I wouldn’t label Baldi as important, he was more a run of the mill director who has made one astonishing good SW.
His early films are mixed affairs with some good moments but also with amateurish directed scenes. The whole beginning of Texas addios is extremely stupid, and like Prepare Your Coffin and Hate Your Neighbor (good title), it could be much better. These 3 movies suffer from their not so imaginative directing.
But soon after he made with The Forgotten Pistolero a well handled SW and then together with Tony Anthony the surprisingly good Blindman, which looks in parts like a Corbucci.
They made together 2 more Spaghettis which were showing the decline of the genre. Get Mean is as idiotic as the story sounds, while Comin’ at Ya, despite retaining some of the Blindman qualities, has too much stupid 3-D effects and also some weird, not working ideas like attacking bats.
Apart from Blindman and Forgotten Pistolero I would say that Baldi is mostly a routine director.
It’s possible that there exists a 21 min longer italian version of The Forgotten Pistolero according to the Bruckner book.
The german and japanese DVDs are indicated as uncut, but the film makes a cut impression to me.
Any of the italian members here, who know a longer version?
I’ve only seen Texas Addio and Rita of the West so far and, although I wouldn’t call Baldi an important director, I do think he was a good and entertaining director. I know, I know, I haven’t seen Blindman yet. I need to get that one…