I definitely don’t mind–and I don’t believe I’ve seen that one yet, so I’ll check it out, thanks!
1 Like
Day 26
Testa o croce - The Spaghetti Western Database (spaghetti-western.net)
I was in the mood for a bit of a harsh spaghetti today so I pulled out the uncut Wild East release of this one which means that it includes the semi-infamous Edwige Fenech scene (as in she is being whipped topless in the street as one of the town’s pious women watches from a window, seemingly finding some sexual gratification in what she sees).
Our heroine, Spela Rozin, is accused of a murder she didn’t commit so, to keep her from being lynched, the sheriff sends her with two deputies to a nearby town but the deputies instead decide to rape her and leave her for dead in the desert. She is found by the notorious outlaw Black Talisman (John Ericson) who nurses her back to health and then sets out seeking revenge.
This one is probably one of the more sordid films in the genre and could border on the distasteful for some. I personally think it is a well done revenge tale that serves up a heaping helping of sleaze. Despite the savagery in this one though, director Piero Pierotti creates some really striking and beautiful scenes that stick with you long after the movie has ended.
Like it or hate it, the move is a unique entry in the genre to be sure.
12 Likes
Day 25: I am Sartana, Your Angel of Death and They Call Me Trinity (both rewatches)
Thoughts:
Missed a day again, another double bill.
I am Sartana definitely has moved up in my rankings. I always really liked all of the films in the series but I was never really confident with my ratings early on. As I revisit the series (I rewatched the first one back in October) I plan to see if that love still applies to all of them. As for Trinity, I’ve always liked it well enough, but what prevents me from loving it is that two hour runtime. Like, haha, I get the joke Barboni is trying to make but it’s a joke too much when the jokes about the spaghetti western as a genre includes the runtime. Stretches the humor too thin.
7 Likes
Four Bullets for Joe (1964)
Directed by Agustín Navarro and written by Fernando Galiana, Mario Guerra, Julio Porter and Vittorio Vighi, this Italian/Spanish Western comes from just before the genre took off in those countries.
Frank Dalton (Paul Piaget) is out to get vengeance for his dead sister, a woman wrongfully accused of killing her husband. It’s a relatively American Western by way of a murder mystery and is very unlike the Eurowesterns that would come after. There’s also a sheriff (Fernando Casanova) trying to solve who the murderer is and trying to keep Frank out of harm’s way.
Notable cast members include Barbara Nelli (Lady Morgan’s Vengeance, Bloody Pit of Horror) and Rafael Bardem, the grandfather of Javier. I wish this were a better movie, but there are certainly others to check out. Then again, the appearance of a black-gloved killer in the middle of a Western is always something I am going to watch. There should be more giallo Westerns! I looked up a list on the Spaghetti Western Database and see the following listed that I need to watch:
Killer Caliber .32
Killer, Adios
Ringo, It’s Massacre Time
The Last Traitor
The Masked Thief
The Price of Death
Kill the Poker Player
Revenge of the Resurrected
The Crimson Night of the Hawk
6 Likes
Skip this one unless you specifically want to venture into the Crea/Batzella/Lattanzi land.
1 Like
Storia di karatè, pugni e fagioli (1973) - Director: Tonino Ricci - 3/10.
The film constitutes basically what you would expect to get from this sort of entertainment, there is however one upside which is the pairing of Dean Reed and Chris Huerta: Reed turns in a pretty solid performance, though what is more surprising and somewhat shocking is Huerta’s unexpectedly good showing who instead of hamming it up as usual beyond the absolute limits of decency and good taste, just seems mean, agitated and cantankerous, but in a pertinently amusing fashion without any surplus histrionics. Notwithstanding, the said factor is largely obfuscated by the remarkably chaotic script which totally lacks any kind of focus and basically careens from one lousy scene to another in order to culminate in, yes, you guessed it, a gigantic bar brawl, which I took the liberty of fast-forwarding so as to alleviate the pain.
What is astonishing is the thoroughgoing superfluity of the kung fu theme in that it appears absolutely unwarranted and rarely even comes to the fore. Whenever it resurfaces, it only serves as a pretext to showcase some awful kung fu fighting sequences or to make use of some racial stereotypes relating to the Chinese, predominantly treating of eating dog meat, rice and fish, all that stuff. The worst thing is not even that it condescends to this level of crassness, picking the lowest-hanging fruit in the laziest possible fashion, but rather that at the end of the day, it simply is not funny at all and comes to grate on one’s nerves, especially what with the vexing English dub. This could have been legitimately good had it been outfitted with a superior storyline, forgoing the redundant kung fu shtick, but it is evidently anything but. Perhaps not quite as bad as its reputation, but close enough.
8 Likes
Day 26:
¿Quién grita venganza ? (Who Cries for Vengeance?)
aka, ‘Dead Men Don’t Count’ (1968)
Thought I’d seen this before … but was confusing it with the similarly titled ‘The Dead are Countless’, also with Anthony Steffen and same director, Rafael Romero Marchent … so, it was a first time watch for me, the only one this Spagvember.
The film started off promisingly, as two low rent bounty hunters get in trouble with a small town sheriff when they try to con him into giving up a lucrative reward for a gang of bandits valued at $15,000 … The sheriff, Piero Lulli realizes their scam and puts them in jail … this leads to a series of coincidences and a revelation about the sheriff and the town’s first citizen, Luis Induni.
Wanted to like the movie more, but it’s routine at best and the story meanders as if they were making it up as they went along. Not awful, just so-so.
5.5/10
12 Likes
7: Il grande silenzio (1968), directed by Sergio Corbucci
Phew, I’m running out of stamina … Corbucci’s seventh Western was released on November 19, 1968, a month before Il mercenario and C’era una volta il West. The film’s snowy landscapes were shot in the Dolomites, around Cortina d’Ampezzo and Sankt Kassian / San Cassiano. As I was born and grew up not far away, in Innsbruck, some ninety miles to the north, I always associate the movie with skiing. For example, when Kinski rides through the snow-covered mountain slopes, I immediately expect someone wedeling into the frame and yelling at him, “Hey, man, no horses allowed on the slope!” Perplexed, Tigrero draws his pistol and … In the opening-credits sequence, you can actually see two skiers in the background.
The great Jean-Louis Trintignant, who died last year at the age of ninety-one, managed to portray the mute gunslinger in Corbucci’s Western just as convincingly as the (petit) bourgeois, uptight characters he so often played, for instance in Claude Chabrol’s Les Biches (1968), Costa-Gavras’s Z (1969), Éric Rohmer’s Ma nuit chez Maud (1969) and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Il conformista (1970). A great accomplishment, contributing significantly to the film’s appeal.
Next: ¿Quién sabe? (1966), directed by Damiano Damiani.
12 Likes
You only have the DVD Version of this?
7 Likes
Yes, unfortunately. Which release could you recommend?
1 Like
Both the Eureka and the Film Movement releases are really good, but I believe the Eureka is slightly better as it fixed a few issues that the Film Movement release had.
1 Like
Thank you, Max! Time for an upgrade, the German DVD has many flaws.
1 Like
To add to the earlier comparison, the Eureka has properly translated subtitles for the Italian track whereas the film movement has dubtitles. The Eureka also has a much better colour grade. Plus the Eureka has some great bonus content including an Alex Cox commentary track, an interview with Cox about the film, and the documentary ‘Westerns, Italian Style’ from 1968 which is a really interesting insight from filmed during the Spaghetti boom and has some really nice behind the scenes footage of Corbucci.
