Day 21
Tonight I’ll be watching this pos-Trinity effort, Domani passo a salutare la tua vedova… parola di Epidemia. I’m prepared for the worst so help me God.
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SPAGVEMBERFEST 2020: DAY 21
Day 21, the final third, the home straight. Tonight, A Fistful of Dollars (Leone, 1964). Clint shoots a f#cking orangutan played by Gian Maria Volonte, and then he sort of walks off. Like my brain.
Right. I’m counting the cowboy hats. I’m not keeping track of which hats I’ve already counted though. Every time the camera angle changes, I’m counting the hats in the shot. In 1 hour and 40 minutes I will be in sole possession of the single most useless piece of trivia ever associated with this movie. Also, I’m eating the Terry’s Chocolate Orange we’d bought and put in the cupboard for Christmas. Just going to stuff as much of it into my mouth as I can all in one go, like a hamster with a death wish.
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Well, that was impossible! I mean, obviously it’s possible but I’d have to prat around pausing a load of shots to conduct a hat-count, and I’m not doing that. I thought it wouldn’t be that bad, with maybe a dozen or so Rojos, as many Baxters and possibly twice as many soldiers in any one shot. A relatively small amount, easily countable. But not when they’re all bloody galloping about, and Sergio is cutting to Rojos! and then Baxters! and then Back to the Rojos, quick! and then Soldiers! then Clint! then back to soldiers! then Cut to Volonte mowing everybody down at speed!
But even with zero chance of counting every single instance of a hat in every single shot, I kept counting anyway just to pass the film, and I counted almost 1200 instances of a hat in the shot.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll cut a hole in one of our duvet covers and wear it like a poncho, and watch the movie whilst acting out everything Clint does and says on screen, in my front room. I’m not sure how the wife will be though when I squint at her and tell her to get three coffins ready. I imagine she’ll call me a f#ckwit and demand that I replace the duvet I’ve ruined before she kicks my teeth in. Still, it’ll freshen the film up.
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‘SABATA’ (1969)
From the superb opening main theme, by Marcello Giombini, to the end credits of a super-cool, vintage, Lee Van Cleef riding off into the Tabernas desert, this Bond-like Spaghetti has it all…snazzy death-dealing gadgets; acrobats, a double-dealing, red-haired, banjo-playing, William Berger; a snooty, despicable villain, played to perfection by Franco Ressel; Robert Hundar, as a henchman on borrowed time; Linda Veras as a gorgeous blonde saloon girl; and the ever-predictable Pedro Sanchez, as a Civil War drop-out.
This is a Spaghetti that delivers on all fronts…great music, entertaining action sequences, enough twists and turns to confuse a driver at Monaco; and a Van in top form (always at his best without a rug on his dome).
'Sabata’ will remain in my top ten. When I first watched it, on BBC2, in 1979, as a kid, I was blown away by ‘how damn cool’ the main character was.
That feeling of enjoyment is still the same, even after all these years…
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Me too … wasn’t sure of the exact year, until now! Cheers 
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Hi, Aldo. If you remember, BBC2 had a season of Spaghetti Westerns, every Thursday, in 1979. As a kid, I looked forward to those Thursdays in July/August so much!!! 
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Funnily enough I was going to say that I remembered it as a Thursday evening, as that was my Mum’s night out with the girls … There’s a good chance we kids wouldn’t have seen this season if she’d been at home those Thursdays.
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Good times…
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Finally came around to watch my Eureka Blu-Ray of this and it was indeed a very pleasing experience.
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- Chentrens & Girault: Judge Roy Bean
-Another rarity finally seen, this time from youtube. I tried using auto-generated english subs for a while but they were no use for me. But it was quite easy to follow anyway. 3/10 for now. If I saw it with subtitles I might rise my rating.
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Luigi Vanzi’s Un uomo, un cavallo, una pistola premiered in August 1967, the same month as a number of other Spaghetti Westerns, among them Fernando Cicero’s Il tempo degli avvoltoi, Edoardo Mulargia’s Cjamango, Alfonso Brescia’s I giorni della violenza, Gianni Grimaldi’s Il bello, il brutto, il cretino, Giorgio Stegani’s Gentleman Jo … uccidi!, Tanio Boccia’s Dio non paga il sabato, Enzo Peri’s Tre pistole contro Cesare, and Giulio Petroni’s Da uomo a uomo – to name just those I’ve seen. Dizzying.
