Another member of the gigantic family of Joes in spaghetti-land, joining his brothers Navajo, Shanghai, dynamite and many others…
This is an alright-to-pretty-good early paella western starring George Martin who does an unfortunate amount of talking in this one. Too many damn scene of people talking! (It doesn’t help when I don’t understand the language, maybe it’s a hidden masterpiece I’m too stupid to appreciate). It’s got a mine in it and I have a weird love for mines in westerns, so that made me pretty happy.
Rewatch. Like with @LankyGringo, this is my favorite Corbucci Western with Django 2nd and Il Grande Silenzio 3rd. I sure do wish Johnny Halliday had done more more Westerns, he was a natural in the role of Hud. He played the jaded disillusioned loner very well Since Halliday’s pretty much the French equivalent of Elvis, I kinda see this as his Charro!, albeit a million times better than Charro!, though Charro! is entertaining.
Francoise Fabian was great as the SW genre’s first female villain in Virginia Pollicut, she actually felt more ruthless than most of the male baddies. Mario Adorf was equally great as the wacky El Diablo.
I know Corbucci meant for the foursome following Hud to be his harsh take on the Hippie Culture, but I tend to view them as hobos with delusions of grandeur.
Eureka! did an excellent job with their release of this classic, much better than Kino.
Ah, this is more like it. Classic pupil against master story with LVC perfect as the hard inscrutable Talby forged and finally defeated by his own rules and tricks. Gemma equally perfect as the downtrodden and impressionable Scott Mary and the whole thing wrapped in a wailing frenzy of screaming brass and guitar in the form of Riz Ortolani’s inspired score. Never fails to deliver and makes up for any God’s Gun or Bad Man’s River nonsence all on its own.
Not much needs to be said about this one. Clint Eastwood…Lee Van Cleef…a small part for Klaus Kinski…and even the briefest of appearances by Peter Lee Lawrence himself. For me, this is the pinnacle of Leone’s work.
The recycled score from Go for Broke and cheap locations attest to the low budget, nevertheless, this is where the cheapness ends. Though there is nothing particularly original about the whole entry, every element is balanced perfectly well and Bosch’s rendition turns out quite splendid. There is not a single tedious moment, the whole composition has a really consistent flow to it, the photography exhibits some fine regularity as well as forethought and the mixture of humor as well as action-oriented content works really well here.
The recycled music, which constitutes one of the best scores among the lesser-known soundtracks of the genre, is turned to good account here, as the director knows where to put each piece without introducing any confusion into the action. Anthony Steffen turns in a surprisingly amusing performance, his role is successfully contrasted with the part of the Mexican played by Daniel Martín and lastly, there is quite a bit of chemistry between the two, which makes the entire configuration even more effective. Despite there being nothing out of the ordinary here, all the pieces simply fit, everything just works and there is not a whole lot to complain about here. The most entertaining cheapo of the of the season so far, a pleasant surprise.
Against the odds, the highlights of this SpagvemberFest for me have been Dead Men Don’t Make Shadows and last night’s The Deserter, so I couldn’t be happier when my girl drew no.18 earlier on; another underdog, this time it’s late entry cult favourite God’s Gun (Parolini, 1976), in which the omniscient Lee Van Cleef takes on two roles: One as a holy man with an unholy fright-wig which gains sentience and goes on a terrifying, rmurderous rampage across rural Israel; and one as the laconic gunslinging sidekick sent to help the sentient fright-wig bring down wig-phobic outlaw Jack Palance. Or something.
I’ve got a real blind spot for God’s Gun. I know it’s crap but, at the same time, it’s kind-of brilliant. I’ve always thought it looks like a dead cert for an 88Films blu-ray presentation. It’s their sort of movie.
Day 13: Shango, the Infallible Gun (1970) w/ Anthony Steffen and Eduardo Fajardo. It is the end of the Civil War, and Shango, a Texas Ranger, has hidden gold that both ruthless Confederate soldiers and Mexican bandits want to get their hands on. Though not a great movie, the forested scenery of the film was refreshing. Steffens was his usual brooding, mysterious self. Fajardo’s character Major Droster starting to hallucinate Shango everywhere among the dead after a massacre of villagers was also pretty cool. I give it a 2 1/2 stars out of 5.
Day 14: Twice a Judas (1968) w/ Antonio Sabato and Klaus Kinski. I didn’t have any expectations about this one. I just picked it because I had never seen it before. Twice a Judas exceeded my expectations as a great mystery story. Luke (Sabato) wakes up in the desert with a dead man nearby. Due to a bullet grazing his skull, he cannot remember the identity of the man, how he got there, or even who he is. I won’t say more because I don’t want to ruin the movie for those who haven’t seen it. I give it 3.5 out of 5.
