Spagvember’s penultimate day brought the fourth and final part of the Stranger series. Get Mean, directed by Ferdinando Baldi, attempts to merge the Western genre with fantasy films and historical dramas. It features barbarians and monks, Moors and courtiers, processions and battles, explosions and silver Christmas balls, a princesse lointaine and a hunchbacked Shakespearean … and I couldn’t make head or tail of it. It is turbid, discombobulating, and it rides roughshod over narrative logic – strange, Stranger, Get Mean.
How it all ended: Raf Baldassarre in his last, uh, Western.
Right at this moment in time? Yeah. Sick to f#cking death of it. In fact I was probably sick to death of it within the first two weeks.
But also… No. A Fistful of Dollars is still A Fistful of Dollars, one of the coolest films ever produced. And collectors of physical media like many of us here all share a trait: We like watching movies we like, over and over. I’ll be in no mood to watch AFoD again in a hurry after my last watch of the month later on tonight, but I’ll watch it again. It might be the mid 2020’s before I do so but there are plenty of other films in my collection I haven’t watched in half a decade.
Here is everything I saw during the season (Spagtoberfest + Spagvemberfest):
Un bounty killer a Trinità (1972) - Directors: Oscar Santaniello, Joe D’Amato - 3/10 Giunse Ringo e… fu tempo di massacro (1970) - Director: Mario Pinzauti - 2/10 Sei bounty killers per una strage (1973) - Director: Franco Lattanzi - 1/10 Rimase uno solo e fu la morte per tutti! (1971) - Director: Edoardo Mulargia - 5/10 Ciakmull - L’uomo della vendetta (1970) - Director: Enzo Barboni - 6/10 Uccidi Django… uccidi per primo!!! (1971) - Director: Sergio Garrone - 3/10 A Man Called Sledge (1970) - Directors: Vic Morrow, Giorgio Gentili - 7/10 Lo chiamavano King (1971) - Director: Giancarlo Romitelli - 4/10 Killer calibro 32 (1967) - Director: Alfonso Brescia - 6/10 Al di là della legge (1968) - Director: Giorgio Stegani - 6/10 Testa t’ammazzo, croce… sei morto - Mi chiamano Alleluja (1971) - Director: Giuliano Carnimeo - 5/10 Odia il prossimo tuo (1968) - Director: Ferdinando Baldi - 4/10 Odio per odio (1967) - Director: Domenico Paolella - 6/10 Per pochi dollari ancora (1966) - Director: Giorgio Ferroni - 5/10 Wanted (1967) - Director: Giorgio Ferroni - 6/10 ¡Viva la muerte… tua! (1971) - Director: Duccio Tessari - 6/10 È tornato Sabata… hai chiuso un’altra volta! (1971) - Director: Gianfranco Parolini - 5/10 Una donna chiamata Apache (1976) - Director: Giorgio Mariuzzo - 4/10 Un hombre llamado Noon (1973) - Director: Peter Collinson - 3/10 Mi chiamavano ‘Requiescat’… ma avevano sbagliato (1973) - Director: Mario Bianchi - 4/10 La vita, a volte, è molto dura, vero Provvidenza? (1972) - Director: Giulio Petroni - 4/10 Dio li crea… Io li ammazzo! (1968) - Director: Paolo Bianchini - 6/10 7 pistole per i MacGregor (1966) - Director: Franco Giraldi - 4/10 Bill il taciturno (1967) - Director: Massimo Pupillo - 4/10 Una pistola per cento bare (1968) - Director: Umberto Lenzi - 4/10 3 pistole contro Cesare (1967) - Director: Enzo Peri - 5/10 Vado… l’ammazzo e torno (1967) - Director: Enzo G. Castellari - 6/10 Execution (1968) - Director: Domenico Paolella - 3/10 Per il gusto di uccidere (1966) - Director: Tonino Valerii - 5/10 Un treno per Durango (1968) - Director: Mario Caiano - 7/10 La legge della violenza (Tutti o nessuno) (1969) - Director: Gianni Crea - 2/10 Dio non paga il sabato (1967) - Director: Tanio Boccia - 7/10 Killer, adios (1968) - Director: Primo Zeglio - 4/10 Ancora dollari per i MacGregor (1970) - Director: José Luis Merino - 6/10 Tre croci per non morire (1968) - Director: Sergio Garrone - 4/10 Due volte Giuda (1968) - Director: Nando Cicero - 4/10 Campa carogna… la taglia cresce (1973) - Director: Giuseppe Rosati - 5/10 Due croci a Danger Pass (1967) - Director: Rafael Romero Marchent - 4/10 Gentleman Jo… uccidi (1967) - Director: Giorgio Stegani - 5/10 El rojo (1966) - Director: Leopoldo Savona - 4/10 Quelle sporche anime dannate (1971) - Director: Luigi Batzella - 4/10 Un uomo chiamato Apocalisse Joe (1970) - Director: Leopoldo Savona - 4/10 Una bara per lo sceriffo (1965) - Director: Mario Caiano - 5/10 Se vuoi vivere… spara! (1968) - Director: Sergio Garrone - 3/10 El macho (1977) - Director: Marcello Andrei - 5/10 Sugar Colt (1966) - Director: Franco Giraldi - 5/10 15 forche per un assassino (1967) - Director: Nunzio Malasomma - 5/10 I giorni della violenza (1967) - Director: Alfonso Brescia - 6/10 Chiedi perdono a Dio… non a me (1968) - Director: Vincenzo Musolino - 5/10 Take a Hard Ride (1975) - Director: Antonio Margheriti - 3/10 Los cuatro salvajes (1966) - Director: Mario Caiano - 4/10 Il venditore di morte (1971) - Director: Lorenzo Gicca Palli - 4/10 Ramon il Messicano (1966) - Director: Maurizio Pradeaux - 4/10 7 donne per i Mac Gregor (1967) - Director: Franco Giraldi - 4/10 Là dove non batte il sole (1974) - Director: Antonio Margheriti - 6/10 Arriva Sabata! (1970) - Director: Tulio Demicheli - 4/10 Django spara per primo (1966) - Director: Alberto De Martino - 5/10 Al oeste de Río Grande (1983) - Director: José María Zabalza - 1/10 Pochi dollari per Django (1966) - Directors: León Klimovsky, Enzo G. Castellari - 5/10 Vivo per la tua morte (1968) - Director: Camillo Bazzoni - 4/10 Kitosch, l’uomo che veniva dal nord (1967) - Director: José Luis Merino - 4/10 Il figlio di Django (1967) - Director: Osvaldo Civirani - 4/10 All’ultimo sangue (1968) - Director: Paolo Moffa - 4/10 Il ritorno di Clint il solitario (1972) - Director: Alfonso Balcázar - 4/10 Hai sbagliato… dovevi uccidermi subito! (1972) - Director: Mario Bianchi - 4/10 Quintana (1969) - Director: Vincenzo Musolino - 4/10 Killer Kid (1967) - Director: Leopoldo Savona - 5/10 Testa o croce (1969) - Director: Piero Pierotti - 6/10 Perché uccidi ancora (1965) - Directors: José Antonio de la Loma, Edoardo Mulargia - 4/10 Giarrettiera Colt (1968) - Director: Gian Rocco - 2/10 ¿Quién grita venganza? (1968) - Director: Rafael Romero Marchent - 6/10 Dove si spara di più (1967) - Director: Gianni Puccini - 7/10 20.000 dollari sul 7 (1967) - Director: Alberto Cardone - 1/10 La morte non conta i dollari (1967) - Director: Riccardo Freda - 5/10 Uomo avvisato mezzo ammazzato… Parola di Spirito Santo (1972) - Director: Giuliano Carnimeo - 4/10 Si può fare… amigo (1972) - Director: Maurizio Lucidi - 5/10 All’ombra di una colt (1965) - Director: Giovanni Grimaldi - 4/10 El hombre que mató a Billy el Niño (1967) - Director: Julio Buchs - 4/10 Uno a uno sin piedad (1968) - Director: Rafael Romero Marchent - 5/10 Giù le mani… carogna! (Django Story) (1971) - Director: Demofilo Fidani - 2/10 Ed ora… raccomanda l’anima a Dio! (1968) - Director: Demofilo Fidani - 4/10 Il suo nome gridava vendetta (1968) - Director: Mario Caiano - 4/10 Arriva Durango… paga o muori (1971) - Director: Roberto Bianchi Montero - 3/10 7 pistole per un massacro (1967) - Director: Mario Caiano - 4/10 Bastardo, vamos a matar (1971) - Director: Gino Mangini - 4/10 Uno straniero a Paso Bravo (1968) - Director: Salvatore Rosso - 4/10 Spara Joe… e così sia! (1971) - Director: Emilio Miraglia - 3/10 Dai nemici mi guardo io! (1968) - Director: Mario Amendola - 2/10
The best movie:Dio non paga il sabato (1967). Wintry, slow, cheap and nasty, just the way I like it. Straight into my Alternative Top 20 it goes. Also Lavagnino’s incidental music, I mean it’s right up my alley. Awesome.
