El Puro / La taglia è tua … l’uomo l’ammazzo io (Edoardo Mulargia, 1969)

It’s blocked for me, so I can’t check it.

It is the 94 min version?

It’s not the complete version - very nice pic and audio quality, but for the first time, the credits which used to play inexplicably slowly and with gaps … has a montage of the events in the film, including the death of 'Puro’s Dad (Robert with wig and grey beard!)

So the title sequence basically is a spoiler for the entire film :wink: … Genius!

93 mins 51 seconds

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Those new titles are TOTAL spoilers (you even see the LAST shot of him on the ground, dead with his eyes open). I didn’t notice El Puro’s dad. I’m just glad to finally see a decent print!

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I think Puro is supposed to have “Dad issues!” LOL :wink:

It seems that every version has different credits, these must be the 4th one, at least the 4th.

He he, make a top 20 …

https://forum.spaghetti-western.net/t/vote-for-our-official-top-20

I’m all over it!

That title design is just silly, done for the type of person who never understands a film and asks me questions ha, ha.

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I find Mulargias movie “Go With God, Gringo” almost as good as El Puro. Give that one a try, it’s a very good film with strong SW-feeling all the way. More in the line of your typical SW than El Puro.

I recently added Go With God, Gringo on my Watchlist on IMDb during my “chronological SW search campaign” (so far covered 1966 - march 1968) for buying candidates which usually though are films without good official release, but another 10 or so did have good releases and were bought in may-june including new favorites as Johnny Yuma, Kill The Wicked ! and The Stranger Returns.

I will always wait for official releases before buying DVDs/Blurays.

Thanks to the pandemic, I’ve started oil painting. I’m doing a series on my Top 20.
Here is my tribute to El Puro (36x60 oil on canvas):

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After my second watching of the fine Youtube video of El Puro, but this time on my TV, I think I will increase the rating to 7/10. My only big objection (as in Tequila Joe) is the excaggerated alcoholic theme. I love the main music theme even if it may not fit perfectly with the (nice) dark mood and the rather slow pace. The acting is good and there is a, slightly strange, but clear SW feeling.
I don’t see much ressemblance with Black Jack which is more of a typical but very good SW (7/10).

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Have you shown this to Robert Woods? I’m sure he’d share it on Facebook.

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I’ve not seen “GOD,” but surely share your enthusiasm for each of the others you list … all in my TOP TWENTY. These films are wickedly entertaining in my view: delectably evil Rosalba Neri (and the parrot) in YUMA, Anthony’s winning underdog-punk performance, and the sly humor of STRANGER RETURNS; the hot bad chick in the tight leather pants, the gothic horror elements, and crazy-violence of KILL THE WICKED; these three would have made a great triple-bill at the drive-in, back in the day.

No, I haven’t, but I wild love too! How do I contact him?
I’ll also show him my Pecos painting (52x70").

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A guess: could “stakanovista” be an Italian version of “Stakhanovite”, “a worker in the former Soviet Union who was exceptionally hardworking and productive”? Is the implication that he’s a journeyman or routineer, who turned out movies as if on an assembly line?

Here’s how my Italian friend Michele explained “stacanovista” to me:

“Stakanovista” (or “stacanovista”/“stachanovista”) is a term used jokingly or slightly contemptuously for someone who is particularly diligent and eager to do his or her work. Someone who never tires, so that his or her goals seem almost superhuman. The word derives from the family name of Comrade Aleksey Grigoryevich Stakhanov.

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Looks like the same word - your link says the great man’s name became a byword:

"Stakhanov’s records set an example throughout the country and gave birth to the Stakhanovite movement, where workers who exceeded production targets could become “Stakhanovites”.

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Thanks indeed for the Stakhanovites, Companero - and to you and everyone who has written on this film here, because El Puro was the kind of revelation I joined SWDB for, and you introduced me to it. I’ve already watched the YouTube version several times. Just two thoughts:

  1. I love the way El Puro keeps on wrong-footing the viewer (an SW feature, I sense). The sheer viciousness of Gypsy’s gang sets us up for a shocking finale, but the shock when it comes is how completely theatre-of-the-absurd that finale is. These villains have a misguidedly In.Your.Own.Time approach to shootouts. They trail into place, well spaced out (!). Sideways glance from Brega’s Tim at Berti’s Cassidy. Halt. Brega hitches up ill-secured pants over waistline that won’t play, Gypsy (Fiorini) nonchalantly picks his nose. “Watch the shotgun,” Puro says to Fernando, “if he shoots first, he’ll blow your head off.” Yeah, but Fernando has his rifle up and pointed in the right direction. Two graceful twirls and Cassidy flops to the earth in front of Tim, who promptly launches that unhinged rhinoceros charge. Once Tim’s done, Puro shows why he’s the legend who sits, waits and shoots – it feels weirdly close to “eats shoots and leaves” - and when Gypsy’s final “Bang!” comes you can almost see the little flag with the word “Bang!” on it dropping from his two-finger gun-barrel. No wonder the Professor hangs back to make sure of both the reward and the downbeat ending – only a kamikaze gunslinger would hang with this bunch. It’s all farcical and faintly unreal, keeping up the movie’s unsettling swither between ferocious violence (the battering of Rosie), a sort of modernist tragedy (the gunman who kills out of fear to die), and more and less playful camp to the very end. Yet it’s still emotionally involving, for me anyhow.

  2. Responses to movie music can be incredibly subjective. That theme tune does echo FoD’s in so many ways, though I think Alessandroni had some right to that sound. Yet even so I do find it special – a real, distinctive earworm, and to me melancholy and a little dark, rather than cheerful. Still trying to figure out why!

A huge discovery for me, and the SW that is absorbing me most right now. Again, it’s great that this forum exists.

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Great, one more fan of this amazing western.

Make a tip-Top 20 …

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