roll out in real time. First, he goes to a priest responsible for the popes bookings while disguised as a priest, he initially requests an audience with the pope for him and his priest friends on behalf of a millionaire who’s gravely ill. The request is met with a polite “No.” at first, but when Paul drops $50k on the desk and once again reiterates that his millionaire is VERY generous and would be willing to donate a LOT more than whats been presented there to various charities if they’ll reconsider. Well, the priest re-assesses the situation.

Then for some reason, the film has what can only be described as a stroke and we’re thrust into a completely random 5-10 minute sequence (NOT shot in rome) in which Paul sees an overweight woman with a dog walking around, he talks to her, gets her to go back to the apartment where the guys are staying, he gets her to strip almost completely naked, PAUL then strips down to his underware and the two of them get into bed with one of the guys who’s also sleeping in his underware and a vest. Some kind of BIZZARE benny hill style threesomey play about happens and then, it’s like the film realises it’s gone a bit mad, and just…randomly decides to get back in to the plot.

So…it’s the day of the audience with the pope, the gang all slowly filter in, Pauls the last one through the door and on greeting the pope whispers to him to follow him and the guys into a back room briefly, before showing him a handgun in his jacket to prove he’s not bluffing. The gang take the pope into a dark backroom, strip him, and get one of the gang to swap clothes with him creating a pretty decent papel lookalike (often known as a pippin) this is all getting a bit “Golden Cleric Award” so to wrap up, they send the fake pope back to the audience session, while they sneak the real pope out the back. They get on the boat and start heading back to international waters, as the news breaks over the radio that the fake popes been exposed! And the heist is officially on, but as the boat trip continues, Paul becomes increasingly jittery and the pope begins to get the other cons to open up a bit more leading to a sense of uncertainty about the future…in a holy hell of a finale, Will the Paul get his tithe? Will the pope convert the cons!? And seriously, what was with that overweight woman sequence? Like…im pretty sure I didnt imagine it, its going to haunt me. What was its purpose, why is it there?..we may never truely know. Anyway; all this and more is available if you check out “Gone with the pope”.

And honestly, this ones a bit of an awkward one, we’re dealing with a movie that wasnt completed where the last 5 reels of the roughest assembly had long gone missing and a lot of the 3rd act had to be “guessed” at by the distributors in order to reassemble it into an order that at least kinda sorta made sense. But because this DEFINITELY didnt have a script (or at least, theres little to no evidence of a script) what we’re left with is really more a series of happenings. Indeed throughout filming for this it was noted that Duke would basically get an idea, roughly sketch it down on whatever he had to hand, shoot it, and keep rolling. So who knows if the movie was ever even really fully finished. Where this film ends could have literally been the middle of the 2nd act of this papel epic.

Because of the lack of a script I can only really go on what I visually see as a storytelling medium, and what there is is a pretty decent 3 act structure with clean transitions between those acts thats bogged down with a LOT of scene setting and padding. Particularly in the sections around vegas and the scenes in rome. I know they wanted to push that this was DEFINITELY Las Vegas and Rome. but they went way WAY overboard as we get WAY too many sequences of casinos, neon lit streets and almost painfully long lounge acts that are “Passable” at best. And the rome stuff was filmed by an external team, they didnt even film for that long IN rome but they sure as hell make sure you see every spire of every catholic cathedral they could point their lens at.

Inevitably with it being a reconstruction job without a script, using whatever footage they had there’s had to be a LOT of intense editing to try and make this thing work, but even with that being the case, this is unfinished…and as such there are a fair few plot inconsistencies, some scenes where the guys are just shooting the shit seem to only be in here for inclusions sake rather than having any driving force on the narrative, there’s a lot of guess work in the running order and, while it all kind of makes sense more or less. Even when cut together in a sensical order, its still a fairly incoherent first act that seems almost disjointed from the rest of the movie. Like…literally the only reason the first act happens is to introduce us to Paul and to give the audience a reason why Paul can afford to wave around $50k it has no connection to the rest of the film otherwise.

