As an added thought on that, there is an equally strong argument to say 1966 was the peak year in terms of domestic box office. The top 5 grossing domestic films that year were all westerns. And four of those starred Gemma.
3 Likes
Grinders no.17:
To be honest I am a little bit tired of watching SW 
So I decided to rewatch casually:
IL RITORNO DI SHANGHAI JOE
https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Ritorno_di_Shanghai_Joe,_Il
I had very bad memories of this as one of the worst SW I have ever seen.
Now after rewatching…it was not that bad as remembered but it was that boring as remembered.
Problem is that this movie does not work in any sense:
Not as a sequel to SHANGHAI JOE because the mood and the style is completely different. It also is not working as a movie in Trinity style although it has a Spencer like character, a bit comedy and a Oliver Onions like score. And there is psycho Klaus Kinski who seems to be in wrong movie…
So, even locations and cast are on good level after a few minutes you loose interest and pray that the runtime will be over soon…
The German version was cut about 9 minutes that on one hand is a good option to watch the movie but on other hand the cuts are not that clever made.
I watched the Italian DVD this time with fanmade German Dub and Subtitels and as written above it was again very boring but not that bad as in my mind.
8 Likes
Day 16: And the Crows Will Dig Your Grave (1971) D- Juan Bosch. Starring Craig Hill, Angel Aranda, Fernando Sancho, Maria Pita. In this paella, an epidemic proportion of post-Civil War stagecoach robberies compels the authorities out west to take action. A town’s business community and Wells Fargo decides to deputize bounty killers like Jeff Sullivan (Hill) and Pancho Corrales (Sancho) to keep the stagecoaches safe. Jeff wastes no time in going after Dan Barker (Aranda), the brother of the man who murdered his wife. There are too many personal agendas to discuss here. Everyone in the cast looked burnt out from acting in so much filone. Even the town buildings looked dilapidated and ugly. ‘Crows’ wasn’t horrible, but I’ll probably never watch it again. Rating: 1.5/5.
8 Likes
Film #18 - The Hellbenders - rewatch of one of my fave Corbucci films 
13 Likes
Not that I recall, but then again, I might have passed out at that particular point owing to the film-induced apoplexy.
2 Likes
Uccideva a freddo (1966) - Director: Guido Celano - 5/10.
This is more of an early style entry which is greatly variegated by the extremely cynical, psychopathic protagonist or anti-hero to be more precise; though the film introduces more of a regular leading man in the middle which subsequently gives rise to a romantic subplot of sorts, the motion picture predominantly relates the sanguinary vagaries of the central character who gains ground by means of murder, defraudation, manipulation and good manners and this is where movie’s primary strength lies; through employing the semblance of piety and probity, he wins the favor of the townsfolk and then proceeds to enrich himself through his arms trafficking scheme.
Although the execution turns out mostly standard without any prominently differentiating qualities, the unabashed psychopathy of its central character distinguishes the work; in spite of some superficial similaries to Black Jack in terms of how vile the protagonist is, that film likewise includes some mitigating circumstances and justification for the main hero’s savagery, whereas this oater’s leading man callously drifts through the storyline, disposing of people standing in his way and resolutely securing pecuniary advantages wherever and whenever he can with no scruples whatsoever. Though the flick does not really abound in action and tends to put more emphasis on drama, it succeeds by reason of its intriguing central character as well as the satisfactory, albeit somewhat offbeat, story progression.
Tutti fratelli nel West… per parte di padre (1972) - Director: Sergio Grieco - 3/10.
The good news is that the film is not so bad in that both the technical execution and the cast prove solid enough to make the work somewhat more entertaining than it otherwise would be. The bad news is that there is simply not enough meat on the bone and the storyline feels largely vacuous and too bland to sustain one’s attention throughout film’s duration. The underlying premise is passable, but there is simply not enough elaboration and variety to make it stick, so the viewer is simply forced to sit through the string of predominantly lame jokes with not much in the way of a interesting story to anchor them in the narrative.
As a consequence of the aforementioned factors, the work comes to exhibit the characteristics of a lazy cash grab with a manifest want of originality and enthusiasm for the handled material which in turn telegraphs a sense of helplessness and effects tedium in the process. Sabato and Stander do their best to animate the production and by and large, manage to improve the experience to some extent, but there is only so much they can do within their limited capacity and there is only so much Grieco’s technically solid rendition may amend when the tale is this nondescript and devoid of surprises to begin with. Not atrocious by any means, but considering the talent behind the camera as well as in front of it, it should have turned out considerably better and more memorable.
9 Likes
Day 17:
Ancora Dollari per i Macgregor - ‘More Dollars for the McGregors’ (1970)
Another one I’ve seen years ago which I originally quite enjoyed … It starts promisingly, and a little mysteriously, but rather loses it’s way in the middle with some very unconvincing indigenous ‘babes’ working for high value bad guy, Stan Cooper in the valley of scorpions!
