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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
#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.
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.
Rewatch. Like with Asa aka @last.caress, I too find this little SW entertaining. It’s a little bit of a slow burner that has a good payoff at the end, and while it drags just a little, it’s not a deterrent to the film. Like with the first Sartana film, we already know who the guilty party is, it’s more of a cat and mouse game as the protagonist filters out the parties responsible for the crime.
Richard Harrison plays well slightly against type as a gunman who wears glasses and dresses more like an Easterner rather than a cowboy. The move pays off as his enemies underestimate his abilities, and find out quickly he’s tough as nails.
Jose Manuel Martin & Jose Bodalo make for good contrasting villains. Martin’s Espartero is a bandit and makes no qualms about it, but he possesses a certain code of ethics and conduct that he doesn’t divert from. Bodalo’s Jefferson is a snake hiding behind a skin of respectability, who’d probably betray his own mother if given the chance.
The only downer with the Colosseo DVD from Germany is very small sections of the Italian audio were lost or unusable and English is in their place, but it’s not annoying and didn’t take me out of the enjoyment of the film.
And the second half of the Woods double bill was this one which, again, looks terrific in this Colosseo Bluray release. Woods has talked often about following direction in terms of over-egging the madness and it is the one weakness of the film I think. But apart from that, definitely one of Woods’ best.
Still playing catch up and working through recent Bluray pick ups and I have to say the quality of German releases I’ve been watching over the past few days has been excellent. This one is Austrian or Swiss or somesuch (Explosive Media) but is also first rate. And nice to see it on a proper release full stop. I don’t believe it even got a DVD release in the UK and don’t understand why. It’s an enjoyable western with a major Hollywood star. You’d think it would be worth it?
Anyhoo, I very much enjoyed revisiting it after quite a while. One of the benefits of Spagvemberfest.
This movie features Terrence Hill taking over the (unofficial) Django role after Nero skittered off to Hollywood. This kicked off a trio of spaghetti westerns, followed by Hate Thy Neighbor then The Forgotten Pistolero, from director Ferdinando Baldi that are all extremely entertaining. Then, after a short break from the genre, he returned to make Blindman.
That is a pretty solid streak of spaghetti westerns from a director who preceded these four movies with Little Rita and then followed them up with Carambola. I don’t know if I will ever understand that.
It has been quite some time since I watched this one, so it was nice to give it a re-watch.