Un uomo, un cavallo, una pistola isn’t as bleak and grim (and, to tell the truth, tedious) as Un dollaro tra i denti. It tells its story – yes, the nameless hero against a horde of mean bandits, this time led by a tall dude called En Plein (Dan Vadis) – in a more lighthearted manner, with some hints of humor. I found it more entertaining than the Stranger’s first outing – a bit more entertaining. After all, it took me almost a week to finish it (also due to a total lack of discipline on my part, as I watched all four Craig-Bond films).
As mentioned above, Alex Cox is completely dismissive of the Stranger series. “These films are unique in that they have nothing at all to recommend them” (Cox’s emphasis, p. 131, 2009 edition). A harsh assessment. Kevin Grant, on the other hand, obviously likes them, as he devotes five pages to the quartet. He writes that what they “lack in substance they make up for in irreverence, largely as result of Anthony’s oblique approach to the genre. It’s this quality that makes the Stranger unique among his fellow franchisees” (p. 271). For Howard Hughes, they are “by far the most obvious Fistful derivatives,” and the first one “worked better as a very poor parody of Fistful (p. 14).
Raffaele Baldassarre was there right from the beginning: he appeared in more than thirty Westerns from 1963 until 1975 (left: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer version, The Stranger Returns; right: German version [Juventus Film, Franz Josef Gottlieb, Berlin], Western Jack).
Next: Anthony, Baldassarre and Vanzi team up for the third time in Lo straniero di silenzio. Coming soon to this theater!
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Day 22: The Magnificent Texan
I picked the wrong film for a day when the fatigue is kicking in.
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The funny thing is, you know he would jump at the chance to record commentaries for all of them if Kino put them out. That’d be amusing. Mighty.
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Day 22
Tonight I’ve watched this black and white early paella western by Ossorio. I was expecting something more traditional so I wasn’t cought unguarded. Of course it’s very different than his horror movies but was a nice ride.
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Day 22 - first day off 
I saw that the eurocrime film Frank and Tony was uploaded to YouTube so I watched it instead of a western. It was pretty nice and it starred lee Van Cleef so I’m not too far off, I was looking all around the internet for it and I finally found it.
This is a pretty nice poster btw
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Day 22 and I’m sticking with the Trailer compilations, hopefully I’ll be back Monday or Tuesday with a full feature
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcIBhLaVGyA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anmV1jjiUSw
I actually lasted a little longer than last year when burnout started creeping up. I think last year it was day 14 I began feeling the pressure, but this year I lasted until about day 20 when picking a film started becoming harder. I’m slowly building tolerance to the challenge…
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Quintana
The score and some surprisingly well done and inspired camera work makes this otherwise mediocre Spagh quite allright
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SPAGVEMBERFEST 2020
Day 20
15 Scaffolds for a Killer (Malasomma / 1967)
Like so many actors in the genre it can safely be said that Craig Hill’s 60s westerns are infinitely superior to his 70s ones and this is a case in point. Not flawless of course but entertaining from start to finish and everyone at pretty much their best. George Martin is a strong addition and Hill just about carries off the anti-hero lead role.
I hadn’t seen this one in years and it was an enjoyable revisit.
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SPAGVEMBERFEST 2020
Day 21
A Taste for Killing (Valerii / 1966)
A classic opening credits sequence and a personal favourite score and theme song. It’s amazing how these things at the beginning of a film can just set me up and carry me through an entire film. Also found myself getting increasingly uplifted as the cast showed up one by one. This film doesn’t make my top 20 but on a good day it easily could based on all of the above. Either way it is Hill’s best by a reasonable margin I think.
Also nice to see all those scenes I watched last week in Bury Them Deep appearing in their correct and original place.
Thoroughly enjoyed this one and will probably put the soundtrack album on the turntable later today just to enjoy it all over again.
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SPAGVEMBERFEST 2020
Day 22
I Want Him Dead (Bianchini / 1968)
Another one of Craig Hill’s best and a well enjoyed revisit.
Bianchini and cinematographer Ricardo Andreu indulged themselves in a bunch of hyper short focal length shots which are memorable and very satisfying and Fidenco supplies his usual minor key music which complements the whole piece well. A nice villains role for Jose Manuel Martin caps it all off. A very solid effort.
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