Spagvemberfest 2025 - Fists, beans and bullets galore!

[JohnnyCashFan66]

1975 - The Return of Shanghai Joe

Rewatch… after 10 years or so. Snake oil salesman Bill Cannon wanders around the west getting into fistfights, sometimes joined by his new pal Shanghai Joe, and the pair become an annoyance to greedy oilmen including one played by Klaus Kinski.

My cats liked the movie more than I did because they got plenty of play time during protracted fistfights. (But to be fair, I chuckled a few times.)

1/5

I want a change of atmosphere later this week. I’ve already watched The Great Silence and Cut-Throats Nine this month.

Can anyone recommend a really dark spaghetti western, preferably an obscure one?

[Gingerbread80]

Day 18: Light the Fuse…Sartana Is Coming (1970) Directed by Giuliano Carnimeo. Starring Gianni Garko, Piero Lulli, Massimo Serato, Jose Jaspe, Frank Brana and Nieves Navarro. Sartana (Garko) springs a casino owner named Granville (Lulli) from a desert prison and partners up with him to find out who killed his business partner. Meanwhile, a sheriff in an eye patch (Brana), a flamboyant general (Jasper), and the widow (Navarro) of Granville’s business partner are after the half million dollars in gold. Gold, the location of where only Granville knows. The last Sartana movie with Garko in the role. Though it had some good moments, I reached my limit of quirky characters like Monk and the old guy tagalong named PlonPlon. Monk’s multi-colored hair and coat with appelates made him look like some sort of lwa from the Vodun religion. And I liked the old guy tagalong in Light the Fuse. It’s an endearing trope in SW’s that is missing in other movie genres. But, PlonPlon? Carnimeo should have just named the old guy YimYam. Rating: 2.5/5.

[makesthemovie]

SPAGVEMBER FEST 2025

Day 18

Johnny Hamlet (1968)

Rewatch

The genre’s second Shakespeare adaptation, and a very faithful one too. The Bard’s tormented Danish Prince Hamlet gets transported to Post Civil War Texas as a returning Confederate soldier determined to find the find the truth about his father’s murder. Enzo G. Castellari and co writer Tito Capri make an interesting and unique change in that their Hamlet isn’t consumed by madness and keeps a level head while getting at the truth.

Andrea Giordana never grew on me the way George Hilton or Anthony Steffen did, but here does quite a fine job in the Hamlet role, that intense stare with his eyes working very well to his benefit. While he doesn’t recite Shakespeare dialogue, he does great with the paraphrasing of a few Hamlet siliques. Giordana has the right face for the Western and rocks the scruffy beard look.

Gilbert Roland, Hollywood’s dashing Mexican character actor, is fantastic in the role of Johnny’s friend and mentor Horaz/Horace. He too doubts how Johnny’s father died and does what he can to the help the young man expose the real culprits.

Horst Frank, the number 2 German bad guy of SW’s after Klaus Kinski, has some of his finest work as Claude Hamilton, the Western Claudius. Unlike the Bard’s cowardly original, Claude is shrewed, calculating, and downright brutal and vial with no regrets for his actions.

Castellari’s brother Enio Girolami (looking a little like a Poor Man’s Burt Reynolds) and genre regular Pedro Sanchez make for a fine pair of sadistic, laughing and smiling baddies in Ross and Guild, unique takes on the minor characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

A must watch entry in the genre

5/5

[Bill_san_Antonio]

15. Carnimeo: Have a Good Funeral, My Friend… Sartana Will Pay
    -Film with one of my all-time favorite soundtracks. So good that it’s been recycled in many other sw’s. Entertaining and quite funny film at times too. 7/10

[Toscano]

The run-up to Christmas wouldn’t be the same without one of my fav. SWs…a festive one, to boot. This is a beautiful pressie to unwrap at any time of the year…

Giuliano and Lorella at their Seasonal best…

Carol singing from Fernando…

No one hangs baubles more exquisitely than the supremely beautiful Lorella de Luca…

[runner]

Light the Fuse…Sartana Is Coming (1970)

@Gingerbread80

Rating: 2.5/5.

Also mine…(5/10).

[Grinder]

No. 18: JOKO, INVOCA DIO … E MUORI

One of my favourite revenge SW with great cast and score. Very brutal with elements of gothic horror.

8/10

[Gingerbread80]

I have to confess that I have a soft spot for the Return of Shanghai Joe despite being a cheesy sequel . Vengeance (1968) with Richard Harrison is a noticeably dark, brutal revenge SW. Harrison is especially humorless and badass as Jocko.

[Gingerbread80]

Definitely one of my favorites as well. Harrison is so angry and vengeful, it’s fun to watch.

[Gingerbread80]

Have a Good Funeral My Friend…Sartana Will Pay (1970) is still my favorite Sartana

[Phil_H]

Spagvemberfest 2025

Day 17

No Room to Die (Garrone / 1969)

It wouldn’t seem like Spgvember without at least one Steff and this one does very nicely. Plenty of slow eye reveals from under the hat, a ludicrously high body count and the obligatory dive and shoot. All present and correct. Plus the luscious Nicoletta Macchiavelli and the smarmy Billy Berger. What’s not to like?