And while I wont spoil the ending of the film. What I will say is it takes a COMPLETELY out of left field turn that makes ZERO sense and ends things on something resembling a paranormal experience. OPEN ENDED as well, thus rendering the previous hour and 22 minutes utterly baffling in terms of how we ended up here. Honestly I felt it was a bit of a cop out, but I was so impressed with the BALLS of this movie to straight up be like “Y’know this mafia movie you’ve been watching for the last 82 minutes BAM we’re etherial now.” like…jesus…I couldnt help but laugh.

Equally; as most of the “notes” were largely written on driftwood Duke happened to have lying around, most of the film has improvised dialogue, Im assuming they went for the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” approach of having a broad idea of what was required within the scene and then they pretty much let loose with whatever they could think of in order to get the scene to the end point. Sometimes it works and you get genuinely harrowing and wonderful little moments of inspiration, other times it’s incoherent dryness that sounds like the ramblings of someone who’s been drinking neat scotch from the bottle since 7am. On the whole though I’d say it works more than it doesn’t and even the worst swing and a miss on the improv front is entertaining even if that wasn’t the intention.

The script was both Written and Directed by Duke Mitchell, who I forgot to mention also had success on the lounge and club circuit! Thats right guys and gals this man was a triple threat! He could sing, dance AND play some of the best mafiosa you’ve ever seen! He has two writing and directing credits for both this and “Massacre Mafia Style” Unfortunately he passed away in 1981 at the age of 55 after a battle with Lung Cancer. As an extra tidbit of information that I couldnt really fit in anywhere else, this film was predominantly shot over Autumn and Winter 1976, mainly shot on weekends and in a style that would make Ed Wood proud, Duke financed the film by offering to put people in the movie as extras or in minor roles depending on the size of their donation. It was also shot entirely on 35mm short ends and offcuts. Additionally, while 2010 may have been the premier of the “finished” film, it wasnt the first attempt to get someone to pick it back up, as a trailer for the movie was cut together in 1999 to show to distributors with the aim of finding a buyer. Noone picked the film up and the trailer too was all but forgotten until Grindhouse got in touch.

On the direction front, Given it’s largely made up on the spot with no guiding script. Colour me impressed. It may not be a focussed production, but Mitchell here has been able, on barely any cash at all, to produce something that feels like it could be released professionally. Now how much of that is down to Mitchells own work and how much of it has been saved via a savvy editor with modern cutting techniques, I cant say. But whats presented here feels like it’s built off the back of the experiences learnt from “Massacre Mafia Style” and even though it meanders in places. It more often than not looks the part of a post Godfather era picture.

Given the majority of the dialogue is improvised, the cast direction must have been pretty close knit, and assuming Duke got to pick his supporting cast members (and that they wernt just donors who paid the biggest chunks) he must have used his experience working in clubs and on stage in picking people who can handle themselves from an improv standpoint, they may not always come out with gold. But I have to hand it to Mitchell, he knows how to direct a cast to give him what he needs. It’s a tight set of coordinated performances here and seemingly everyone knows vaguely what to say, how to use their sets and where to go for how long and when.

As for the cine. Iiiiits a bit of a minefield honestly, where it’s good it’s phenomenal, with the whacking sequence between L.A and Vegas putting some big budget productions to shame in terms of how the shots are arranged, what shots are used, their composition and their pacing with the musical cues, it looks phenomenal. But, at the end of the day, this was an unfinished production and as such there are some parts of this film that are…less steller I think it’s fair to say.

Some of it’s down to rushed camera work to just get the shot and move on, thats quite prominent in places through this film, there are scenes that look and feel like they were shot for coverage rather than with a specific sequence in mind and as such they fall a bit flat, generally these are wides that just occasionally cut into a head and shoulder shot. It could be they were shot that way for time, it could be that Duke intended to go back and shoot some B-roll or cutaways. But in either case the 21st century editors only had what they could work with. Which does rather let it down a bit.

The other MAJOR issue is that some critical scenes have serious faults with the film, with several notable instances of incredibly soft focus or framing issues. Again; it’s to be assumed that these were noticed on the day and that, had duke had the money, these would have been reshot to make them actually not look like arse. But, unfortunately he didnt, so…these are the only shots we have for those particular scenes. Resulting in a distracting watch to say the least.

