Day 19: Mannaja (A Man Called Blade)(1977) with Maurizio Merli, John Steiner, and Donald O’Brien. This Sergio Martino spag west is one of my favorites. Merli plays a bounty hunter called Blade. He brings one of his recent catches (O’Brien) to a desolate silver town on a rainy night. He quickly makes a name for himself and draws the attention of the town boss, McGowan, and his hired toughs (led by Steiner) by asserting his dominance. Blade offers his services protecting silver shipments, which have been robbed repeatedly by bandits. However, McGowan isn’t buying what Blade is selling, and the lead tough, Steiner, has his own plans. What I love about this one is how stark and moody it is. Most of the characters look as haggard as the town (like they’ve been in too many spag west’s in a row). Merli is convincing as a battle-hardened bounty hunter who is sick of all the BS in the world. The soundtrack, which sometimes has the chilling notes of a harmonica playing during tense moments, adds to the bleak atmosphere. I give it a 9/10.
Watching vamos a martar Sartana on YouTube off this site for day . Need to make up a couple of days, though.
Very nice, this of one of my favorites. Great choice. Have the WILD EAST PRODUCTIONS copy.
SPAGVEMBERFEST DAY 19
SPAGVEMBERFEST DAY 20
Couldn’t fit one in last night - bloody in-laws showing up with their bloody kids - so I’m closing out the middle third of my 'Fest with a Saturday night double-bill, kicking off with my final visit to Arrow’s Vengeance Trails box set and Massacre Time (Fulci, 1966), and followed up by my final visit of Spagvember to Arrow’s The Complete Sartana set, in the form of Have a Good Funeral, My Friend… Sartana Will Pay! (Carnimeo, 1970). The former is, I think, my favourite Fulci movie of any genre, and the latter is… well, if not quite my favourite Sartana pic - my favourite will always be the first one - it certainly feels to me like the one where Garko definitively nailed down the character. For a couple of movies, as cool as Sartana was, he just needed an indefinable something to really finish off the image. Turned out that that indefinable something was a heroic full-bodied mustache like a guinea pig all along.
Day 20
A Hole Between The Eyes aka A Hole in the Forehead (1968)
Buco in fronte, Un - The Spaghetti Western Database (spaghetti-western.net)
After a fun new watch yesterday it is time to return to the re-watches today and, more specifically, to the works of the great Anthony Ghidra. This is a nice nice treasure hunt story involving three playing cards and a bunch of monks in a monastery with tasty wine that pits Ghidra against the always entertaining Robert Hundar. This one may not have as much action as some may like but it definitely drips with spaghetti western goodness. This marks the second western team-up between Ghidra and director Giuseppe Vari, after Django, the Last Killer, and is my favorite of the two.
Day 20 - Cabalgando hace la muerte
https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Cabalgando_hacia_la_muerte_(El_Zorro)
Riding with Zorro once again!
Day 20: ‘Per il gusto di uccidere’ … For the Taste of Killing (1966)
Another Craig Hill goodie … standard stuff well executed with all the key faces and ingredients for an enjoyable SW romp 7/10
I’ll try something more ‘challenging’ after the weekend 
I might get in one more before travelling, it will likely be my last entry in this year’s fest
Quitter!!
Sorry, I started well but life caught up and now I am about to leave on a vacation 
but it prides me how everyone else is spaghettifesting. you don’t need me :))
Spagvemberfest 2021 Day 20: THEY CALL ME TRINITY (1970)
When was 10 or 11, I saw this in the theater and it quickly became my favorite movie for a number of years. It also started me on being a lifelong Terence Hill and Bud Spencer fan. My inner 11 year old still loves the blend of comedy and spaghetti western here, but the outer 61 year old grouch on this rewatch thought the movie was a tad too slow and too gentle. That’s okay though, it’s still miles ahead of nearly all the slapdash spaghetti comedy imitators that quickly followed and nearly destroyed he genre. I will always have a soft spot for this one, so 8/10.
