A Hole in the Forehead / Un buco in fronte (Giuseppe Vari, 1968)

Better ?

This one starts out very promising. Then after 35 min, in comes Undar, and then, for me, it sank like a stone. Still somewhere within my top sixty I think. Could have been much better with a stronger plot and story.

Iā€™ll second that.

Iā€™m a vegetarian

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Which explains the look on your/his face ā€¦

Good for you.

Watched this last week and wasnā€™t overly keen, the script just seemed pretty routine and generic overall even if it did have some nice touches here and there. It was well-made though and I do think that Vari was a great director who could make something out of (almost) nothing and was one of the most talented people to work in the genre. I genuinely think that if only heā€™d been given even a semi-modest budget, weā€™d rank him alongside the three Sergioā€™s all day.

I couldnā€™t make all the way through this one. Is it just me or does it sound like Frank Wolff dubbed Ghidra in English??

Didnā€™t notice that but Iā€™ll have a look.

EDIT; Definitely sounds like him now that youā€™ve mentioned it. Did he dub films that he didnā€™t actually star in at all?

Thatā€™s exactly what I was wondering. If so then this is the first Iā€™ve noticed.

I must be used to the tone of ā€œGhidraā€™sā€ voice in the NEW release because the voice I hear in the WE version is jarring to me and doesnā€™t seem to match the character as I see him.

I rate it an 8-out-of-10 mostly because of Roberto Pregadioā€™s soundtrack. Wow. Canā€™t get more ā€˜thematicā€™ than that. The production is excellent. The script doesnā€™t exactly flow as it should, but thatā€™s okay. If you went to the cinema to see it, youā€™d leave feeling you got your moneyā€™s worth. Thatā€™s what Vari was going for.

Vari was capable of making cheap locations look ok in the context of the movie but otherwise it is another of his failed attempts to make a movie that is not sleep inducing. It is very slow paced and tiring, the same score in few variations plays over almost every scene and it gets already annoying in the first 20 minutes. The truth is it is just boring. So what about the story? The less a movie can deliver in a style, budget and direction, the more it should put emphansis on a story and originality. This is another hidden treasure plot youā€™ve seen countless times (gold, divided map/code) and it also takes a lot from FOD (infiltration, machine gun, hero exposed, torturedā€¦). So nothing really new in this department either. Low budget usually binds your hands tight but Iā€™ve surely seen more enjoyable low budget movies than Hole in the Forehead. I gave it few chances but it gets worse with each new try as you realize in the first 20 minutes that the moviesā€™ tempo and fun wonā€™t get any better in following minutes. For Ghidraā€™s fans only.

Yep, Iā€™m a fan. I never get tired of watching this film, wish he had made more Spaghs, he had such presence.

He reminds me of Roy Scheider for some reasonā€¦

Thank you for a tempting review increasing my curiosity.
A Hole In The Forehead can be watched at Yotube with English audio, and I just did that for the first time. I donā€™t 100 % agree on the quality of the music which I think was musically better in for example the non-Morricone Requiem For Gringo and Ramon The Mexican, according to my own TASTE. But it still seemed good enough or even very good especially near the end when the guitar gets more advanced. And the music definitely suits and emphasizes the moody melancholy atmosphere which I like in many SWs.

I think it is necessary for me to watch a better DVD/Bluray to be able to fully appreciate this movie after a second or third time. Right now I feel it seems to be a possible candidate for a 7/10 and minimum 6.
I have a couple of only Italian audio SWs which feels not very inconvenient since SWs are so associated with Spain and Italy, but I am not sure if German is OK in this regard. There seems not to be an official release yet in English, so I might wait until then.


I hadnā€™t seen Diamondā€™s short review from just a few hours ago when I wrote the comment above, and if I will lean in the same direction after a second view of this SW is of course not impossible :slight_smile:

Watched it today for the first time and saw Django, The Last Killer yesterday. Iā€™m not sure which one I like the best. As I recall, I really loved Shoot The Living, Pray for the Dead, as Iā€™m a huge Klaus Kinski fan. Vari is a director I havenā€™t thought about until I watched these two the last days. I must say I really enjoyed both movies, though they definitely arenā€™t masterpieces. Lovely soundtrack on A Hole in the Forehead, as many of you have stated before. As a Norwegian, itā€™s always hard to catch all the dialogue in the Wild East releases as they donā€™t have subtitles. Luckily, the story is not that hard to follow. 3,5/6 on both of them.

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I also rate A Hole In The Forehead and Django, The Last Killer high, both 7/10 and both starring Ghidra (Dragomir Bojanić) who always(?) is very good, as in another 7/10 rated by me Pistoleros.

Ah, I must watch Tequila Joe and Pistoleros as well. I really liked Ghidra. The other actors, not so much. But munks and priests are always welcome!

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