Montero - if this was a straight 3 hr slot then you are probably correct as there were 12m of advert breaks per hour back then.
Must be my memory playing tricks. The uncut version was released in 1982 not 1981 with an AA rating. The shorter version was released in 1969 with an A rating after some cuts to the bed scene between Jill and Frank.
It wasn’t just Roger Ebert who went into a ‘frenzy of annoyance and upset’ at the picture, it also included a professor of criminal justice:
HANS W. MATTICK, a noted University of Chicago criminologist, was watching television at dawn Wednesday, sickened by the brutal news, when he saw something “so fantastically gruesome I had to turn away.” It was a commercial for a new movie, interrupting the reports of the shooting of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
“The movie is called, ‘A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die’,” said Mattick. “And I swear to God, in 45 seconds of the preview film I saw at least 30 people killed. I was horrified. This was the first commercial of the day. And coming right on top of that news. What kind of country do we live in? It’s hard to find words to describe it anymore…” (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 9, 1968)
The producers opted for a formula ending at the last minute, much to Alex Cord’s disgust:
The new Western was screened Tuesday [April 30, 1968] in Dallas by mass media representatives from throughout the state prior to its state-wide release… Its star, Alex Cord, attended the preview in Dallas and learned only then that the last few minutes of the original film had been cut at the request of a review board. This, he said, changed the meaning by its failure to fully develop the theme that killing is not worthwhile. He is, at the moment, a very congenial but unhappy star. (El Paso Times, May 1, 1968)
“I think that beautifully showed that the entire plot of the movie was a gunman’s futile effort to live,” he said and suggested that the movie-goers write to the producers: Selmur Pictures, ABC Studios, New York City, N.Y.
“I doubt that they will put the last two minutes of the movie back on, but I’d like to know if a lot of other folks don’t agree with me bout the end being cut,” he reasoned.
“In this movie, I want to die,” he joked. (Tyler Morning Telegraph, [TX], May 1, 1968)
Walter Barnes provided the voice of McCord’s sidekick Fred Duskin (Giampiero Albertini):
If the voice of actor Walter Barnes, who plays the heavy in Columbia Pictures “The Big Gundown,” sounds familiar to Western movie fans, it’s no wonder. Barnes’ vibrant Southern drawl has been heard in scores of European films, especially Westerns, for he is in great demand as the English voice of Italian, Spanish and German actors. Between movie chores, Barnes works as one of the top film dubbers in Europe. His latest assignment: serving as the English voice of Alex Cord’s sidekick in “Dead or Alive.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 27, 1968)
Sources below: (1) (2) (El Paso Times, May 1 & 5, 1968) (3) (Houston Chronicle, May 5, 1968)
