Drummer of Vengeance / Il giorno del giudizio (Mario Gariazzo, 1971)

I just read Hughes book, well after about half way through I started to gloss over since he pretty much just spelled out each film scene by scene and thats about it.

Anyway I noticed he called this film “worthless” and I found it annoying for him to make a comment like that but then not go into any further details.(this was one of a number of problems through out the book actually)

All I know is this film still sounds pretty cool and I want to check it out.

Well, to each his own. I haven’t seen it yet but I will soon. Hughes is a great writter but I don’t agree with some of his views.

I really didnt find anything special about his writing.

SPOILERs!!      I'm about 3/4's f the way through and it is not bad at all. I think lordradish hit the nail on the head. It is very cheap but has very cool things in it. It is made in a very different way than most spaghetti revenge flicks. We start while hardin is in the middle of his revenge quest. And the next 30 mins, the pace is so fast it seems ike a genocide. Killing every single person responsible for the dastardly deed. I like how he used different disguses to get the drop on his enemies. Much of the killing is shown through the eyes of the sheriff or the victims. Example: We follow the bad guys out of a room or smething and there is Hardin with his toy drummer all wound up and he say's " When it quites...make your move." Great ine I think. He then proceeds to mow down his victim then a few seconds of freeze frame. One scene I like was when Hill's side show is in town and an indian is show casing his skill with the javeline. Throwing them to outline rosalba neri. Everyone in the crowd starts to get a little suspicious and then, with the ast javeine, we discover it is Hardin then he trhrows it at his next target. He kinda reminds me of a hitman doing away with acrime scene witnesses or something. He is just VERY good at killing. He knows several different ways to kill and uses them. But my copy is a terrible quality print so I can barely ake out what is going on mst of the time. Well, so far so good. And I find it strange that the British were involved in this one. It has none of the shit quality other british spagh imitadors have. They must have just put up the money.

Also, I have a question. Was this one shot in Gordon Mitchells’ western town? It doesn’t look ike Elios. Looks very small and cheap. It would explain Gordon Mitchell’s presence in the film.

A british involvement in DoV is maybe only a rumour. Bruckner has it as a soley italian production. I think the Brits made all their westerns in Spain, but this one here has the typical cheap, cheap italian locations.

Yes, definetly the usual Italian locations - gravel pit 'n stuff.

[quote=“Stanton, post:25, topic:1284”]A british involvement in DoV is maybe only a rumour. Bruckner has it as a soley italian production. I think the Brits made all their westerns in Spain, but this one here has the typical cheap, cheap italian locations.[/quote]Sounds plosible but I still like to think of it as a British co production just to satisfy my oddity enjoyments.

I don’t know why this film has gotten such a bad rap. Yes we’ve seen it all before but the look and feel of the hard Spaghetti westerns is captured. Hardin is more that acceptable as the silent and vengeful gunman. The gimmicks are nice, the toy drummer, the coffins ready to be filled etc. It may be a cheap production but it doesn’t matter and doesn’t intefere with anything. Maybe because the music is borrowed from “Hellbenders” and isn’t credited to Morricone that upsets some fans. All in all it’s not a great film but far from bad and it sure is easy to watch for 90 minutes.

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I often find thee ultra cheap spaghettis very cool. Especially this one. Especially one as different and as well made as this. It has a very interesting style that doesn’t really focus on the main character and ge is almost something of a background character.

THere a re many cheap looking SWs I like, W Django fo example.

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Yeah, the film is not bad, but makes often a rather confused impression, at least in the short international versions. If there is really a 98 min version, this could be a different film. But could it really?
DoV sems still too long in the short version, and I have no idea what 20 extra min could bring or improve. Maybe some of the many, many short appearances of famous or half-famous actors would make more sense. Maybe not.

The film is made basically out of lots of close-ups or half close ups with the typical establishing shots often missing or only partly seen, so that it wasn’t always easy to understand what was happening at the moment or were excactly the actors were located in the scenes.
This could be very interesting, but here it makes more the impression of being directed by a director who still has to learn some basic rules of filmmaking. (First you should learn the rules before you are allowed to ignore them)

Nevertheless the film is worth a look or two.

The best is probably the borrowed Morricone music, which seemed to work better here than in I crudeli, for which the score was originally written.

Question to the soundtrack experts:
Is the complete DoV score made out of the I crudeli music or only parts of it? The main theme is clearly recognicable, what else?

I viewed the cut version of Drummer of Vengeance not to long ago. As far as I could tell pretty much all of the score from Drummer of Vengeance uses music from The Hellbenders. Including the main theme I would estimate at least 7 or 8 tracks are used from The Hellbenders score. The longest CD issue of The Hellbenders is 17 tracks, but has a few variations of the main theme though.

The german version of DoV is named Zeig mir das Spielzeug des Todes and belongs with only 79 min also to the short ones.
But it seems that there exists a second version, which was released with a new dub on VHS using also a new title Tag der Vergeltung (an adequate translation of the original, if I’m not wrong). It is most likely uncut.

I like the usual German Title for it exemplifies the stange ideas of the German publishers back then.

[quote=“Stanton, post:33, topic:1284”]The german version of DoV is named Zeig mir das Spielzeug des Todes and belongs with only 79 min also to the short ones.
But it seems that there exists a second version, which was released with a new dub on VHS using also a new title Tag der Vergeltung (an adequate translation of the original, if I’m not wrong). It is most likely uncut.[/quote]

You’re close
Il Giorno del Giudizio = Judgement Day

Giudizio would be in German ‘Urteil’, or ‘Urteilsverkündung’, but the title probably refers to the biblical judgement day, in German (so says my good friend mr. Dick Sionaro) Jüngste Gericht

I like Zeig mir das Spielzeug des Todes (no doubt a variation on the German title of Once Upon …) as well as the English title Drummer of Vengeance. By the way: Giusti also calls it an Italian production only. The film apparently was re-edited (and retitled) in 1974 for a special release in Britain. I understand why it was retitled, but I don’t know why it was re-edited or why the Brits wanted to release an older SWs in 1974. There must have been a special reason for it (I’d say).

My old U.K pre-cert VHS had the title of ‘An Eye for an Eye’.

Maybe not an adequate translation of the original title, but according to some this what it’s all about on Judgement Day …

I wondered where my copy came from …

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Mine was from the Netherlands and was called Doomsday.

The film of (too) many titles.

makes the collecting fun tho’ … :stuck_out_tongue: