Spagvember Fest 2024 Day 10
One by One
Really boring and nothing really exciting in it. Not necesarily bad, just uninteresting.
6 Likes
Not the best Corbucci, but I always had a soft spot for this one. In a way feels almost like a Trinita movie, with less slapstick. Gassman was a fantastic actor. Regular soundtrack from the Maestro
6 Likes
No. 10:
L`UOMO DELLA VALLE MALEDETTA
Rewatch after 12 years…remembered absolutely nothing about this.
Could have been due to low quality version (third generation VHS copy on DVD-R with only 80 Minutes runtime) or maybe because it was just boring.
I think it is/was both 
English version titled “Cursed Valley” misses about 17 minutes material. Maybe a complete reel… I do not know. English Dub sounded good in my ears.
Really obscure and not logical in construction, also looking like an american B- or C- Western.
I`m searching since many, many years for German version but it seems to be lost forever. After cinema start in 1966 no sign of it…I only got some fragments on 35mm with about 4 minutes runtime from a collector friend…really hard to find stuff.
7 Likes
I’m decided to re-watch some Tony Anthony movies during the fest. This one made a poor impression back in the days and this new iteration didn’t change my idea. Just a bad ripoff with some nice lenses.
7 Likes
#6 Vamos a matar, compañeros
4.5 / 5
Rewatch. First Morricone this month! Can I just gush about the action sequence at the finale? I really think it is one of the best cut, best paced action sequences in any western, or perhaps movie. There’s just a quick and glorious two minutes of Morricone’s audacious theme song mixed with Franco Nero blasting everyone with everything around him!
Special shoutout to Iris Berben, a German actress who gets one of the best female roles in any Italian western. She’s a revolutionary that’s tough, passionate and intelligent. She might be an inspiration for the character Luisa Fortuna from Red Dead Redemption–and is certainly less naive.
#7 Red Sun
3/5
Rewatch. Enjoyable enough, but it seems torn between a 1970s twilight western and 1970s hippie-misfits-buddy western, and while it is better than most of the latter it is weaker than most of the former. Mifune’s performance is the highlight for me, he pulls off the serious scenes as naturally as the deft comedy.
8 Likes
Spagvember Fest 2024
Day 10
Quien Grita Venganza
Rewatch. The pacing is still a little slow, but dang it this is still a fun little B grade SW.
Anthony Steffen and Mark Damon have great chemistry together as bounty Hunter adventurers who accidentally stumble upon a land grabbing plot, and decide to help solve the matter. Seeing Anthony Steffen more animated, cracking jokes and laughing is a wonderful change of pace from his dead seriousness in other roles, though he did do excellent in those. Mark Damon shines as Steffen’s buddy, who may or may not be the long missing son of the villain’s tormented wife.
Genre regulars Piero Lulli, Raf Baldassarre, and Luis Induni are always in form as the baddies; Lulli as the corrupt sheriff, Induni as the ruthless land baron, and Baldassarre as a hired gun.
The Explosive Media Blu Ray is fantastic looking and sounds just as good.
8 Likes
Day Ten: For a Few Dollars More (1965)
I’ve found this the most rewatchable of the “Dollars trilogy”. If it’s not Leone’s best it’s certainly a personal favorite of mine. It’s just this platonic ideal, this rhythmic work (mostly in part due to Morricone’s wonderful score), where every element works in motion.
Anyways, this time around I found it cute that Carlo Simi cameos as the owner of the bank he designed.
7 Likes
Blood River (1974) - Director: Gianfranco Baldanello - 5/10.
While the motion picture evidently represents Baldanello’s most ambitious foray into western by far, it is tough evaluate the work in terms of narrative focus or time passage by reason of it having been shortened by fifteen or twenty mintues. In light of it having been hacked to pieces over the years, pic’s certain segments are barely comprehensible, though what emerges out of the dilapidated debris of a narrative generally seems promising and intriguing enough. The tale basically constitutes a fusion of a revenge yarn and a multifaceted family tragedy.
The former factor comes out after a fashion because the vengeance is exacted by an Indian and it so happens that the depiction of the indigenous population turns out droll more than anything else which is underscored by Umiliani’s somewhat mischosen sountrack. Thankfully, the said component subsequently gives way to the familial intrigues and associated shenanigans which is where the movie shines. Rosalba Neri is given a chance to act and act she does, turning in a compelling performance as the befuddled damsel in the throes of passion; Testi and Ireland put on a good show as well which additionally helps to thicken drama’s atmosphere in the final act. The climax proves rather heavy-handed and feels a bit overcooked shall we say, but considering that we are dealing with something produced as cheaply as this and made as late as in 1974, the overall offering is definitely nothing to sniff at.
6 Likes
Spagvemberfest Day 8
Blindman (Baldi / 1971)
Next up from the Hall of Fame was Tony Anthony. This is still my favourite Anthony western I think despite its flaws and still a pleasure to watch every time. Also got to tick Baldi off from the directors list too of course.
7 Likes
Spagvemberfest Day 9
If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death (Parolini / 1968)
Garko’s turn and of course it has to be a Sartana. The original and maybe the best? I’m never sure. It’s a goodie though and also ticks off Parolini, Berger, Kinski and Sancho.
7 Likes
Spagvemberfest 2024
Day 11: The Ruthless Four
Banger alert! Great score, well written characters, great direction and just ensemble spaghetti cast. Really nice palette cleanser after watching lots of cheap spaghettis as part of this fest. Need a blu-ray of this one ASAP.