Another just average mid-60s spaghetti western for me, and like all of the others, it’s pretty fun. There’s nothing much to say, it’s everything you’d expect from an American style SW. with this I’ve seen every Brett Halsey euro-western.
#12 Kennedy: Deserter
-Another random pick from shelf, too bad it was a dvd-r with bad pic quality and even worse audio which was partly out of sync and had some parts missing completely. I didn’ t remember much about the film, I had even forgot the star filled cast. Ok film which is badly in need of proper bd/dvd release. 6/10
First time watch. Despite the occasional frustration of the great sounding Italian soundtrack changing to a near gawd-awful English dub, I found this lesser discussed SW a very entertaining watch. George Hilton and Walter Barnes made a great team and I wish they got teamed up more as they had a good chemistry going.
Horst Frank, the debonair villain of the Italian West, does another great job as the slimy psychopath. I wonder what an SW would’ve looked like had he and Klaus Kinski got to play villain brothers? You’d have the sane menace of Frank and the psycho madness of Kinski that’s for sure.
I never saw that twist within a twist style ending coming and am still trying to figure it out. Carmineo’s flashy cinematography is on fine display.
There appeared to be quite a bit of age damage to the film’s negative when it was restored for Blu Ray, but I didn’t find it distracting (apologies to @Bill_san_Antonio, but I honestly didn’t mind) as sometimes there’s only so much that can be fixed.
Undoubtedly, this is one of my guilty pleasures in the genre. There is non-stop action, and the production quality is surprisingly decent. George Hilton and Erika Blanc are solid as always but, in the end, it is Charles Southwood’s dandy Sabata/Sabbath who steals the show. Southwood only made a total of 11 movies in his career, five of which were spaghetti flavored. It is a shame that the other four weren’t of this caliber and that he didn’t get better roles on the whole as he definitely had a great screen presence.
It’s been far too long since I watched this one. Thank you Spagvemberfest. Classic Spaghetti Western with all the elements you look for in the genre including another magnificent Morricone score. Excellent
Whenever I see Chris Huerta now, I have flashbacks from Fat Brothers of Trinity and I shudder in utter trepidation (thankfully he gets hanged fairly early on). As for the film itself, it does look good and combines comedy and serious western reasonably well, however, it appears a little disjointed on account of the storytelling being destitute of focus, which effects the muddled structure. I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly that makes the film feel so distant and indifferent;
I guess it is sporadically difficult to follow the storyline in virtue of how swiftly the flick leapfrogs between multiple locations and characters which in turn induces the tale to progress in a rather choppy fashion and divests individual sequences and major plot developments of their impact and resonance; basically a lot of the crucial scenes are cut short and then they fail to leave a mark in one’s memory, effectuating the hazy focus. Garko and Spoletini have some good chemistry, which offsets the said faults to some extent, but none of that can completely compensate for the somewhat tenuous writing and the feeble narration.
One of those rare spaghetti westerns in which dialogues are sedulously worked out to the extent that they are witty and smart, characters are veritably three-dimensional and the story does not feel like a contrived mock-up of a plot intended for providing an unobtrusive background to action sequences rather than recounting a concrete tale as such like it is the case here. The narrative has a proper flow to it, consecutive scenes relate to one another and all serve an overarching purpose, resulting in a highly immersive viewing experience and generally higher class filmmaking.
Long story short, this feels like an actual movie with properly delineated characters and an actualized blueprint as to film’s overall destination. I do not understand why it is not more renowned; I guess it is a lot more drama-driven than other genre examples, but it works just the same, features some of the most fleshed out characters you could ask for in a western of this kind, some traces of noir motifs and Bobby Woods puts on one of his strongest performances too; there is not a single dull moment either and everything sort of fits together, greatly benefitting from film’s tight focus and high production values. One of the few titles I would not mind revisiting in the not so distant future; the mere fact that it has not been released officially yet is a bona fide travesty.
My final LVC flick of the season and what I think is best described as a “mid tier” Van Cleef. Entertaining enough without being outstanding in any way.
From now on it will be more random selections with the theme of just watching some of those Blurays I picked up in the past year and haven’t actually got round to watching yet. I’ll be starting with some of those German ones I picked up in Berlin during the summer.
Starts off pretty good, then had a boring middle part, then had a pretty great ending shootout. Didn’t think much of George Ardisson and I wish Martell was in it more. Also, does this movie re-use some music tracks from an early bond film? I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had heard some of the music before.
