It takes some thinkings to make the sense out of some plot points but this is pretty enjoyable spaghetti that suffers a lot from over-injecting many jokes into the film. Some of them are tiresome, and annoying clownish music didn’t help much either, but all of them are perfectly counterbalanced by stream of very deliciously directed action sequences. After the crucial scene at gold mine, the film get more and more serious and remaining minutes are really great, downbeat ending is perfect too, only wish they make a hardcore western actioner from the start. Anthony Steffen who I saw for the first time with No Room to Die recently is pretty solid, not so much from rest of the cast tho.
I watched Apache Woman (1976) and was impressed by the story and acting by everyone in the cast. It was made to be a sort of Romeo and Juliet story with a US cavalryman and young Apache woman caught between two hostile worlds that will not let them be together. It also does an effective job of showing the prejudice and brutality toward native people. I definitely recommend this one. It’s different than the filone of other spagh westerns of the time. Interestingly, actor Al Cliver, who plays the young US cavalryman, was later in the Lucio Fulci horror movie, Zombi (1980). The film I plan to watch today is Any Gun Can Play (1967) with George Hilton and Gilbert Roland.
One of my top 10 as well. I read a little of Willaim Berger’s background, and found out that he was roommates with Rolling Stone Keith Richards for a little while in the '60s.
No more than a cameo for Craig Hill in this one really. In fact considering he was still doing starring roles elsewhere in '71 it begs the question why did he take such a small part in this flick? Either way, it is obviously a Ty Hardin picture really and in structure amounts to little more than a prolonged series of shootout set pieces set around the toy drummer motif as Hardin piles up the bodies of his family’s murderers.
The French DVD release rip with English dub I have is so much better than the old ex-rental VHS I first saw the film on years ago.
One more Hill western I think (I won’t bother with any more cameos) and then I’ll finish the month with some random picks.
Finally got around to see this one with English audio through the Sinister Cinema release. It definatly held up to my expectations - Not as good as my personal favourite of Andrea Giordana - The Dirty Outlaws but still very good, solid stuff. De Masi score, Snow, John Ireland, 1968 production. All the good ingredients!
Considering both films revolve around sheriff with a strong moral principles and dedication to law defending his office from attack of outside forces, this one is giving me a major Rio Bravo vibe and I wonder if Corbucci was inspired by Howard Hawks’s classic. Anyway, plot in Ringo and his Golden Pistol is not conceived in the best possible way and rough around the edges, so much going in very little runtime, even tho it comes to a nice conclusion at the end, some of the things don’t fleshed out, and more so Ringo himself isn’t that interesting either.
But even if this one is far from his best and lacks the distinctive style and feel of the later movies, Corbucci still pulls the strings and weaves everything skillfully and the end result is a film that is still above the decent territory. It’s great and I loved it, the actions kick-ass and even tho overstays the welcome final battle is fantastic. Music by Carlo Savina (any Spaghetti western with a good whistle theme will always get some love from me) and opening song are great too.
There’s amateur & low-budget and then there’s Franco Lattanzi. I got slightly further than I did with The Executioner of God but couldn’t finish either film. Bad, so bad.
I wanted to wait to get the Blu Ray from Japan originally, but with COVID on the rise again, I went through Films&Clips on YouTube. My first Craig Hill of the Fest in general, as I can’t recall if I watched one of his last year or not. Has that very gritty and hard hitting look that a fine SW has, so I’m really excited to see this one. And Jose Manuel Martin as the main villain is refreshing as he was almost always the henchman of the main villain or a secondary villain.
EDIT: A very enjoyable little SW, with a fun ironic ending that offers up a cheer and a laugh.
5/10
Only managed three films this November, all directed by Sergio Garrone. Still better than nothing, and I hope It qualifies me for next November, Three films that I¨’ve seen before but remembered nothing from. Now back to the most intriguing of them: If You Want to Live… Shoot!
Day 23
Latest pick was alright so I guess I can pick a piece of garbage for this night. Gonna do it by scratching this Peter Lee Lawrence of my watchlist. I expect nothing.
OK. It’s done. I din’t like it but… there’s a great gory scene instead of a traditional duel. Also, and this is a major spoiler so walk away, our sweetheart Evelyn Stewart was gundown which was unexpected. Overall bad.
Its not easy being Clint! And I’m going to find out just how hard it is tonight when I tuck into A Fistful of Dollars (Leone, 1964), in which Clint stars as a banjo-picking frog making his way from the swamps of Florida to the bright lights of Hollywood, picking up friends as he goes but being chased all the way by a nefarious frog’s legs restaurateur. Ma na ma nah!
I’m only going to manage this another two, maybe three times between now and the end of SpagvemberFest. Tonight I’m going to take @aldo’s advice and watch it in Italian with no subs. Might keep me more focused upon it.
Brass: Yankee
-I couldn’t get sleep last night (which isn’t necessary a bad thing during a spagvember) so I picked randomly a dvd from shelf which turned out to be this pop-art western from the maestro Tinto “Ass-man” Brass. One of my “lesser favorites”. 8/10
One of the great things about Spagvemberfest for those of us who’ve been around for a while is watching a film which it turns out you haven’t seen in donkey’s years and have therefore forgotten almost everything about and are subsequently reminded that it was a pretty good one. That was definitely the case with this one. Enjoyable throughout and a stand out performance from Franco Cobianchi D’Este.
Definitely falls into the category of needing a decent quality DVD release to do it justice.
Luigi Capuano striked again in my #spagvemberfest. The plot involves a robbery on a monestery, unusual stuff. All priests got shot in the process then our usual revenge motif starts (our hero’s brother is one of the killed priests). I’d recommend it.