8 Likes
- Leone: Fistful of Dollars
-“The Spaghetti Western”. Such a cool film, even though it is a remake of Yojimbo it’s such an original film. 9/10
6 Likes
No. 11:
7 DONNE PER I MACGREGOR
The sequel. As mentioned before I like it more than the first film. Good cast, great score, great landscapes, a good story and a mixture of light fighting scenes, action and also some brutality.
I also like Victor Israel as dentist
Escpecially the 7 irish ladies and also Agata Flori are doing a great job since they seem to have done many of the action scenes and fights themself.
Best scene for me is when the brothers ride into the massacred town. Pure atmosphere. Also finale on train is made well.
Explosive Blu Ray is OK. Not a masterpiece but a little better image than Italian DVD. Nevertheless DVD stays in collection since the interesting interview of Giraldi as well as 10 minutes material with outtakes (Jose Manuel Martin as Maldonado !) did not make it to Blu Ray.
6 Likes
Day 11–Long Live Your Death (1971) (a.k.a. Don’t Turn the Other Cheek) D: Duccio Tessari. Starring Franco Nero, Eli Wallach, Lynn Redgrave, and Eduardo Fajardo. An ex-patriate Russian prince/con man Dmitri Orlavsky (Nero) springs condemned Mexican bandit Alfonso “Max” Lazoya (Wallach) from jail in order to find buried gold. Lazoya poses as popular leader “El Salvador” and Orlovsky poses as his military advisor. The two soon cross paths with red-haired Irish journalist/revolutionary Mary O’Donnell and fight in the Mexican Revolution. I has a good time and quite a few laughs watching this SW comedy. Though Wallach was good in the movie, it was hard to see him as anyone other than Tuco from the ‘Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.’ Unfortunately, it stifled my appreciation of the character Max Lazoya/El Salvador here. Nero was just the right amount of sleazy and charm to enjoy his conman character. I read a great article in the 2017 Italian western anthology book “Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads” (edited by Austin Fisher) by SW writer/historian, called “The Quiet Man Gets Noisy.” The article explores the potrayal of Irish people as characters in Italian westerns. One of the examined tendencies of Irish characters in SW’s is the exiled Irish revolutinary/demolitions expert who helps in the Mexican Revolution. The most famous example is Duck You Sucker! with James Coburn. Frayling also discusses Irish revolutionary women in SW’s like Brigitte Bardot as Maria O’Malley in Louis Malle’s Viva Maria! (1965) and Lynn Redgrave’s Irish revolutionary/journalist who wants to photograph, write and be in the Mexican Revolution. Redgrave does a fantastic job as the ambitious yet bumbling Mary O’Donnell.
Rating: 3/5
Reference:
Fisher, A. (Ed.) (2017) Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads: Studies in Relocation, Transition and Appropriation. Edinburgh University Press.
8 Likes
I’ve never seen the sequel to 7 Guns. It sounds like the sequel is better than original. I’ll have to check it out!
2 Likes
Spagvember Fest 2024
Day 11
El Precio de un Hombre (The Bounty Killer)
Long overdue rewatch. Haven’t seen this film since checking out the French Blu Ray some years back, and it’s still a fascinating and interesting watch.
The film is much more about a town coming to the harsh realization a young man they cared very deeply for has changed for the worse and that not all bounty hunters are killers hiding behind a legal license rather than the typical bounty hunter/lawman vs bandido/criminal story. Whether Jose Gomez was always a bad egg and the town just never recognized it, or if hanging out with the wrong type of people really did change him might never be known, but that the townsfolk can’t forget the person Gomez was as they decide his fate makes themselves tragic figures.
Tomas Milian in his debut Western delivers the goods on the good man gone bad character very well. Even in this first genre outing he displays all the skills, style, and eccentricities that would define his career.
Richard Stapley aka Richard Wyler is quite good in the role of the bounty hunters who truly does believe in justice. While admitting freely he likes the money he makes, Luke Chilson isn’t a typical pariah that kills first and then asks questions, but acts accordingly to a code. As things intensify, even he sees and sympathizes how much the town suffers seeing how a once loved young man fell from grace.
The Explosive Media Blu Ray looks very solid, and while I can’t be sure it’s the same 2K restoration/transfer as the French release is still fine quality.
9 Likes
O’Cangaceiro (1969) - Director: Giovanni Fago - 6/10.
If the movie qualifies as a spaghetti western stylistically, though obviously not in terms of plot’s overall setting and time period, then it must be the most exotic and extravagant of them all. As opposed to most Zapata westerns, to which it arguably bears comparison, the work actually mystifies rather than demystifies central revolutionary’s persona which in turn entails that the storyline assisted by Fago’s impressionistic direction acquires a certain poetic allure. Film’s biggest issue resides in that on ridding itself of the revolutionary as the driving force behind the narration, it does not assign this narrative role to anybody else, the Dutchman for instance.
As a consequence, it turns into a bit of a heroless epopee, becoming both superficial and indistict subject-wise. Narrative’s elliptical facets and outlandish atmosphere are compounded by a host of bizarre situations and Milian’s outrageous antics which seem to be cut out for this sort of material and highlight its exceptional status. One could argue that by virtue of its eminently whimsical nature, pic’s social backdrop does not have the punch and immediacy of similar ventures, notwithstanding, what it lacks in this regard is partially offset by its unignorable salience, imaginative choreography, Ulloa’s striking cinematography and Ortolani’s wonderfully flamboyant soundtrack.
7 Likes
At least I think so.
Look forward to your review😉
1 Like
- Bianchini: I Want Him Dead
-I have watched this quite often considering that apart from the soundtrack I don’t really like it that much. There’s some nice ideas here and there but overall it’s just kinda bland. Arrow’s blu looked really good though. 5/10
5 Likes
