A Gun For 100 Graves was my ābonusā SW on the Wild East DVD which I bought for the sake of the not so impressing Fury Of Johnny Kid. It happens sometimes that the other SW surprises and surpasses the āmain movieā, and this was the case here.
A Gun For 100 Graves is rather odd, sometimes very amateur-like. It has a horrortheme with criminal lunatics behaving like apes and several twists of the plot.
Some short lines for Peter Lee Lawrence sounded really cheap.
So even if it is not a western comedy or intentional parody I did laugh sometimes.
On the other hand the music sometimes contributed to a āDjango Killā (8/10)-feeling of weirdness.
Most of this SW was filmed in the classic Western town Golden City near Hoyo de Manzanares Northwest of Madrid.
All in all I was in fact more entertained by A Gun For 100 Graves than Fury Of Johnny Kid, and I want to watch it another time rather soon so maybe I now should give it an preliminary rating āgoodā which is my definition of 6/10. It might be high by strict quality criteria for this SW but it is the subjective entertainment value that I rate as good. At least I found it definitely not boring as some other comments in this thread indicated.
A week later after my second watching I actually dare to upgrade A Gun For One Hundred Graves to a (weak) 7/10 as the last SW with that rating for rank 35 on my SW Top 50 . I did the same with Blood At Sundown (rank 33) some time ago.
Both have a nice rather dark mood and good music and appears to be typical B or C-movies but with a lot of charm I think. A Gun For One Hundred Graves has a slightly more compact and complicated plot with twists which altogether now seem rather logical/plausible.
To be fair and consequent there still might be one or two of the 6/10 rated SWs that also could deserve un upgrading especially Taste Of Killing/Lanky Fellow but maybe it still feels a bit too ācleanā lacking some tension.
Continuing my Lenzi kick with one of his westerns and I think I enjoyed a bit more than my previous comment back in 2010.
Itās still a bit uneven but the performances are good and the story kept me engaged.
Always gets me when a bible toting pacifist becomes a crack shot over night though.
Pistol for 100 Graves has been updated to the new layout (3.0). Let us know if you can add anything: pictures, posters, trivia, facts, figures, links, etcā¦
This is now, I believe, the 100th poll added since we started bringing them back. You can find it at the top of the page on the original post, as usual.
I saw this recently and thought it was quite poor. Cobbled together from bits and pieces of other movies (TGTBTU, Death Rides a Horse, For a Few Dollars More, Stagecoach even). Not much of a plot so it had to be padded out with extraneous material such as PLL being gratuitously beaten up and then the bandits simply let him go! (no impact on narrative) and the lunatics who are fun to watch but have no impact on the plot. Lenzi seems to have lost interest - the scene in which PLL discovers his murdered family has no impact at all, Lulli is just shot dead and the final gunfight in the cemetery is a couple of minutes short of what Corbucci or Leone would have staged. As others have noted, PLLs transformation from religious pacifist to murderer takes place in the blink of an eye and might have not been there at all. I did wander whether the opening Civil War scenes were from some other (abandoned) movie and they had redubbed them so irrelevant they were to the story.
Bizarrely, the English language print on You Tube is missing any opening credits. The music and visuals are there but no titles. Are they missing on the WE print?
I watched the WE disc within the last 6 months ā¦ and Iām pretty sure there are title credits, otherwise I would have made a mental note of it ā¦ my copy isnāt at hand at the moā, but if I find it Iāll check it out for you.
Here we are: Iād say the guys at Wild East added these titles themselves, as they have a shimmering look, like video, rather than coming from an actual 35mm print. Iād bet my last tamale on it
You Tube has a French version with French credits and they look āfakeā also.
The You Tube print does have a āThe Endā though. Which suggests there must have been opening credits at some point.
I wonder if the ārealā credits should have come right at the beginning of the movie, which cuts jarringly into the first scene, and have been lost from the print in circulation used by WE and stuck on You Tube.
Itās possible, though Iām not an expert on this movie - There are certainly instances of other films having pre-title sequences / or non pre-titles, being moved around - The Italian DVD version of āLanky Fellowā, aka āFor the Taste of Killingā is one, and ā Degueyoā another that Iāve noticed ā¦ Iām sure there must be others ???
PS: From the Spanish version ā¦ this looks more like it! āThe Taste of Hatredā
Some versions of āToday Itās Meā¦ Tomorrow You!ā have the title sequence bizarrely moved to the start of the film - then followed by the prologue. One to avoid.
Very often those changes come down to what can be done with lip sync in varying languages. Same reason for character name changes.
Iāve only seen the English version, and Wild East rarely bothered to include other language tracks ā¦ so I canāt comment on the Italian or Spanish (screen grab came from clip on You tube)
The English title of the 1963 western Duello Nel Texas is Gunfight at Red Sands. However, in the English dubbed version the town is Carterville. No sign of Red Sands.
This was an odd oneā¦kind of boring at times but I still mostly enjoyed it. The subplot (if you can even call it that) with the lunatics was really weird, and outside of Fajardoās (hilarious) reappearance at the climax seemed almost completely irrelevant to the rest of the movie. The amount of double and triple crosses piled up towards the end were amusing as well. Plot definitely had some holesā¦PLL had no idea how to even work a gun at the start of the movie and then a couple scenes later is a master gunfighter?
There were a couple clever scenes though. I especially liked the part when PLL first arrives in town and goes into the saloon with the old guy to order drinks.
PLL is always a bit wooden but heās a decent leading man. Struck me as an almost Steffen esque role, but seeing as I absolutely cannot stand Steffen Iām glad it was PLL instead. Ireland seemed as close to phoning it in as Iāve ever seen from him in a spaghetti, but still managed a decent performance. The familiar villain faces such as Lulli and Baldassare were entertaining as always.
Pretty minor entry but an okay way to spend an hour and a half. Definitely not top tier stuff but not bottom of the barrel either.
Christmas Eve meant one thing for me. A bit of Peter Lee Lawrence. Big soft spot for him and I think this one is the best Iāve seen him in. Heās quickly becoming one of my favourites.
Overall, 7/10. Maybe a bit generous, I can accept it being a 6.5, but I thought it was quite good and kept my attention from start to finish. The story was simple and easy to follow, it had a short runtime and some decent action sequences.
Lawrence was great, as was John Ireland as Douglas. Some other very notable faces too.
Wasnāt a huge fan though of how Lawrenceās character went from being the reluctant gunslinger that only drank water, didnāt know how to shoot and didnāt kill anyone, to basically the complete opposite in almost no time at all. This has been mentioned by a lot of people I know. Also the ālooniesā subplot was unexpected, but surprisingly I found myself okay with it overall.
Another small gripe would be the endless amount of double crosses towards the end of the film, got a little messy and frustrating imo.
Very solid SW though, dare I say, slightly overlooked and underrated.