Considering the extremely limited production budget (None of the main cast are wearing real western hats … but cheap woolen ‘fashion’ hats or classic fedoras modified to look a bit cowboy) the movie is surprisingly ‘watchable’ … not great at all, but not too terrible either.
6/10
10 Likes
Day 17. Movie 12. A Bullet For Sandoval.
First things first; I love Ernest Borgnine. Always have. And in this picture - a decent revenge story, with something of an operatic finale - he goes full bore Borgnine in a number of scenes. At least he didn’t try for a Spanish accent; his attempt at a Russian one in “Ice Station Zebra” a few years earlier was hit-and-miss, to he charitable.
8 Likes
much props to the borgmeister! 
5 Likes
borgnine is an easy borgten
3 Likes
Five for Revenge (1966)
Jim Latimore has been battling the Gonzales brothers and when he marries their cousin Rosaria (Mónica Randall, (The Witches Mountain), things get even worse. They hire El Matanza (Antonio Molino Rojo) to kill him and take his son to be raised as one of the Gonzales family. Rosaria is assaulted and barely survives. Three years later, Tex (Guy Madison, Long Days of Hate; he also plays Jim) arrives with four other men — Dan (Vassili Karis), Ramon (José Manuel Indios (Giovanni Cianfriglia) and Alan (Mariano Vidal Molina) — who plan on killing every one of the Gonzales brothers, giving Rosaria back her home, getting her son back and getting vengeance.
This is directed by Aldo Florio, who also made Dead Man Ride and wrote [*2020 Texas Gladiators, which is pretty much a Western with cars instead of horses. This movie was written by Dirk Wayne Summers, Bernard C. Schoenfeld and Alfonso Balcázar (La casa de las muertas vivientes)
One of the camera crew with Aristide Massacesi, the man of many names who most call Joe D’Amato.
7 Likes
Day 17: Killer Adios
Thoughts:
Rather average mystery spaghetti western and kinda-sorta-not-really-but-basically sequel to Killer Caliber .32. Primo Zeglio may be a better director than Alfonso Brescia but ultimately with a film like this, the strength is in the script, and unfortunately for this film Killer Caliber .32 ultimately plays out more competently. At the very least, this is a nice looking film, and the soundtrack, when it isn’t recycling tracks from Long Days of Vengeance and A Bullet for the General, is quite good.
6 Likes
Day 18
Sangue chiama sangue - The Spaghetti Western Database (spaghetti-western.net)
It was an exciting day as I have wanted to see this one for quite some time - supposedly one of the rarest of the rare. To the best of my knowledge it has never had a home video release of any sort yet, there it was on Tubi. Where they got it from, I have no idea but it looked really nice for the most part and it was entirely in English, save for a few seconds here and there.
Fernando Sancho actually receives top billing in this one and he really stretched his range here as he played…a Mexican bandit.
Fernando leads a raid on a local monastery where there is a diamond laden head dress worth a fortune. Despite his warning not to hurt the monks inside, one of his men initiates a total massacre. Before they leave, they end up also killing a monk who was stopping there for shelter for the night. He just happened to be the brother of an outlaw gunman named Andrew (Stephen Forsyth) who also had designs on the treasure and now sets out to not only avenge his brother but to get the diamond head dress for himself.
This one left me with mixed feelings. Parts of this movie are fresh from a visual standpoint and are really memorable while other parts are about as generic as it gets. The violence early on is well shot and choreographed while later in the film men with no guns in their hands rush at Sancho just so that he can shoot people. It is almost as though director Luigi Capuano set out to make something that really stood out in the genre but the producers lost patience and told him he only had a week left to finish the film. 
Regardless, it was nice to finally get this one checked off of my list.
13 Likes
Pancho Villa (1972)
An Italian Spanish co=production, this was directed by Eugenio Martín and produced by Phillip Yordan as part of three movies they’d make together, which also include Bad Man’s River and Horror Express.
After being double-crossed in an arms deal by a gun merchant McDermott (Luis Dávila) from New Mexico, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa (Telly Savalas) and his American lieutenant Scotty (Clint Walker) attack a U.S. Army weapons depot and seize McDermott.
Colonel Wilcox (Chuck Conners) is stationed on the American side of the border and is assigned to rescue the shady McDermott, who is as bad or worse than the Mexican revolutionaries.
In his book Hollywood exile, or, How I learned to love the blacklist: A memoir, producer Bernard Gordon goes into how little Telly Savalas and Clint Walker liked one another. Savalas made attempts to upstage Walker while — unlike their characters in the movie — Anne Francis and Walker got along quite well. Walker was also not far from a near-death experience. The actor Walker skied out of control and had his heart stabbed with a ski poke. He was pronounced dead until a doctor heard a faint sign of life and performed life-saving surgery.