Spagvember Fest Day 20
All’Ombra di una Colt
Rewatch. I enjoyed this one more the 2nd time around than the first, very entertaining smaller scale SW. I admit I would’ve preferred to see a little more of Conrado San Martin as I thought he was cooler looking than Stephen Forsyth, but Forsyth is still fun to watch.
The love story is a nice change of pace too, as usually in SWs romances are either cut short by one of the characters in the couple being killed, or are a product of the fear of not leaving a situation alive, a way of grasping one last pleasure, only for it to just stop once the conflict is over. Here the love between Steve and Susan is real, and he truly does want to hang up his guns for her and have a life/family with her.
The Blu Ray from Koch looks great, like the film was just made recently.
Week three. I’m proud of myself for watching seven this week!!
But now I’m kinda tired, so I’m gonna stop here. The ten others I had queued I will keep those westerns in mind as a starting point for the 2022 SpavemberFest - or I’ll just watch them whenever I can and plop down thoughts. This was very fun.
Have a final bit of art and words 
Summary
13. A Reason To Live, A Reason To Die - 6/10
This movie was okay. I’d seen James Coburn mostly in American westerns, so it was a surprise for me to find him in a Spaghetti. And his acting/character was fine, like the rest of them. There were things bothering me about this one though, like the pacing, and the understandable yet monotonous opposition of the gang, and the monotonous score straight from Day Of Anger - which… distracted me. Still, the plot was nice and I liked the new take on the duel motif, using swords instead of guns (until the slow-mo made it awkward for me).
14. Red Sun - 6/10
This movie was also okay. I have to say most of the characters got on my nerves (I’m sure that was the intent for the villain, lol) except for Toshiro Mifune’s character. (I had a hunch Mifune’s character would die in the end, but it still saddened me 
I had also thought I’d like Charles Bronson here after OUATITW, but hey. 
) Despite the characters, I thought this East-Meets-West one was clever in terms of casting seeing as Mifune and Bronson practically own their respective genres. As rousing as the action is in this film, it would’ve been better if it contributed more toward the pacing and the plot rather than the characters completely… oh, and it was cool to see Ricardo Palacios.
15. Day Of Anger - 7/10
I think what keeps me from giving this movie a higher score is that the editing can get choppy, some scenes are unnecessary (tho they were usually short), and some of the dubbing isn’t very convincing. So, the qualms I have are mostly technical. For everything else, this movie does super well, and it’s long been a comfort film for me (this movie also prompted my love for LVC, lol)! Gemma did Scott beautifully here and I really enjoyed his development. Increasingly, every bullet he shot got pointless - and Murph’s wisdom helped with that effect. It came together very nicely for me. The score is also very memorable; y’all oughta know how much I love the percussion in the main theme. 
16. God’s Gun - 4/10
Lord have mercy. There are some good things about this movie: I liked the main suite, the child actor here does okay with Lee Van Cleef, and the incorporation of Van Cleef twins was a nice surprise! (I take it as a callback to a movie he did young where he also played a pair of twins - naturally they were never on screen together, lacking in the tech) But aside from that, this movie flew over my head. Scenes got awkward often, and the camera work could get unbearable (that shaky camera shit, that early-2000s-twist-and-turn-shit like in the R&B and hip-hop music videos, I see their influence). The plot worked in theory but definitely not in execution. And I did not take that little chant one of the twins had well. It kept scaring the shit out of me. If you know, you know, lol.
