Spagvemberfest 2022 - the legend continues

DAY 19

Drawing no.22 today has brought me maybe my favourite late-cycle spag: The great-but-gloomy Keoma (Castellari, 1976), starring the always-fantastic Franco Nero as Cousin Itt from The Addams Family. It’s quite ironic that Nero is as hairy as he is in this one because, every time I hear the Keoma music, I begin tearing all my hair out. I’ll likely be as bald as a Crenshaw melon by bedtime tonight

Excellent film, though.

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Spagvemberfest 2022

Day 17

A Moment to Kill (Carnimeo / 1968)

And the second half of the double bill was this one which I hadn’t watched in any format for some years. It’s an enjoyable little trip with a light tone as you’d expect with Hilton and Carnimeo but a massive body count all the same. The picture quality of this one is not what I would call Bluray quality with the inserted “international” version bits decidedly ropey. But the film itself is still enjoyable and certainly better than the completely butchered VHS tape I originally saw it on.

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Day 16 - In a Colt’s Shadow
Had to add this one in on an edit. I’ve watched so many, I’m losing count, but this was a really fun first time watching with great music . . .

Day 17 - Bury Them Deep
First time watching! This wasn’t so bad as some people suggest, though the inserted footage from other films was a bit ugly compared to what was actually shot, and the Chaleco theme by Nico Fidenco was very good. I give it a C.
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Day 18 - Red Dead Revolver
I downloaded this one on the Xbox store and finally gave this extremely challenging game a replay over the last week in HD. It’s fair to say it will be many, many more years before I pick this up again. #JackSwiftLives

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Spagvember Fest Day 19

Buon Funerale Amigos!… Paga Sartana

https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Buon_funerale,_amigos!…_paga_Sartana

One of many rewatches. Day 3 of the Sartana Sequels Weekend has one of the most clever plot twists in the franchise. That it’s the only sequel without Tito Capri involved in the script is part of it, though some of Capri’s contributions to the other films were good.

Gianni Garko returns sporting a nice thick mustache as Sartana, and is again at his best with the character. His opening scene is iconic and made him one of my favorite characters after he threw that fold of money into the fire rather than take from a dead man. Garko even gets his shot at a romantic lead, trading kisses with the lovely Daniela Giordano, who herself is quite tough.

Luis Induni, a Spanish Italian character actor gets a good meaty role as the conflicted sheriff. George Wang is a blast as the Confucius quoting casino owner Tung, who also has a nice surprise near the end.

A well crafted series of red herrings and crazy antics make this Western with a Mystery thrown in is worthwhiley entertaining.

Arrow Video once again did. great with the Blu Ray.

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Day 19: On the Third Day Arrived the Crow (1973) w/William Berger and Lincoln Tate. It should have been titled: ‘And After Three Days Arrived the Disappointment.’ I read viewers testimonials on this Gianni Crea dud making a lot of Bottom 20 lists in one of the discussion forums, so I realized I was in for some frustration. The movie wasn’t terrible, but it was the completely unlikeable main characters: Sally, Link, and Toronado that made it bad in my opinion. I thought the character Sally was okay for the most part. However, her brothers Link and Toronado turned out to be trashier than some of the townsfolk they look down their noses upon. Their humiliating treatment of Sally over her wetting the bed as a young girl and making her sleep on the floor wasn’t funny. It just left me wondering the mindset of the story writers that they decided that treating a female character like a doormat made good comedic material. Link’s (Tate) superiority complex, sarcastic comments, and generally smug attitude throughout the movie made me really want to punch him in the face. Then, the Crow was a let-down as far as villains go. Berger must have been behind on a couple of payments for his second yacht to agree to be in this. Rating: 1/5.

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DAY 20:

Un animale chiamato uomo (1972) - Director: Roberto Mauri - 2/10

Another day, another subpar Trinity rip-off. This is a supremely sleep-inducing experience by virtue of its incredibly derivative, lame script which does not go anywhere and hinges on pre-Trinity clichés just as much as on post-Trinity tropes. Hence, apart from furnishing an unsalutary amount of fisticuffs, it introduces the story revolving around the corrupt, peremptory land owner, some top banana or whatever, played by Craig Hill; the central duo set out to liberate the town from the tight grip of his power.

Needless to say, none of this is remarkable in any way, shape or form and to add insult to injury, there is a lot of back and forth between Foster and the tramp buddies as to the details of their alleged compact or whatever that was all about, I could not care less frankly. This is a completely featureless muck of a motion picture with as much excitement and elan as you would expect from Mauri’s work. There is barely any structure to maintain the whole sorry business with most of the events, which are to form the so-called storyline, being haphazardly stitched together in the most dilatory and uninspired fashion possible; not hard to see why Craig Hill resolved to walk off the set.

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Day 20

The Forgotten Pistolero

Pistolero dell’Ave Maria, Il - The Spaghetti Western Database (spaghetti-western.net)

FOR4

I felt like watching something familiar this morning, so I went with a classic. For me, this is undoubtedly the most underappreciated film in the genre. It has it all - a great story (loosely based on the Greek tales of Orestes), a great cast (though Leonard Mann is the “star”, it is Peter Martell and Luciana Paluzzi that steal the show), memorable music, and what is arguably the most unforgettable finale in all of the spaghetti west.

The fact that this film has yet to have a Blu-ray release is a tragedy.

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I never knew that there were references to Greek mythology. Wasn’t the Return of Ringo inspired by Greek mythology as well?