Walker is pretty much Rick Dalton. He was the lead on Cheyenne before getting into Western and war movies. He eventually moved into TV movies, several of which are pretty good, including Killdozer! and Snowbeast.
Pancho Villa even has a song, We All End Up the Same”, which was written by John Cacavas and Don Black and sung by Savalas. This feels very Vietnam-era, in that Connors has a scene where the entire army can’t kill one fly. It ends as all movies should with a train on train head to head crash.
8 Likes
Spagvember Fest 2023 Day 17
First time watch
Joe…. Cercati un Posto di Morire!
https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Joe…_cercati_un_posto_per_morire!
**** out of *****
While nothing too spectacular stands out in this SW entry, it’s still entertaining and well written. The first half plays out similarly to the Barbara Stanwyck Noir Jeopardy in that a woman must find aid for her trapped husband, and her only hope lies in the fugitive kind. The 2nd half transitions to a good old fashioned shoot ‘em up as the motley crew bands together to stop a Bandido from becoming a despot and forming his own kingdom.
What struck me first and foremost is that all the male characters, with the exception of Piero Lulli (who didn’t get enough screen time I think) are all a bunch of bastards (which they refer to each other a lot as), what saves the characters played by Jeffrey Hunter, Nello Pazzafini, and Reza Fezili agree that there’s a bigger and worse bastard in the bandit Chato.
Hunter was the perfect choice for Joe Collins: he was bitter about his Hollywood career stagnating after his wife inflated his ego and no one was willing to take a chance on him, his vices for a time got the better of him, and he aged prematurely, so he had the right mindset and look going into the role. His performance was really solid and worthwhile, and should’ve ignited interest from other Italian directors, but it wasn’t meant to be sadly.
The Blu Ray from Arrow Video is fantastic looking and offers up great extras.
12 Likes
Watched Garringo on Explosive Media Blu-ray.
The picture quality of this release is fine. The film itself is great. Johnny is the bad guy with a baby face. Lieutenant Garringo is hellbent on capturing him. It’s interesting to note that there is no love story. There are some casual flings, but no love. Love reale has no place in this gritty little flick. Dead are countless because there is always betrayal. There is no honor among thieves. There are no real friends. The score is perfect. It’s never sappy. Just marvellous.
Raf Baldassarre is cute in this. He deserves more screen time. Garringo is not like Django or Ringo. It’s not carried by countless films. Some may love Robert Woods as Garringo. That’s about it. I guess it is a shame that this name is not recognizable for many.
12 Likes
Film 12: California
I saw this one for the first time a few days ago, but am not posting about it before now. I really enjoyed this one. Gemma and whatshisname were likeable and cool. I loved the downbeat, vilent nature of the film, supported by the camerawork and the costumery/set design by Carlo Simi. It was an interesting portrayal of Confederate soldiers after the war. Although I see many don´t like the music, but I thought it fit the film. A solid 8/10
10 Likes
Day 17: A Long Ride from Hell (1968) D-Camillo Bazzoni. Starring Steve Reeves, Wade Preston, Ivan Scratuglia, and Rosabla Neri. I wasn’t sure how Steve Reeves would do making the transition from all the swords and sandals movies he was in as Hercules to Italian westerns. Though far from an acting giant, I thought he did a great job as Mike Sturges, a cattle rancher who gets sent to Yuma with his younger brother Roy (Scratuglia) after being set up by mustachioed (and the mustache comes up in a conversation) villain, Marlin Maynor (Preston) and corrupt railroad official, Freeman, for stealing a train shipment of gold. A crime Maynor and Freeman themselves committed. There isn’t any new territory broken here. It was all about style and execution, and director Bazzoni does it well. The movie was very entertaining and enjoyable. I didn’t feel bored or annoyed at any cliches or annoying characters like I typically do. I would definitely watch it again! Rating: 3.5/5.
11 Likes
Film #19 - Bastard, Go and Kill (great title) - First viewing - 
out of 5
https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Bastardo,_vamos_a_matar
From the title I went in expecting a violent, dark film BUT instead its a lighthearted humorous romp with barely any violence in at all. George Eastman is playing a Tomas Milian-esque type Mexican peon character who hams it up. Its semi entertaining but I dont think the actors quite pull it off completely and the story isnt fully baked
11 Likes
- Colizzi: Ace High
-I had not watch this for a while and it was actually better than I remembered. Colizzi’s directing is very good, I’d say out of all sw directors his style is closest to Leone. I like howe the film is direct continuation to God Forgives… though in style this is a nod more comedic and more in the style of future Hill & Spencer films. Great film. 8/10
12 Likes