17. Duck, You Sucker - 8/10
I read someplace that some Leone buffs take this as his weaker film. I personally get that with the movie’s occasional slow pace and some score choices that I didn’t get, like I didn’t understand the happy-go-lucky “shon shon” with a lot of the moving scenes, like in Sean’s flashback in the pub. I get it for the sake of juxtaposition, but I don’t think leaving those kinds of scenes in silence or with something more grim would’ve hurt - or took away from the movie’s comedy. The villain’s plot armor also irritated me. But the funny aspect here and everything else was really well done. Juan was my favorite character, making me laugh out loud so many times - especially in his first scene - and his dynamic with Sean was so enjoyably Tom & Jerry-esque. The explosives didn’t bother me, the doctor being a rat was a good twist, and the friendship, which I read was what Leone wanted to highlight, was the sweetest part of this film. Really enjoyed this one. 
18. Minnesota Clay - 5/10
According to this IMDb review, this Spaghetti Western was America’s first, so that attracted me. But as I watched, I spent more energy trying not to cut it off than actually watching it. The movie is kinda like God’s Gun in which it has a promising plot but bad execution. The editing got awkward a lot, hurting the overall. I didn’t end up caring about the characters that much and the “romance” made my eyes roll. I guess the subplot with Clay and his daughter was a little interesting, but then the pacing made it boring. I was also very unimpressed with this movie’s costume design - and I didn’t know why it bothered me when I’ve seen worse until I realized the movie didn’t have anything else substantial for me to focus on! It was just real boring for me. Apparently, this movie has multiple endings depending on the country, so now it’s like there’s no true ending. Maybe it’s the Italian version? Meh. At least the score is nice. 
19. My Name Is Nobody - 7.5/10
The extra 0.5 is for the infamous slapping scene in the saloon, lol. Anyway, this one was funny at some parts then boring in others for me. I liked Terrence Hill’s character well enough, liked Henry Fonda more (plus his name made me chuckle, sounds like “beautiful look”!) Where I caught myself getting bored was mostly during the set up of some jokes, where character establishment and other things had to be done. The pacing got a little slow as a result and I ended up wandering off a little. It’s either that, or I just didn’t care about the characters that much to be intrigued by those set ups and pay offs. Some scenes also raised my (faint, lol) eyebrow, like the duel that they tried to do in the beginning and the mirror scene thing (even tho it was different - and I respect that!). I also thought the music could get a little goofy, but it definitely worked in the very beginning with Hill’s character doing… whatever the fuck he was doing. Nevertheless, I got some laughs from this.
Love the artwork - you could have been designing the title sequences for these 1960s films - Bravo!
Talked once with @Admin about a t-shirt project to help raise some funds for page maintenance. Seems to me that you are a perfect candidate for the design. You two should talk.
The art-work is brill - I particularly like the inclusion of Toshiro Mifune, from ‘Yojimbo’. Without the wandering ‘Yojimbo’, we may never have had ‘Fistful of Dollars’…
@p.pereira is correct! I would buy one of these t-shirts in a heart beat.
Day 21
Tequila Joe aka Time and Place for Killing aka And Then a Time for Killing
E venne il tempo di uccidere - The Spaghetti Western Database (spaghetti-western.net)
Anthony Ghidra gives a good performance (as always) as the drunken lawman who has lost all control of his town. With the help of his bland deputy Jean Sobieski (father of formerly popular U.S. actress Leelee Sobieski and there is definitely a family resemblance), Ghidra attempts to follow in the footsteps of Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum before him by sobering up in time to help bring peace back to his violent hamlet. I came into this movie really looking forward to the re-watch as I enjoyed it first time around but found myself a bit disappointed on this viewing.
17th - Prega Dio…_e scavati la fossa
You never know what to expect from Mulargia. This was quite alright. Qualitatively speaking it is torn between goodies like W Django and turkeys like Cjamango. 6/10
I’ve got the inclination, but not the energy, (thanks to C.F.S) to watch not only my favourite SW, but my fav. film of all time…I worship this film for introducing me to the wonderful world of the Italian Western.
Hoping that watching my fav. clips counts…struggling to do that…
I adore this film…and it’s been my constant companion since 1976.
Could say more…but exhausted.
Hoping to get my energy back soon, so that I can give Sergio’s master-piece the attention it deserves…