Spagvemberfest 2022 - the legend continues

#23 Singer: Captain Apache
-This film is so stupid but compared to LVC’s other 70’s westerns it really isn’t as bad as its reputation. And those songs… priceless. 5/10

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Day 29-Cemetery without Crosses (1968) w/Robert Hussein and Michele Mercier. Manuel (Hossein) becomes the hired gun of Maria (Mercier) after members of the rival Rogers clan murder her husband, Ben. I hadn’t seen ‘Cemetery’ since my first watch a few years ago. I remember finding it slow and difficult to get into. However, I was in the last few days of my first Spagfest, and I had reached pasta burnout at that point. This time, the movie was easier to digest, and I was able to appreciate it as one of the greats of the genre. Rating: 5/5.

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I don’t massively rate OUaTitW either. The incessant individual music cues irritate the life out of me to the point where the entire pudding of a movie can bumfinger itself, frankly. There are a handful of absolutely cracking scenes, of course, but if I hear Jason Robards’ or Charlie Bronson’s musical cues one more time I’m going to lose my mind I swear to fupping Jeebus.

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well then you must also hate Duck You Sucker?

I find that music cue weirdly hilarious. I’m told they’re singing “Shaun! Shaun! Shaun!”, but they’re not. I’m convinced they’re singing “SHONNG!”, which I suspect is the sound of James Coburn whipping out his massive boner and waving it at Rod Steiger. No wonder the movie’s also known as A Fistful of Dynamite. :slightly_smiling_face:

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DAY 29

My girl’s final draw of SpagvemberFest 2022 brought forth no.4, and that’s California (Lupo, 1977), another one of those movies I never really look forward to - because of the mournful, sad music, plus the terrible copy of it I have via the comically bad Westerns Unchained blu-ray - but I’m always glad once I’ve watched it, because it’s a bloody good movie. I also kind-of love the symmetry of Giuliano Gemma - the spags’ first hero, really - coming full circle and helping bring the curtain down on the genre with such a fantastic late entry.

One day left! Consequently, I know which movie I’ll be watching in advance for the first time this month. It wouldn’t be my pre-ordained choice as a SpagvemberFest finale but I’ll enjoy getting my F̶i̶g̶h̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ F̶i̶s̶t̶s̶ hands on it tomorrow anyway.

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I have to say there are some unintentionally hilarious ‘Airplane-esque’ moments in this one … … imagine Robert Woods’ character, ‘Fernando’ (the earnest and self righteous) played by Leslie Nielsen in the ‘Frank Drebin’ style … it makes a lot of these dross productions much more enjoyable. :thinking:

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Yes it really has got the lot! It is my number 1 spaghetti western and one of my all time fave films. Nero and Musante play off each other fantastically well- Palance is an unforgettable baddie. Ralli is plenty of eye candy. Fajardo good too. Beautifully shot. Enthralling - but mischievous, exciting and emotional too. I must also admit L’arena and the final 5 minutes is just an emotionally charged piece of music and caps off a deserved ending to a true masterpiece

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Yes ,good point …I like it …have you seen it on kino blue ray ? Looks great. I enjoyed it… it’s like the REAL…ACID western …Lol.,u know? I’ve come to appreciate it. Didn’t care for it the first time around …wasn’t giving the film a chance to begin with neither. Glad you stood up for this one.

Kino blu ray? I think you must be confusing this with a different title?

Yes ,your right . Was thinking it was Captain Apache ,must of read wrong thing. I Apologize

Ah yeah, Bill_san_Antonio made a post defending Captain Apache a few posts earlier. I like the film as well, mostly as a laugh

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Day 28 - R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned
There’s no judgement here, right? I’ll just say that I’m a fan of the Weird West subgenre, and that this is more watchable, for me, than Wild Wild West or Jonah Hex, both of which are pretty unwatchable. But the ubiquitous influence of the spaghetti western on the whole genre is here–just look at that poncho on the poster.

Day 29 - Silver Saddle

Seeing the great Gemma back on some of the same sets used in A Pistol For Ringo over a decade later is definitely a great way to ride off into the sunset. The first time I saw this I gave it a 4/10, this time around I’d give it a 7.5/10. I guess I was in the right mood. Maybe the boy didn’t annoy me much.

