I wonder why the barber’s immediate response wasn’t: “Oh, you mean Der Dicke Django!”
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Yeah, but they’re all pretty stupid looking guys - too disloyal to be bothered with revenge … they’re just thinking about the next stagecoach massacre - strictly one dimensional bad guys - fickle, if you will. 
You clearly missed the part in which they presented their doctorates to Elfego. He wouldn’t hire anyone without Phd.
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Clearly! LOL
Today I watched Viva Django / Django, Prepare a Coffin (Ferdinando Baldi) for the second time since I got the BluRay last week, and it grew for me to a much more solid (but still) 7/10 and advanced about ten positions to rank 15 on my Top 40 just before the other Baldi on my list The Forgotten Pistolero, followed by Ramon The Mexican and the original Django.
I see a little ressemblance to The Forgotten Pistolero in the slightly complex story building and in my taste, pretty stylish with good music and with some very good main well known actors. That George Eastman’s (Luigi Montefiori) second rated bad guy character and several in his band were eliminated in a shootout and fire rather long before the end was rather unusual I guess.
The real end is one of the best I have seen with Horst Frank’s main villian who thought he had outwitted Django at the nicely staged graveyard when the main bad guy’s riders arrived, but it was Django with the machine gun hidden in the coffin who had the best of it.
My feeling for this SW is stronger than the original Django which also is very good but my opinion is that Sergio Corbucci’s Django is a little bit “cleaner” and lacks something. Without analysis of facts I would like to think of Django, Prepare a Coffin as a later produced prequel to Django, where a machine gun in a coffin is one direct connection.
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Spent this evening watching E Dio Disse a Caino (And God Said to Cain)
Very brooding, very dark, but also very good and suspenseful. Probably the only time, in the SW at least, that Klaus Kinski played something close to a good guy. Definitely a Gothic film in many places, but to say it has Horror elements I think is a little much. I think it fits more into an eerie Ghost tale as Kinski really is like a phantom, appearing and disappearing at will. Also, I think this is the only time in an SW I’ve seen two German actors, Kinski and Peter Carsten, playing the two main leads, which is cool in its own right.
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They Call Me Trinty (1970, Barboni)
After watching My Name is Nobody, I felt the need to rewatch this movie, that started the entire Hill/Spencer comedy western madness. I watched my old Dutch DVD, non-anamorphic, colors often completely off, but somehow that seems okay with this movie that ruined the spaghetti western, but saved the Italian genre cinema industry for another decade.
With all these lousy Trinity imitations in mind (I watched quite a few over the last couple of years) I noticed that Barboni still took his time to build up a story and to create characters that are believable, at least within the context of a comedy western. Like I said elsewhere, Trinity is closer related to the tradition of the so-called freebooter (Uylenspiegel, etc.) than to the traditional western hero: he comes to the aid of the poor and the helpless, but he is lazy, bad-mannered and (in spite of his good heart) selfish. It’s a bit of an odd combination, but it works very well and it’s probably also why audiences world-wide could identify with the character: he’s a loser who wins.
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Yesterday, I saw Fidani’s Arrivano Django e Sartana… è la fine (1970) and Giù la testa… hombre (1971). I found the former to be astonishingly entertaining despite its virtual lack of story and its utter nonsensicality, which is what ultimately made it incredibly enjoyable in the end. My favorite moment is the toad passing Django’s way for no apparent reason and additionally, its croaking sounds like it was done by some hapless voice actor desperately trying to emulate the poor beast. I mean couldn’t they just get a freaking toad or a frog and then record it for Christ’s sake? It sounds nothing like the real thing and is so out of place and absurd it’s absolutely hilarious.
As for the latter movie, I frankly don’t know what to make of it. The flick has Batzella-level production values, equally vacuous script, but unfortunately very few notorious somersaults, rolls and nowhere nearly as much brisk ridiculousness. Beer might’ve kicked in and clouded my reasoning, but it’s more reasonable to assume it’s… well, just not very good, shall we say. When Kinski munching on a motherfuckin’ apple is the best part of the movie, then you just know something is terribly wrong. It’s just very bad with no real redeeming qualities. Admittedly, it’s kind of fun and interesting to see movies which look this cheap every once in a while, but other than that, the pic simply isn’t all that enjoyable and it’s pretty crass by regular standards to be perfectly honest.
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Martino: Mannaja -Man Called Blade
-I had not seen this one for a while. Great looking film with some nice ideas but also with some bad ones. The whole plot is very stupid. Why Voller and the girl came up with the whole kidnapping idea, why they couldn’t just get married? Old man probably wouldn’t had objected since Voller was a foreman for his men anyway. 7/10 -
Pallardy: Règlements de femmes à OQ Corral
-Something different for a change! A French sex western, oui! Alas, it’s a very boring film with just few sex scenes which are very lame. 3/10
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Yeah, pretty much this. Mannaja is easily one of the most distinctive heroes the genre has to offer, it’s too bad the execution and the story itself isn’t as good as the basic concept. Heavily flawed, but thoroughly enjoyable regardless.