3 Likes
The lack of a loaded computer yesterday prevented me from keeping my promise of a quick catch-up documentation of my viewing, but here we go:
Sabata (Gianfranco Parolini, 1969)
After my joyful revisit of Death Rides A Horse i figured it would be refreshing to watch another LVC vehicle. It may not be a truly good movie in terms of plot (i’ve never been a huge fan of those Sartana-style gadget-shoot’em ups based around a huge amount of gold which everyone tries to get their hands on), but it’s well executed trough and trough and the obvious and refreshingly big budget helps a good deal in this case. Rarely did an Italian western set look so vivid and beautiful as Elios does here.
The cast is good, too, although i’ve yet to warm up entirely to the sidekicks; Carrincha is generally an entertaining character, but a bit too over-the-top at times, while Alley Cat feels like some character from an interwar-era B-movie, and does not belong to the few well handled depictions of Native Americans in SW:s. In a way, he’s used too much and too little at the same time - too little to get developed enough, and too much to avoid my slight, well, not really annoyance, but i overall just don’t feel he is likeable enough to outshine the slight mentioned feeling of a flat stereotype rather than a more dynamic character. On the other hand, there’s William Berger as Banjo - whom i liked more this time around - and Franco Ressell as Stengel, a truly entertaining villain.
The one thing that bugs me about this film is the plot. Yes, it was never meant to be an intelligent plot-driven movie, and it serves its purpose well for the most part, but i think the twists and turns are driven one step too far - maybe one of the various people hired to kill our hero in the first half could have been cut out. This is mostly an issue which could have been resolved by trimming the length - 107 minutes is simply a bit oversized for this type of plot.
On the other hand, this kind of plot unlocks a certain joyful feeling when you watch it. Had the bad guys been humiliated and/or disarmed instead of killed this could almost have been a Lucky Luke adaptation. Ok, Luke would never have intended to blackmail the villains for selfish reasons, and Goscinny would probably have come up with a slightly more sophisticated script, but you get the same lighthearted invincible western hero feeling that takes you back tho better times
For what it is, this is at least as entertaining as most american matinee action-adventures from the same era. I tend to agree with Alex Cox overall verdict; Not truly great, but entertaining and the best of the “circus” westerns. If anything, the good mood it put me in and the general entertainment value - maybe more so than some titles previously close to my top 20 - may cause it to grow further for me personally. And did i mention that it stars Lee Van Cleef as a laconic anti-hero, which he does really well and rounded as usual? That alone is a huge advantage.
7/10 for this likeable matinee western action-adventure.
8 Likes
Day 26: May God Forgive You… But I Won’t (rewatch)
Thoughts:
Above average spaghetti western revenger but I forget the character names in this one are terrible / amazing. And then I remembered as I rewatched this.
6 Likes
Day 26: Last of the Badmen (a.k.a. Time of Vultures/No Tears for a Killer) (1967) D-Nando Cicero. Starring George Hilton, Frank Wolff, Eduardo Fajardo, Pamela Tudor, and Femi Benussi. A more obscure (but no less entertaining) entry I happened upon while looking on YouTube for SW’s. Kitosch (Hilton) flees forced peonage after getting caught with the wife (Tudor) of Don Mendoza (Fajardo). He soon crosses paths with a mysterious man in black, named Joshua Tracey (Wolff). What seems like the beginning of a beautiful friendship soon takes some dark turns.
I thought there were great performances from all the players. I’m always impressed with Frank Wolff’s ability to convey the subtlest of emotions with his facial expressions. I wonder if he had any comedies amid his acting credits. I could see him having transitioned easily into comedic work. I really enjoyed the haunting soundtrack by Piero Umiliani. It gave me an earworm that stayed in my head for the past 24 hours. The film was a sequel to the 1966 movie ‘Kitosch: The Man from the North.’
Rating: 3/5
10 Likes
Day 27
Notte dei serpenti, La - The Spaghetti Western Database (spaghetti-western.net)
I decided that after starting a Wild East double feature, I might as well finish it today with this one…and I am glad I decided to give it a re-watch.