The worst movie: that’s a tough one, but I’ll have to go with Cardone’s 20.000 dollari sul 7 (1967). As terrible and shitty Zabalza’s Al oeste de Río Grande (1983) is, there is also a kind of perverted virtuosity to it, it’s one of the most aggressively shitty movies I’ve seen in a while, it’s so utterly demented and horrendously hostile in its crappiness it almost becomes interesting. On the other hand, 20.000 dollari sul 7 (1967) seems to combine the very worst aspects of the dregs of the genre: Crea’s incompetence, Lattenzi’s tedium and Zabalza’s plotlessness. It has the worst fistfight I’ve seen in any genre example and the most pointless sandpit climax of all low-budgeted spaghetti westerns. The plot makes practically zero sense and overall, the whole movie feels thrice as long as it really is.
The biggest positive surprise of the season:Dio non paga il sabato (1967).
The biggest disappointment of the season:Un hombre llamado Noon (1973).
Phew, I did make it to the full 30 and it didn’t even felt as laborous as some previous years even though I feared I wouldn’t have enough time this year.
Carnimeo: Have a Good Funeral, My Friend… Sartana Will Pay 7/10
Bosch: Red Harvest 3/10
Ricci: The Great Treasure Hunt 6/10
Martin: The Bounty Killer 7/10
Corbucci: Sonny & Jed 8/10
Leone: The Good, the Bad And the Ugly 10/10
Loma: The Boldest Job in the West 8/10
Salvi: 3 Bullets for Ringo 4/10
Torrado: Relevo para un pistolero 2/10
Caiano: The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe 7/10
Pinzauti: Vamos a matar Sartana 2/10
Marchent: Pitiless Three 6/10
Ferroni: Wanted 6/10
Chentrens & Girault: Judge Roy Bean 3/10
Carnimeo: Sartana’s Here… Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin 7/10
Brass: Yankee 8/10
Garrone: Vendetta at Dawn 3/10
Christian-Jacque: The Legend of Frenchie King 5/10
Baldi: Little Rita of the West 8/10
Corbucci: Companeros 10/10
Vanzi: The Stranger Returns 7/10
Caiano: A Train for Durango 7/10
Again, I had no theme except watching some completely new ones and quite many upgrades from blu-ray and fan dubbed/subbed prints. Rest were just random picks.
Although I can’t identify half of the movies by those italian titles, I can say you have been through a lot.
It almost looks like @last.caress’ list would be less painful to endure. All those 1-4 ratings.
So, you were pulling my leg. No, no, no, I don’t believe Cardone would make such a turkey. I had to see it with my own eyes (the trap closed).
Really? Arriva Sabata is superior by at least two or three rating points imo.
Today, for the final day of the fest, I will be watching the 1966 Spanish Euro-western, ‘Savage Pampas’ (a.k.a. El Cjorro), starring Robert Taylor. The movie takes place in Argentina in the late-1800s.
That’s a great idea BTW, please do create that Deucemeber thread. I won’t participate this year, but I like the idea of it and I think it should definitely exist, will probably partake next year. I have a bunch of poliziotteschis and gialli I have to get around to viewing sooner or later. Maybe I’ll view a couple of those during this year’s Deucember, but there is no way I’ll be able to view a movie every day of the month.
Agreed. I have avoided this one throughout the years because I thought costumes used in the movie looked too clean and “American” and presumed it was just another one of those Americanized efforts. Turns out costumes are the only thing that have a kind of an American feel, the rest is obscenely Italian.
I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of them. BTW, my 4/10 rating is more of a neutral “just okay/mediocre” rating. It depends on the context, but it usually means I didn’t mind the flick too much. Some of these titles aren’t that bad and are still enjoyable, but I still can’t justify higher ratings because of some of their flaws and whatnot.
It’s more of a reflection of my subjective reaction. Arriva Sabata! didn’t make much of an impression on me just like El hombre que mató a Billy el Niño (1967) didn’t. While the former is probably executed in a more prepossessing fashion, I like them both in equal measure at this point in time. If you like the movie more than I do, then just ignore the rating. Who knows, maybe it will grow on me after a couple of viewings, I can’t say.
The only other Cardone I’ve seen is Mille dollari sul nero (1966) and I happen to dislike that one intensely too, so do bear that in mind, 20.000 dollari sul 7 (1967) is on another level though. I dislike Mille dollari sul nero in a more conventional sense: I think it’s very superficially developed, is narrated in an extremely erratic fashion and its action sequences are shot and edited in a crappy manner. On the other hand, 20.000 dollari sul 7 is bad in the zero-budget, what-the-fuck-am-I-watching sort of way.
It has the shittiest premise I’ve seen in any spaghetti western, bar none. Even Fidani’s Django Story makes more sense: it may very well be a dumb underlying idea to base your storyline on (it results in something virtually plotless) and it may very well be structured in a shitty way, but at least that FIdani movie has a story that theoretically makes sense, it’s also trashily enjoyable to some extent. It’s like a trashy spag anthology: it doesn’t work that well, but at least it’s… something.
