Nowadays, after having watched it around 6 or 7 times at least in just a year I rank it at 10th place on my SW Top 45.
The music, the mood, the scenery/locations and some nice characters are its strongest points. It is my highest ranked 7 out of 10 rated SW so it must be rather close to get a higher, 8/10, rating.
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I absolutely love seeing these old SW films advertised in newspapers, etc…
Please keep them coming.
Seen this one now for third or fourth time and I like it more and more for eeverytime. I thought Lang Jeffries was a bit boring at earlier viewings but has no problem with at all now, he does the job!
Like it has been said before, A lot of spaghettis start up very strongly and then falls into limbo with a story that doesn’t know where it’s going and looses it’s flow - Not the case with this one! Straight forward like a tank our hero dressed in a leopard poncho get’s his renvenge. We think it has reached it climax after the flashbacks when he tells Coranza how he has slaughtered his henchmen one by one - but then, bam! We get thrown back right into it when he’s finally coming for Sancho! Very entertaining and certainly creative when you think about how there’s very few extras and not even a western town in the movie
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Also the main musical theme is very very good and different.
Otherwise the mood, the style and the locations (Colmenar Viejo) also appeal to me.
Requiem For A Gringo is ranked 10 on my SW Top 40, and the highest ranked with only my 7/10 rating. It is very close to a 8/10.
Carlos Gaddi is perfect for his black-clad character and so are the goodlooking females Marisa Paredes and Femi Benussi. Aldo Sambrell is also nice as a slighly weird henchman to Fernando Sancho’s Carranza.
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I agree! Carlos Gaddi looks very mean! He’s also great in the God In Heaven… Arizona on Earth with Peter Lee Lawrence in the lead.
I re-watched it last week and it is a gem. Top 10 for me. Can’t believe it took me nearly 20 years to see it!
Agree, number 10 on my SW Top 50. The main music theme is nearly worth the rating by itself 
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I thought it was a very entertaining film but it looked a bit cheap. Locations were a bit meh, and it didn’t have to many great examples of framing. The eclipse lighting setup was a bit of a dissapointment. I expected it to be a bit trippier.
Music is great, so is the main character and the 3 important henchmen. The narrative spin was pretty good as well.
I watched Requiem For a Gringo for something like the 6th or 7th time in just a little more than a year and finally increase my rating to a 8/10, but still with rank 10. I had to differentiate my ratings more even if I still have 25 SWs rated as 7/10.
This time was the first since I got the Kill The Wicked! 2 months ago DVD, so I further understand the greatness of Lavagnino’s beautiful music which perfectly interplays with the, in both these SWs, rather slow but nice moody storytelling. He managed that without the classic trumpets (which I also like).
Regarding the locations, which I like here as well, there are 3 for me unknown, even if the antihero’s estate due to the background in one short scene could be locatated ESE of the characteristic hills/mountains north of Hoyo de Manzanares as seen in other SWs from the vanished western town Golden City, close to and south of Hoyo de Manzanares. The only town in this SW was a tiny one in the Colmenar Viejo are, not far away from a little ranch which also appeared.
Also the location of the big spanish style estate where the main villain Carranza is still unknown to me, as well as the entrance to that estate on the plains. Or maybe it was south of Madrid ?
For me the only weakness is the plot in the later stages of the film for example when the antihero just by talking controls the situation. My 9th ranked SW Dead Men Ride/Anda Muchacho Spara is more even in that respect, but Requiem For A Gringo I think is slightly moodier in the first 2/3 of the film and the locations are better since I like Colmenar Viejo. Both have wonderful music.
Just finished watching this for the first time and love it. It’s a great entry with some cool, moody shootouts and strange costume designs. I think this movie borrows some element from Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri, especially when he start recalling about the duels and talked how Tom, Charlie and Ted behaved like cowards.
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Welcome Amigo! I too enjoyed the atmosphere and the mood in this one, the astrology mix is what sold me and it was well worth it.
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Lovely, lovely movie, this. Just watched it for 6th time this year. Easily in my own Top 20.
Some reasons why:
- I find Merino’s sense of pace quite unerring. Admire the supple shifts between the febrile, sexy plotting at the claustrophobic Ramirez ranch and Logan in his wilderness, closing in. The gravitation towards the Hara-Kiri-style flashbacks near the end grows organically, and after the ninety-minute - in the Youtube version - gathering of tension, that shootout in the eclipse is like the energy released by a coiled spring.
- The dynamic between Carranza and his men and women, all conspiring against him, makes for a compelling parallel narrative to the revenge plot (of course they converge, as Logan himself finally “supplants” Carranza, though only to kill him). Fernando Sancho is remarkable here; allowed to show more nuance than usual, he gives us a guy well past his prime who knows his grip on power is slipping, a pathetic craven yet with remnants of true grandeur, “the old lion” (Sancho actually looks leonine, which doesn’t hurt!).
- It’s also one of those movies that does wonders with its leading man’s limitations. Lang Jeffries may not the most flexible of actors, but the deep voice and natural gravitas absolutely carry the role.
- This may seem OTT, but the no-man’s-land between the Logan and Ramirez ranches becomes more and more allegorical, expressionistic even, as the film goes on, in a way that sends shivers down my spine. There’s the arch to nowhere where Dan’s body is strung up; the black-clad processions with their biers, from one of which Logan springs to blow Leader away (the Pasolini reference further up the thread spot-on); a whorehouse; crumbling barns haunted by a black cat (some knockout feline acting in this movie). It all feels strangely ungrounded and unstable - an indrawn breath before apocalypse.
- What’s to say about the music that hasn’t been said? That organ makes for a sound-world unlike anything else (though if memory serves, doesn’t And God Said to Cain do something similar)?
Riveting after multiple viewings. I am a devotee.
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You probably already have beaten my 2019 personal record for this SW, since I guess I only watched it 4-5 times that my “first” year (but probably totaling close 8 or 9 times by now) 
Lavagnino’s wonderful music is an important part of Requiem For A Gringo’s nice mood (8/10, rank 10 on my SW Top 72), as it also is for Kill The Wicked (8/10 rank 12).
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Can you list the other movies for us please and thanks 
I hope you can find them all here on this database page:
https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Category:José_Luis_Merino
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Thank you Sir 
I’m a big fan of the movie, but I’ve always tuned out the hairpieces from hell. Rubén Rojo’s toupée is also pretty bloody awful.
I’ve watched the HD version of the movie since making that comment, and it’s true that the story and atmosphere overrides the shortcomings of the wardrobe !! LOL … I enjoyed it very much. It’s definitely a unique film within the genre.
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A man shot to death slipping down the bloodstained wall during the final shootout is at present missing from both the Italian and the Spanish version, you can see this part of the scene in its entirety only in the trailer
In the censored Spanish version you don’t see any killing, only gunshots from behind the wagon wheel with subsequent zooming: the sequence is 1-2-3-6.
Current Italian version is drastically shortened so that blood can’t be seen: the sequence is 1-2-3-4-6.
Can someone check the edited German version and whenever possible old VHS releases, please?
According to the site dvdcompare the runtime of Wild East and Colosseo Blu-ray is essentially the same: is the sliced hand around minute 41 missing from both releases? If so, it would be highly desirable to reinstate it in occasion of future HD releases.