To me, Keoma is a late 10/10 masterpiece. But this is still a very good twilight spag, and thankfully keeps a lot of the feeling of the classics alive. If we could just replace the lyrical ballad theme song with the mostly strong instrumental score, I’d bump this to a solid 8/10.

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Day 30! :partying_face:

Taste of Killing (1966)

Per il gusto di uccidere - The Spaghetti Western Database (spaghetti-western.net)

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I decided to bring this marathon to an end with one of my all-time top 10. I think that the thing I love most about this one is how un-heroic our hero Lanky Fellows is until there is an opportunity to make money. How many heroes can watch a massacre through the scope of their rifle and smile because it is an opportunity to put cash in their pocket? Some people say that Craig Hill was wooden in this role but I think the subtlety of his portrayal was brilliant. His facial expressions revealed more about the characters thoughts and motivations than 50 lines of dialogue ever could.

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Every “hero” needs a “villain” and this film was lucky enough to have the great George Martin playing Gus Kennebeck. The line between the good guy and bad guy here is negligible at best and Martin’s outlaw is also a doting father who truly loves his son.

In this film, the good guy is far from good, and the bad guy has a few admirable traits. This is far from typical and, for me, what makes Tonino Valerii’s film so enjoyable.

And, with that, my Spagvemberfest 2022 comes to an end! :partying_face:

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The appearance of the automobile tainted my view a little towards Arriva Sabata as well.

That would’ve made the movie so much better.

DAY 30:

La mia Colt ti cerca… 4 ceri ti aspettano (1971) - Director: Ignacio F. Iquino - 4/10

Aside from having a decent story at its core, the movie works well as a kind of Fidanesque comedy and essentially goes off the rails in a spectacular fashion, eventually becoming an entertaining trainwreck of sorts. The issue here dwells in that every single character is on the brink of assaulting anybody standing next to them and if they do not happen to glower and murmur menacingly at their interlocutors, they bawl, tug at one another, push each other around, throw punches and engage in the most over-the-top exchanges and fisticuffs possible. This lunacy never seems to end which results in a cavalcade of absurd situations and causes the film to spiral into pure idiocy.

I thought Tomas was hyperbolizing when describing the movie during one of the previous Spagvemberfests, but no, that’s just the way this flick is, the histrionics are so absurdly exaggerated it genuinely becomes a sort of comedy disguised as a western, but without any of the habitual slapstick you would expect in a seventies affair, thus coming to constitute something more along the lines of a clandestine burlesque. Some people are bound to hate it by reason of its firmly bipolar or rather unipolar nature, but to my way of thinking, this characteristic at the very least endues the work with a very distinctive quality and makes it kind of unique even if it is indubitably not that good on a purely technical level.

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8h left in #spagvemberfest 2022 (my time zone). What a wild ride so far…

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I guess it is time for a brief summary:

C’era una volta questo pazzo, pazzo, pazzo West (1973) - Director: Vincenzo Matassi - 1/10
Su le mani, cadavere! Sei in arresto (1971) - Director: Sergio Bergonzelli - 6/10
Se t’incontro, t’ammazzo (1970) - Director: Gianni Crea - 2/10
Il lungo giorno del massacro (1968) - Director: Alberto Cardone - 4/10
Ninguno de los tres se llamaba Trinidad (1973) - Director: Pedro Luis Ramírez - 1/10
Passa Sartana… è l’ombra della tua morte (1968) - Director: Demofilo Fidani - 5/10
Amico mio, frega tu… che frego io! (1973) - Director: Demofilo Fidani - 3/10
Uccidi o muori (1966) - Director: Tanio Boccia - 4/10
El hombre de Rio Malo (1971) - Director: Eugenio Martin - 2/10
Lola Colt (1967) - Director: Siro Marcellini - 3/10
Il suo nome era Pot (1971) - Directors: Demofilo Fidani, Lucio Giachin - 4/10
O tutto o niente (1968) - Director: Guido Zurli - 6/10
Professionisti per un massacro (1967) - Director: Nando Cicero - 6/10
Un dólar de recompensa (1972) - Director: Rafael Romero Marchent - 4/10
I tre che sconvolsero il West (1968) - Director: Enzo G. Castellari - 3/10
Vivi o, preferibilmente, morti (1969) - Director: Duccio Tessari - 5/10
L’oro dei Bravados (1970) - Director: Giancarlo Romitelli - 5/10
Monta in sella, figlio di…! (1972) - Director: Tonino Ricci - 5/10
Il mio nome è Scopone e faccio sempre cappotto (1972) - Director: Juan Bosch - 3/10
La caza del oro (1972) - Director: Juan Bosch - 7/10
Un par de asesinos (1970) - Director: Rafael Romero Marchent - 4/10
La sfida dei MacKenna (1970) - Director: León Klimovsky - 7/10
Pecos è qui: prega e muori (1967) - Director: Maurizio Lucidi - 5/10
Little Rita nel west (1967) - Director: Ferdinando Baldi - 6/10
Lo chiamavano Tresette… giocava sempre col morto (1973) - Director: Giuliano Carnimeo - 4/10
El bandido Malpelo (1971) - Director: Giuseppe Maria Scotese - 4/10
Di Tressette ce n’è uno, tutti gli altri son nessuno (1974) - Director: Giuliano Carnimeo - 5/10
Il West ti va stretto, amico… è arrivato Alleluja (1972) - Director: Giuliano Carnimeo - 4/10
Carambola (1974) - Director: Ferdinando Baldi - 2/10
Un animale chiamato uomo (1972) - Director: Roberto Mauri - 2/10
Il mio corpo per un poker (1968) - Director: Lina Wertmüller - 3/10
L’uomo venuto per uccidere (1967) - Director: Leon Klimovsky - 3/10
Alleluja e Sartana figli di… Dio (1972) - Director: Mario Siciliano - 2/10
Domani passo a salutare la tua vedova… parola di Epidemia (1972) - Director: Juan Bosch - 3/10
Quinto: non ammazzare (1969) - Director: León Klimovsky - 4/10
Il bianco, il giallo, il nero (1974) - Director: Sergio Corbucci - 3/10
In nome del padre, del figlio e della Colt (1971) - Director: Mario Bianchi - 4/10
Manos torpes (1969) - Director: Rafael Romero Marchent - 7/10
Una bala marcada (1972) - Director: Juan Bosch - 6/10
Kid Vengeance (1976) - Director: Joe Manduke - 2/10
Sette winchester per un massacro (1967) - Director: Enzo G. Castellari - 4/10
Arizona si scatenò… e li fece fuori tutti (1970) - Director: Sergio Martino - 4/10
E poi lo chiamarono il magnifico (1972) - Director: Enzo Barboni - 4/10
Prega Dio… e scavati la fossa (1968) - Director: Edoardo Mulargia - 4/10
La muerte cumple condena (1966) - Director: Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent - 6/10
La mia Colt ti cerca… 4 ceri ti aspettano (1971) - Director: Ignacio F. Iquino - 4/10

The best movie: there were several quite enjoyable entries I had not come across before, but the best one of the bunch was undoubtedly La sfida dei MacKenna (1970); the film decidedly excels in the screenwriting department even if it is not as stylistically flashy and boisterous as most of genre’s best outings. The dramatic component of the narrative is remarkably strong which gives rise to the exceedingly immersive tale rife with psychological anguish and trenchant cynicism.

The worst movie: C’era una volta questo pazzo, pazzo, pazzo West (1973), hands down, a pure piece of shit, it encompasses every single bad thing you dread to see in a spaghetti western comedy. Absolute garbage.

The biggest positive surprise of the month: Manos torpes (1969).

The biggest disappointment of the month: E poi lo chiamarono il magnifico (1972); very overwrought, oddly structured and plain boring most of the time.

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#24 Valerii: My Name is Nobody
-I started watching first 20 minutes of Django Kill which I bought recently on blu but changed eventually to this personal favorite. 10/10
Addio spagvemberfest 2022…

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