Luigi Pistilli plays a leader of a garrison in a small village and he decides to join several of the townspeople in robbing an orphan of his inheritance and killing him. A local drunk, portrayed by Luke Askew, is chosen to be the fall guy. As it turns out though, he used to be a great gunfighter who is hiding inside a bottle to escape the trauma of his past.
Askew is great in this film and he truly had an underappreciated career. Just some of the titles on his resume include Cool Hand Luke, Easy Rider, Will Penny, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. And this is just a sampling.
This one also contains a nice supporting cast of some of my personal favorites. In addition to Pistilli, there was also Guglielmo Spoletini, Magda Konopka, and Chelo Alonso.
This is not a typical spaghetti western as it tells a bit of a deeper tale than what he are used to with the main story revolving around a man forced to confront his past as he tries to overcome the demons that control his life. This one won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but for those that appreciate something a little out of the norm there is a lot to like here.
11 Likes
Dynamite Joe (1966)
Gold transfers keep getting attacked, which puts a hurting on the U.S. Mint, so they sent Joe Ford (Rik Van Nutter, Felix Leiter in Thunderball) — better known as Dynamite Joe — to make sure those bandits get taken care of. Joe’s talent is blowing people up. That’s why they call him Dynamite Joe, after all.
Joe builds an entire train car out of gold. That doesn’t seem like a plan, but I’m also not someone that throws lit sticks at people. Maybe it’s the fact that Van Nutter was in a Bond movie, but this feels like a Eurospy mixed with an Italian Western and I am all for everything that is all about.
So yes, Joe shows up looking like Eastwood, but this is by Antonio Margheriti which guarantees great camerawork and something a little different. Cinematographer Manuel Merino also shot She Killed In Ecstasy, so the camerawork is great and the soundtrack by Carlo Savina is a bit off as well and I mean that in a “it’s a bit off” and I love it usage of the phrase. He also composed the music for Comin’ at Ya!, Lisa and the Devil, And God Said to Cain… and many more.
7 Likes
Grinders no. 26 & 27:
DOUBLE FEATURE
Starting with (26) PANCHO VILLA
https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Pancho_Villa
A Zapata style Eurowestern with Telly Savalas.
I wonder why it isn`t that popular…not even a topic in SWDB Forum?
I think it is quite entertaining even though I understand that not everyone is happy with mixture of serious and stupid parts.
I have wtached this time Super 8 version - only one reel with about 16 minutes - that is only showing train scenes…that means beginning and end of the complete movie.
Red colours but who cares 
Here`s a German Version identical to DVD…to me it is a rip of old German VHS:
27 I QUATTRO DELL`AVE MARIA
https://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Quattro_dell'Ave_Maria,_I
This is one of my favourite Spaghetti Westerns and one of my favourite Spencer/Hill movies.
The sequel to the grim DIO PERDONA—I NO! is a bit more lighter entertainment and the characters of Spencer/Hill are more developed. I especially like that the plot of the first movie is carried on and that in the speech between Spencer/Hill before they got robbed by Eli Wallach we learn how Spencers life will be in part three (LA COLLINA DEGLI STIVALI).
The narrative structure is done as “episode” per “episode”, so there are standard Western scenes in a bank or in a Saloon, a Zapata episode and even a small Heist like sequence with artistics from Hill and Peters also as a little preview to LA COLLINA…
The camera work and the cutting is amazing, espcially the Mexican fiesta with drunk Spencer.
I don`t know how often I have watched this movie…10-20 times I think. It never gets boring and with each screening you see new details.
Therefore I have several official and non official version in collection…including two VHS and two 35mm copies.
This time I have wtached a HD fan upscale of Italian DVD with added first German dub from 16mm. Quality is fine (27 GB file) and runtime is 126:18 Minutes(25 fps) = 132 Minutes (24fps).
It is a shame that this fine SW is in the hands of Paramount that only is releasing cut reperformances… 
9 Likes