On the whole, where the cine works here it works very well, Duke seems to have a real knack of using effective lighting, particularly in club settings where a dank top lit setup with coloured light to offset the shots works its best. Everything has this wonderfully dim and smokey quality to it and quite honestly I really loved the eye for detail in just being able to capture specific details in the cast or the location. It may be a bit ropey due to the lack of reshoots. But even in it’s ropiest moments, it still manages to present a film that really fits the bill and tone a project like this requires.

Perofmance wise; Duke Mitchell IS this movie. His performance as Paul grants him a VERY wide range to work with and he sure as hell uses every inch of screen time to work it, giving a performance that I think is standout for low budget cinema of this age. Its an effortless performance that feels so natural coming from him that, i’d swear he WAS in the mafia given how he’s able to reel out that kind of spiel.

The rest of the cast too are all pretty reasonable. One of the big issues with there not being script is that the characters don’t really get any sense of clear development or arc. As such the performances all kind of feel a bit, in the moment. As in; the cast know their characters and *roughly* what they’re supposed to be like, but whether this is supposed to be happening at the start or end of the film is a total crap shoot. Meaning they cant really develop their characters progressively because they LITERALLY don’t know if what they’re filming in that instance is going to be near the beginning of their story or the end. It means rather than a neat progression. We get clunky gear changes as and when revelations happen. Which can be a bit jarring. Though; their performances all in I would say were more than passable.

And finally! The soundtrack! And its a bit of a mix of old and new as some of the score was already put in place by Duke in ‘76, but some of the film had holes where the score that hadnt yet been decided was intended to go. The result? As much of the original score has been preserved, and where possible, extracts from some of the lounge performances and unused audio cues that were discovered have been reinstated into the film to help keep things nice and smooth. Where there are gaps, Grindhouse have rescored the pieces using bands with similar sounds and feels to the bands in the score already. Im not going to lie, some tracks are more notably modern than others (some have a very distinct Goodfellas/Resevoir dogs slant to them) and in those cases it’s clear to see which were original 70’s pieces and which are new records. But on the whole, the scores delightful, one i’d love to own on vinyl as I think it works as well on it’s own as it does punctuating this film.

I should also note that, despite a warning that the audio quality is a little ropey in places, I honestly didnt really hear anything too offensive (I think my years of working with ropey SOV flicks where the audio was captured via the cast screaming into a bit of sandpaper has permanently lowered my bar for “acceptable audio quality”) but yeh…it wasnt as bad as I’d been led to believe and i’d say at least 95% of the thing is perfectly audible.

Gone with the Pope was released in 2015 on DVD by Grindhouse releasing, this is the version I own and it’s packed with extras including a commentary track, a making of, notes on the restoration, deleted scenes, B-roll footage, footage from the premier and much much more. This film also got released again by grindhouse in 2019 on bluray as part of the “Duke Mitchell collection” bundled up with “Massacre Mafia Style” and honestly; there isnt much more to say about it beyond that. It’s just a good solid release that I think really deserves a deep dive should you decide to pick this up.

Is Gone with the pope a hidden masterpiece that we totally lost out on? well…I wouldnt go that far. But i’d absolutely say it was worth picking up. What we have here is a movie that, probably would have been overlooked in it’s time, but having been rediscovered and restored using more modern film editing techniques, has yielded something that I feel, despite it’s flaws is quite enjoyable. Yes some shots are a bit ropey, yes some of the dialogues a bit questionable and stilted and yes, the total lack of reshoots or a script does make this film wander a bit, ultimately leading to an ending that does rather feel like a frying pan to the side of the head. But y’know what? I dug this, and I think if you can find it and you have just shy of 90 minutes to kill, that it’s absolutely worth your time checking this out. Just keep in mind it is a bit of a slow burner and isnt *Quite* the gorefest you might expect going in, and I think you’ll have a solid enough time with it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/gone-with-the-pope/1/