Spanish western of the pre-Leone type. Direction and action sequences in particular are somewhat pedestrian and it suffers from a pretty poor musical score too which really doesn’t help it but some of the locations are beautiful and the whodunnit storyline makes a nice change so not all bad. Don’t let the black gloved mystery killer motif fool you though. this is really not gialloesque and it’s far too easy to pick the murderer pretty early on.
The TV rip I watched was quite nice quality actually and, although a bit stodgy in places it passed the time ok.
This one popped up on YouTube overnight, under its U.S. title of Four Bullets for Joe, having been posted by BangBang! so I decided to give it a watch this morning as it is so hard to find. I think @Phil_H pretty much has it pegged as the locations are definitely gorgeous and the mystery story line is pretty interesting though entirely predictable. Were it not for the movie having the feel of a Hollywood made matinee B-movie western from the 1940s or 1950s, I would be tempted to classify it a mystery instead of a western. This is not to insinuate that it is badly made (it has some truly wonderful camera work in it) but just that it had that feel.
This movie’s page in the database has been updated to the new layout. I also added a few pictures. We still need a lot more stuff, like info, facts, trivia, reviews, etc, so help is appreciated.
I just left home for a few days and will, hopefully, be back late next week. If someone doesn’t have an answer in the meantime, I will be happy to try to play to switch my region free player over to Region B to see if it will play if you like.
Sorry it has taken me so long to get back with you. I played it on all three regions on my all region player and it played on all of them. So, in theory, it should work.
I have received and watched the US BD.
I confirm it is region free…so thanks again for checking, Brian
I enjoyed the movie even it really looks like an US B Western from the 40`s.
But I wonder what went wrong with the HD scan or upscale.
The colours are strange and not natural. There is no real sharpness and the image is trembling/shaking from time to time especially during the credits.
It looks like they scanned and old 35mm print and during restauration everything went wrong.
Nevertheless glad to watch this early SW from this BD since the German version called DER RÄCHER VON GOLDEN HILL seems to be lost since the Sixties.