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. IMDB lists 11 films he appeared in that were released 1971 … Makes you wonder who was crazier, Klaus himself or the producers who agree to pay him huge amounts of money for one day’s work, just to use his name on their product.
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SPAGVEMBERFEST 2019: DAY 24
My Criterion Godzilla set arrived today leaving me sorely tempted to blow the remainder of SpagvemberFest off so’s I could get my Kaiju on, but what sort of Soldier of Spag would I be if I did that? No, I’m going to see it out, and today I’m going with early(ish) shooter In a Colt’s Shadow (Grimaldi, 1965), which isn’t too bad a choice for a Sunday afternoon. Giddy up!
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- Town Called Bastard/Hell
I’m rather thankful that I had never seen this before - according to @morgan’s review in the database, I would probably ran right into some truncated version, and didn’t enjoy it as much as I did. Wow! What a ride. Some scenes were so intense I almost forgot breathing. This is certainly biggest surprise of this spagvember so far. I really liked Robert Shaw in the lead role, so I’m going to seek out Custer Of The West very soon. 8/10
Now, that must be some very good movie that Executioner Of God youtube is suggesting, righty?
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It’s definitely called ‘Bastard’, as I remember this being a bit of a talking point in the mid 70s, when ITV showed a season called the ‘Savage West’ … must have been around 1974 or 5 as I was sent to bed early then and missed out on ‘Soldier Blue’, ‘There Was a Crooked Man’, ‘Two Mules for Sister Sara’ amongst others.
This was a big deal then and the season made the cover of the TV Times listings magazine.
I think the movie was probably renamed ‘Hell’ by the people in the next village, ‘A Town Called Pussy’ !!! ?
… with ‘Le Samourai’ as a double feature! … that was a good night out!
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Number 28: I’ve got a bit ahead of schedule, what with a few double or even triple bills.
Last night it was a classic, ‘Run Man, Run!’ (1968)
Milian’s most enjoyable and comedic characterisation, ‘Cuchillo Sanchez’, not as hard edged as ‘The Big Gundown’, but still damn good … drags just a tad in the middle but redeems itself with a great finale. 8/10
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- Mulargia: Brother Outlaw
-This has pretty good beginning and end but too bad that everything in the middle is just so boring that it’s hard to make it to the end without falling asleep. 5/10
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Execution (Domenico Paolella)
As I said before, every spagh deserves a second chance, now it’s your turn, Execution.
After the movie I’ve read comments in the movie’s thread and what a confusion reigns over this spagh!
Then I have reread @scherpschutter’s review, which kind of made me thinking few months ago (when I’d read it first time) I should rewatch it because scherp liked it, and I thought I might change my mind. Another reason for a rewatch was John Richardson, whom I liked in John The Bastard, but couldn’t recall much of him from this spagh.
I liked it only partially first time around thinking it’s a bit trashy, but forgot all whys and whats, so I was quite curious about it.
First of all Execution is not that confusing as it seems. It just has that stagecoach sequence, which is out of place a bit and if someone cut that out, you would probably get everything in the right order.
So, first 35 minutes are amazing - direction, cinematography, locations, score, everything strong. Then the stagecoach sequence follows, which depicts some troubles of Mimmo Palmara and John Richardson trying to get to the city in which John Coller lives, but the director or whoever was in charge at that time tried to sabotaged the film or experimented too much with the material. After that the movie slowly returns to normality, almost as if nothing happened.
Now, @scherpschutter’s review:
“A protracted sequence (set on a stagecoach) seems to make no sense at all.”
The whole point of confusing stagecoach sequence is to depict that Bill Coler is trying to prevent Mimmo Palmara’s bounty hunter to get to Harland city to get his brother John. Unfortunately, it is done in quite confusing way, but it’s not that nonsensical.
“The strings of a guitar are shot through, but the body of the instrument (as well as the guitar player!) are not hit by the bullets.”
In the scene there’s visible that Coler is holding the guitar the way bullets wouldn’t harm him. You can see backround through the hole of the guitar, so he doesn’t hold it in front of him, but on the side.
“The most interesting character, Mimmo Palmara’s bounty hunter, is killed at the one hour point, leaving us with John Richardson in a dual role as the two brothers. Richardson was obviously chosen for his looks, not his acting skills.”
I disagree. I thought Palmara’s character and his acting skills are nothing special, but John Richardson in the double role is very good, it especially shows during torture scene, wall-digging scene and when he buried his friend in the end. Great actor!
“The split scene technique, which allowed Richardson to face himself in some scenes, is used to good effect, but like some have stated, Richardson even lacks chemistry with himself.”
Come on, really?
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Spagvember extra: I watched title scene of Captain Apache while enjoying some cognac. 10/10.
Any suggestions for sw’s that could be watched from youtube?
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This might be the first instance of the name ‘Captain Apache’ and 10/10 ever coming together in a sentence ? … must be some damn good brandy!
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I have a limited number of SW available here so today I watched a 2.45 hour filler, Once Upon A Time In The West and it was not that bad, 10 out of 10. Cinematograhically beautiful and decorated with emotions, meaning, purpose all with depth in a great perspective or to put it a bit shorter I think it is outstanding film art formally in the spaghetti western form.
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