In 20.000 dollari sul 7, I couldn’t understand what the fuck was going on for the first fifteen to twenty minutes because of how poorly all of it was presented. You can see actors stealthily ducking during the fistfight, then artificially jumping in the other direction to feign getting hit in the face. I’ve seen my share of bad fistfights, but this one is among the worst, it has that one-take sort of look of impromptu negligence for lack of a better term, it so fucking pathetic. It’s like it’s been purloined from a fucking Z-grade comedy enacted by a bunch of porn actors. The acting fucking sucks. The soundtrack fucking sucks.
The story is tenuous and slavishly reliant on a bunch of weird gimmicks and scripting mental gymnastics that completely destroy suspension of disbelief. There is zero focus. And then the fucking finale comes and our leading man cannot shoot the guy the first time he disarms him, oh no. He disarms him two or three times on different occasions just to come back later and to have another “duel”. That stretches the third act to about thirty minutes and it is about as pleasant as getting waterboarded is I imagine.
Are you going to enjoy it more than I did? Possibly. Heck, I thought it was going to be at least enjoyably bad, but there is so much awkward, nonsensical, stupid fucking shit in this thing it really took me off guard. I firmly believe it belongs to the shittiest examples of the genre. It’s becoming increasingly obvious it’s a moot point which entries are the most pailful and opinions vary on this issue wildly, but if I were to create Bottom 20 list, this movie would definitely find its spot there, no question about it. The flick is utter shite. IMHO obviously, YMMV.
I consider Mille dollari an okay spagh with pretty good death scene by Garko, but Kidnapping and Wrath Of God, although quite flawed at times, are both lesser favorites of mine. I actually still can’t believe that he would make such an eponymous shitfilm as you are suggesting. Maybe you’re just pulling my leg again and I’ll ram right into a gem!
On the other hand, I also don’t believe you would spend your time to compile these long paragraphs just to trick me!
That’s actually a good question, since, for example, I quite enjoyed Execution (but only the second time around, first time I didn’t think much of it), while you rated it only 3/10. On the other hand, you rate IMO superturkey Quintana generous 4/10 (for me more like 1/10) to give the same rating to Il ritorno Clint Solitario is almost blasphemous, sigh, which is certainly a lot more enjoyable spagh in my eyes. But, I’d would say half of the listed spaghs I would rate similarly like you did - Arriva Durango, El Macho, 15 forche, Sugar Colt …
I couldn’t get into it at all, it’s been some time since I watched it, but overall, I didn’t like it that much, thought the execution (no pun intended) was rather poor.
Maybe not a superturkey, but it was pretty mediocre and disappointing after seeing neat Chiedi perdono a Dio… non a me, it didn’t piss me off enough to get a 3/10 though.
Thought it was not constructed all that well. Kinski’s part is both the best element of the movie and the most superfluous component of the script. George Martin’s motive of gunfighter’s redemption is well-intentioned, however, it reeks of an old-fashioned American western, which is not remedied by the rather irritating English dubbing and the annoying role of his ungrateful brat of a son. It feels like a incongruous hybrid of an old-school American western and a gritty, but also unbalanced spaghetti vehicle. It has its moments, but it could’ve used a redraft or something. I would have to re-watch it to be more specific.
I was very positively surprised by this one, genuinely enjoyable. Heavily flawed and sort of peters out towards the end, but there is a lot to enjoy, especially in the first half. It’s also very twilight-ish and deserves to be mentioned alongside other Twilight Spaghettis. Definitely not on the same level as the others, but still very enjoyable in my book. Didn’t expect that at all.
That leading dude, Brad Harris, is plain terrible in that one, he makes Steffen look like freaking Robert De Niro.
Cardone’s Spags are for me also generally more disappointimg than entertaining, he is a rather mediocre and mostly unimaginative director, and Mille dollari sul nero (3/10) was surprisingly even worse on a 2nd watch. Sette dollari sul rosso (4/10) was for most of its runtime similarily boring, but it then managed to have a good ending. Better as a whole was Kidnapping (5/10), and maybe you should give this one a try.
But 20.000 dollari sul 7 is one I have not watched so far (at least I think so), and it seems its better to leave it at that.
Overall my ratings are btw not that much different from your Spagvember list, mostly only differing by one number.
And here are 3 which I have more fun with than you, mainly for a certain enthusiasm in the directing:
Testa t’ammazzo, croce… sei morto - Mi chiamano Alleluja (1971) - Director: Giuliano Carnimeo - 7/10 15 forche per un assassino (1967) - Director: Nunzio Malasomma - 6/10 Django spara per primo (1966) - Director: Alberto De Martino - 7/10
And also the 3rd Sabata, which I still prefer to the first one, albeit only slightly.