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Yes, it is. It is a loose re-retelling of Homers’ Odyssey. That just shows you how cultured we spaghetti western fans really are! :grin:

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Lol. Absolutely!

A little late but my updates are:
Day 16 This man can’t die
Day 17 Sartana’s here… trade your pistols
Day 18 Four rode out
Day 19 The unholy four

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DAY 20

My girl drew no.12 at Sundown on Sunday which means I’m in for possibly my most frustrating evening throughout Spagvember: Tonight, I’m going to be watching Django the Bastard (Garrone, 1969), in which Anthony Steffen’s undead invulnerability grows or recedes depending on whether or not the plot requires a bit of peril at any particular point He’s a supernatural entity, he can’t be stopped or killed or even harm… Oh, they’re shooting at him and he’s legged it. Still, like Arnie to The Terminator, “The Steff” was born to play an emotionless, inscrutable cowboy zombie and, narrative inconsistencies aside, Django the Bastard is still a lot of fun. It’s a very spaghetti spaghetti.

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Spagvember Fest Day 20

Una Nuvola di Polvere… un Grido di Morte…. Arriva Sartana

One of many rewatches. Day 4 and the last day of the Sartana Sequels Weekend ends with a nice bang. The great Sartana finds himself dealing with multiple scoundrels looking for $500,000 in gold that was meant to finance another revolution in Mexico. That Sartana doesn’t trust any of them, including his friend who claimed he was framed makes things even more interesting.

Gianni Garko is at his most playful and fun in his farewell to the exceptional Sartana character, and still finds time to dispense justice as only Sartana can. His right hand man, the ornate cigarette lighter Alfie is just as fun as Sartana himself, and Garko uses the prop to great effect.

A great rogue’s gallery including the alluring and seductive Nieves Navarro, Piero Lulli, Jose Jaspe, Frank Brana, and Massimo Serato all help make Sartana’s search all the more interesting and intriguing. It’s not who you can’t trust with them, it’s who’s deadlier.

Arrow does it one more time with another great restoration.

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Day 20: Hey, Amigo!..A Toast to Your Death (1970) w/Wade Preston and Marco Zuanelli. A.K.A. Hey, Amigo!..Rest in Peace. Preston plays what I assumed to be the sheriff of a town that is held hostage by bandits. The bandits then intercept a gold shipment on an incoming stagecoach. Then, after the robbery the sheriff gets the gold back and gets his good name back after killing the bandits. Zuanelli plays a Mexican transient, called Loco, who helps Preston after the latter buys him a bottle of tequila. Zuanelli brings a little two-dimensionality to an otherwise one-dimensional filone. But, even he became annoying after awhile. Rating: 1.5/5.

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Just got my EM release of Arizona Colt, beautiful looking package… can’t wait to rewatch!!!

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Spagvemberfest 2022

Day 18

Starblack (Grimaldi / 1966)

Entertaining in a strictly Saturday Matinee serial kind of way but the transfer on the Colosseo Blu is stunning. Makes you wish some much better films could get the same grade A treatment.

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Day 21

Sabata (1969)

Ehi amico… c’è Sabata, hai chiuso! - The Spaghetti Western Database (spaghetti-western.net)

A re-watch that doesn’t need much said about it except that the Eureka release is very nicely done. I can actually remember watching this one for the first time when it came on TV when I was probably something like a pre-teen. The fact that I can remember watching it shows how much it resonated with me at a time when I was still reading comic books and Doc Savage pulp novels. It is still an enjoyable re-watch to this day.

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DAY 21:

Il mio corpo per un poker (1968) - Director: Lina Wertmüller - 3/10

A tolerable romance western with a bit of an artificial storyline. While it is hard to qualify the material as anything particularly good, the differing touch renders the composition intriguing and albeit kind of contrived, the utilization of flashbacks diversifies the flow of the narrative to some extent, distinguishing it from scores of spaghetti westerns by reason of some character elaboration and nonlinearity alone. With that being said, only some of it works and despite aiming for an epic atmosphere, the motion picture exhibits rather anaemic direction, lackluster visual style, narrative indifference and conspicuously falls short of its lofty goals.

It also appears to be structurally disjointed in virtue of its flashbacks lasting for as long as half an hour in total and preponderating over the present time of the story, thus following the retrospections feels like viewing a movie within a movie so to speak. At the very least, it undoubtedly constitutes something different and is a bit of a curiosity for that reason alone. Nonetheless, that quality alone cannot make up for the fact that a large portion of the narration feels quite garbled, pretentious and eventually gets bogged down by its overambitious aspirations. You can definitely give it a shot out of pure curiosity if you are a completist and have to see it all, but it’s nothing essential by any stretch of the imagination.

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#16 Vari: A Hole in the Forehead
-a film which I mostly remember for it’s music. Many beutiful pieces of music in this one, I remeber when I first started collecting spaghetti westerns and didn’t have many titles yet I had this cd collection with music from various films and Hole in the Forehead was one of my favorites. Film itself is good too 7/10.

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DAY 21

Two-thirds of the way through, already?? Bloody hell. Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it? Not sure mrs.caress would agree of course, but bollocks. She should learn to embrace the grace of these Shooty Beauties. Anyway, my daughter drew no.5 from my Spag drum which means I’m heading into the home straight with Day of Anger (Valerii, 1967), a personal top favourite of mine with LVC in some of his villainously best form and Giuliano Gemma showing every other actor who ever took the “pupil” role in one of these types of film just exactly how it’s done.

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