Rewatched this thanks to the new Blu-Ray from Arrow.
This to my mind is the best Sartana movie after If You Meet Sartana… it is the one that gets the closest in terms of spookiness and all round Saratana- atmosphere though it is a more light-hearted film than the original. In fact it can feel a bit like two movies in tone when you compare Sartana’s introductory nighttime gundown to the relative cuteness of the lady-swindler denouement.
I thought George Wang made for a charismatic semi-villain while the main villain wasn’t particularly memorable.
Carmineo keeps things general interesting with his usual camera tricks and bits of inventive action. There’s plenty of action which to me it doesn’t feel alike a lot of unrelated, strung together action sequences - though they possibly are! Very god music too.
Agreed. Recived the box a couple of weeks ago and watched the five films in two nights. Real nice to see them in such good picture quality, with Italian audio and English subs. I even have Have a Good Funeral sligtly ahead of the original. Have a Good Funeral 7/10, If You Meet Sartana 6,5, Light the Fuse 5,5, Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin 5, Sartana Your Angel of Death 5.
I more or less agree, I would go:
If You Meet Sartana - 7.5/10
Have A Good Funeral - 6.5/10
Light The Fuse - 5.5/10
Angel Of Death - 5 (This one starts off well but always disappoints me).
Trade Your Pistols - Haven’t seen this one.
Honorable mention to They Call Him Cemetery as a great lost Sartana movie!
I love all the Gianni Garko spaghettis. I wish they’d have made a sequel to Those Dirty Dogs. Koran was an interesting character and very different to Sartana.
The ending of that one was for me rock bottom of the saga. When the hardworking townspeople claim their prospected gold back, Sartana teams up with this Sabata guy, a Tennyson-reading work-shy dandy with a lady’s parasol, to steal it from them for the second time. What kind of plot is that?
This is the first Sartana-film I’ve seen and I give it a 9-out-of-10. Immensely entertaining. The script flows logically like a river through a canyon. Fascinating production, with accent on authenticity. The ‘card-throwing’ gimmick seems straight out of a Shaw Brothers’ vehicle. Or vice versa. Superb. And Garko’s relationship with Daniela Giordano is as refreshing as fine whisky. Zero smarminess. Same goes for Bruno Nicolai’s score.
Just wondering what you guys think of this one in the Sartana series. Like a lot of the spaghetti westerns it was released under a couple different titles. I remember our local video store had one with “Have A Good Funeral My Friend…Sartana Will Pay.” and another copy titled “Stranger Of Gold”. As a kid then and not knowing any better I ended up renting both and on back to back Fridays. LoL I was not hapy… The other Sartana movies are pretty good but this one is definitely my favorite. It would even make my top 10 list of my favorite spaghetti westerns.
Simply the best of the bunch and imo even Carnimeo’s best western. Sartana is cool and funny at the same time and throws hilarious one liners at everyone. The movie is genuinely funny. It does not take itself too seriously but it is serious enough when it needs to be serious if that makes any sense. It is not as serious as If You Meet Sartana… nor as spoofy as Light the Fuse… and it is more memorable than ridiculously plotted and let’s be honest because of that crazy plot rather boring I’m Sartana Your Angel of Death. The plot is actually pretty easy to understand in this one so you won’t have any problem following it, complicated badly explained plots is something that plagued the other Sartana episodes. Have a good funeral… is just perfectly balanced and that is what you want from a good movie. The quality never drops down to the point you’d want to turn your recorder off. Of all the episodes about Sartana, Garko is the most likeable right here. It has also the best soundtrack of all Sartanas provided by noone else than Bruno Nicolai. The only thing that sucks are locations! Ugly, gritty, muddy Rome locations don’t exactly fit the movie’s tone but it did not bother me too much though I wished they were rather sandy.
I agree with most of what you say but I like Light the Fuse… just a bit more. I think it has a better soundtrack and opening sequence. Have a good funeral… has the better story, though. Garko is awesome in both.
Light the Fuse opening sequence is cool, def. the best opening in the serie! It might be just me but I had high expectations after the bombastic intro but the movie never managed to fullfill them for me.
That’s the only one I have bought as a DVD and I found it just OK (6/10) a bit too lighthearted but rather entertaining with a partly maybe misplaced crime-solving feeling. I had before watched the, as I understand, most serious or moody If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death on Youtube but found it likewise a bit too lighthearted (6/10).
Have a Good Funeral… has been updated to the new layout (3.0). Let us know if you can add anything: pictures, posters, trivia, facts, figures, links, etc…
