Hate Thy Neighbor / Odia il prossimo tuo (Ferdinando Baldi, 1968)

itā€™s very strange movie and it has our spyro foka but he looks litle boring

horst frank giveā€™s life to this forgoten gem

The fight of the two bad guys in this, and this is great for me. But like I have read in Philā€™s review of this one the good guy is overshadowed for sure. So on a pure revenge level it does not work 100%, but yes there is more to the story than that of course. Even though I enjoyed the claw style fighting, enjoyed the way the dynamite was used at the end more. Not the best by the director, but not the worst either ā€¦some where in the middle.

better than many others in the genreā€¦

Baldiā€™s Hate Thy Neighbour (1968) is a good, but not great Spaghetti Western. Itā€™s too over-lit, too TV-like, with the sets looking too fresh and clean. No real feeling of the West is invoked. Almost as bad are the bland hero and his pointless coffin-maker sidekick. There are things to like though: the character Gary Stevensā€™ torture is well done and ingeniously cruel; Horst Frank is a lot of fun and invests the film with some actual menace. The gladitorial fights are a good idea (perhaps a nod to the Italian film industryā€™s previous phase?), but isnā€™t really developed properly. A generous 3/5.

Gladiator scene (although that idea went nowhere from there) and snakes scene only pluses. Uninteresting soundtrack (and non-existent in places where there should be music) and one of the most boring good guys. Iā€™m feeling less generous these days, 2 out of 5 rope eating mice for me.

Finally watched this movie. Like most people here have stated, itā€™s a not so great movie with some great scenes and two terriffic villains, George Eastman and Horst Frank

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https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Hate_Thy_Neighbor_review

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A pretty good film with memorable characters and some of the greenest scenery Iā€™ve ever seen in a SW (What is this, The Quiet Man?).

The Koch DVD transfer is lush as expected. :ok_hand:

I agree, after having watched a good Youtube video.
The story isnā€™t near as good as in Baldiā€™s Viva Django / Django Prepare A Coffin and The Forgotten Pistolero/Gunman Of Ave Maria (both 7/10) and has rather weak music. Still I just ordered the Koch DVD and with good will I might rate it 6/10.
Hate Your Neighbor so far appears to be one of the a little bit more entertaining SWs on my watch list since I have even not completed watching several of them recently due to boring fist fights etc. Nowadays it seems hard to get another 7/10-rated after having watched not far from 100 SWs rather carefully picked out of which I rate 35 films 7/10 or higher,

I received the Koch DVD today and after this second time it got a little bit better for me (as did also Baldiā€™s Django Prepare A Coffin last year).

I like the slightly twisty story and serious mood (as in Viva Django / Django Prepare A Coffin and The Forgotten Pistolero/Gunman Of Ave Maria), and Baldi creates some stylishness.

Of course it was George Eastman and Horst Frank that dominated the film in their usual type of characters, while the supposed antihero is in clear shade of their charisma and for the better got less screen time. The serious Terence Hill type character as in Viva Django would probably have made the film even better where he was acting against those two same actorā€™s characters.

The bizarre ā€œgladiatorā€ duels with the H Frank character and his amused wife is example of one of the type of components that can contribute to a more interesting SW IMO.
There were some nice music, both orchestral and solo guitar but also some less good as the song in beginning.
It feels fair to increase my rating to 7/10, but so far at the last position of those SWs with such a rating, i.e. rank 37, but maybe it will climb some more in my appreciation later.

35 Garringo (Rafael Romero Marchent) (good music Marcello Giombini)
36 A Gun For 100 Graves/Pistol For A Hundred Coffins (Umberto Lenzi)
37 Hate Thy Neighbor (Ferdinando Baldi)

Itā€™s a heroless movie in a way. The death of protagonistā€™s brother serves only as a pretext to move on to the villains played by George Eastman and Horst Frank and the motion picture never really bothers to elaborate on the good guy in any meaningful way whatsoever, nada, zero. The main hero has got to be the most generic, rachitic, pointless and boring leading man Iā€™ve ever seen in any spaghetti western, bar none. Heck, weā€™re talking here about an action-oriented genre, yet this guy still takes the cake, I canā€™t tell a single thing about him despite having just watched the thing.

The narration is out of focus in the sense that it liberally switches back and forth between the narrative strand of the good gunslinger and the treasure hunt with Eastman and Frank battling each other. The issue with this lies in the fact that it makes the whole script stillborn; the basic dramatic progression of the plot seems to rely on the character of Dakota, which is left completely underdeveloped and unexplored. The part of the film relating to the treasure hunt is the most interesting component of the film because it features some highly original touches and scenes, but then again, it gets attenuated by the other half and doesnā€™t really have any characters you could root for.

The crude, eccentric amalgamation just doesnā€™t work, endows the structure with a distinctly ugly, amorphous look and results in a messy succession of events I didnā€™t know how to feel about. There are quite a few neat as well as intriguing elements and Baldiā€™s handling of action is as strong as ever, but I ultimately found little of it to be of much interest in the end.

Interesting is that a short musical theme (6 notes) which appears in the last scene is very similar to the main theme in the Swedish TV series ā€œKullamannenā€ from 1967 (and 1968), about a year before Hate Thy Neighbour was released.

Hate Thy Neighbor has been updated to the new layout (3.0). Let us know if you can add anything: pictures, posters, trivia, facts, figures, links, etcā€¦

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Watched this one for the first time the other night and I was a bit disappointed. I liked Eastman and Frank, but it didnā€™t seem as inspired as some of Baldiā€™s other westerns like Blindman or The Forgotten Pistolero. The lead actor (forget his name) wasnā€™t that convincing in the lead and felt under-used, as did Machiavelli. Didnā€™t hate it but it was far from special and could have easily been better.

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I agree that it isnā€™t on the level of those two or Django, Prepare a Coffin but it definitely blows Little Rita out of the water. :laughing: I did love Horst Frank and his Roman Colosseum style fights that he hosted and George Eastman is always entertaining. Then, we also have Nicoletta Machiavelli. :kissing_heart: The plot wasnā€™t carried out as well as it could have been and Spyros Fokas was as wooden as any actor could be. I enjoyed it but it wasnā€™t Baldiā€™s best.

New poll for this one at the top of the page on the original post. :arrow_up:

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just got done watching this one today!

This is my 2nd Ferdinando Baldi directed spaghetti western after his excellent 1966 film ā€œtexas aidosā€ and my first time seeing George Eastman in a spaghetti western role!

Needless to say this movie really is George Eastmanā€™s show and he is amazingly slimy as one of the two main villains of this movie, other then George Eastmanā€™s presence this is a pretty standard if somewhat more violent b-tier spaghetti western but still a really solid one of its type!

I loved the death trap that Eastmanā€™s character is threatened with, and the shield and claw human cockfights in this deserve a mention!

Overall not the greatest spaghetti western but you can do so much worse when it comes to these films, and I had a pretty good time with it overall!

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The Forgotten Pistolero would be my recommendation for your next Baldi film. :wink:

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Will have to check that one out next, it sounds very interesting thanks!

Oh man. Forgot about this film. The next Arrow box set really should be a Baldi set!!!

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