[runner]

@Phil_H

Plenty of slow eye reveals from under the hat, a ludicrously high body count and the obligatory dive and shoot. All present and correct. Plus the luscious Nicoletta Macchiavelli and the smarmy Billy Berger. What’s not to like?

Another one I also like, nice music as well.

34 Ramon The Mexican (Maurizio Pradeaux) music Felice Di Stefano 1966
35 Death Sentence (Mario Lanfranchi) 1968
36 No Room To Die/Hanging For Django/A Noose For Django (Sergio Garrone) music Vasili Kojucharov and Elsio Mancuso 1969
37 Requiescant/ Kill And Pray (Carlo Lizzani) 1967
38 A Hole In The ForeHead/ A Hole Between The Eyes (Giuseppe Vari) music Roberto Pregadio 1968

[TheyCallMeGoldMod]

Day 19: Arizona Colt

Rewatch.

[makesthemovie]

SPAGVEMBER FEST 2025

Day 19

Uno Dopo l’Altro (1968)

Rewatch

This is a solid and fun mid level Western series that mixes the revenge plot, bank robbery plot, and the detective element. A well liked Colonel who committed a treasonous act during the Mexican American War gets blackmailed by the bandit leader he made the deal with to let his bank be robbed. Turns out the Colonel planned on robbing his own bank and made the bandits the scapegoats to save himself. A loyal teller is killed by the Colonel and soon a spectacled gunslinger arrives to avenge him, and all sorts of truths and twists come out.

Richard Harrison, one of the many beloved American expats of the genre, gets to do something totally different in playing a well dressed gunslinger named Stan who wears glasses. When he learns someone he’s close to was murdered, he sets out to find the truth and winds up embroiled in a plot involving greed and cover up.

Jose Bodalo and Jose Manuel Martin offer fine supporting roles as dual baddies.Bodalo is Colonel Jefferson, a seemingly upstanding war veteran and banker who in fact a war criminal guilty of selling out his men to the enemy to split a cache of money. When the partner crime decides to collect his share, Jefferson decides to disappear, but not before staging a robbery on his own bank and framing his blackmailers. Martin plays Espartero, the soldier turned bandit leader who made the deal with Jefferson. After being framed for the robbery he didn’t have time to commit, begs Stan to help prove the frame up.

Hugo Blanco, Paolo Gozlino, Jose Jaspe, and Jose Canalejas offer fine supporting performances.

A fun SW that needs more fans

4/5

[Wobble (Timothy Rogerson)]

My watches this month:

A Genius, Two Idiots and a Dupe (1975)

Yankee (1966)

Ramon the Mexican (1966)

[Grinder]

No. 19 IL TEMPO DEGLI AVVOLTOI

Great to see this again after about 10 years. I did not remember Frank Wolff performing that psychopathic. What an asshole character

Really brutal all the way with a high bodycount, George Hilton as womanizer Kitosch, nice ladies, great score, great landscapes…good SW.

7/10

[Phil_H]

Spagvemberfest 2025

Day 18

The Desperados (Levin / 1969)

A British western in all but name and as bad as a western as only we can make it seems. Vince Edwards leads the handful of American actors and is god awful while Jack Palance tries to out-Palance himself and chews so much scenery it is a wonder he has any teeth left. Neville Brand appears as the marshall and looks much the worse for wear from years of drinking. Overweight and missing a tooth by this stage he cuts a sorry figure. Pretty much everyone else is British (Sylvia Sims, Kate O’Mara, Kenneth Cope, Christian Roberts et al) which is not surprising as the Producer, Irving Allen, made most of his films in England despite being American. To be honest, it’s just bloody awful.

[Admin (Sebastian)]

In terms of Spagvemberfest I just concluded a most magnificent meeting with @Alleluja and friends of the Tokyo spaghetti western community. What a blast!

[Gingerbread80]

Day 19: The Return of Ringo (1965) Directed by Duccio Tessari. Starring Giuliano Gemma, Jorge Martin, Fernando Sancho, Nieves Navarro, Lorella De Luca, Antonio Casas, and Manuel Munoz. The Return of Ringo has always been in my Top 10 list of SW’s since I first saw it 10 years ago. It’s powerful, rousing musical score, gorgeous cinematography and fine performance by every cast member has always resonated with me. But, more so after watching it again.

Montgomery “Ringo” Brown (Gemma) returns to his hometown after fighting in the Civil War. Only to find his hometown of Membres to be virtually a ghost town. All of the young men have been killed off by a racist Mexican gang run by the Fuentes brothers: Paco (Martin) and Esteban (Sancho). The only law in town is a sheriff, who is an alcoholic, and can’t carry a gun because he is a gringo. To add to Ringo’s dissociating horror, he finds out that his father was murdered by the Fuentes gang and Hallie (his wife and mother of his young daughter) is engaged to be married to the self-absorbed Paco. He dons brown face and acts like a mestizo peon in order to eavesdrop on Eateban Fuentes at a local Mexican cantina. Ringo tangos with Esteban and his men and resists the romantic of the seductive Rosita (Navarro). Rosita seems to remember Monty Brown from her past and suspects Ringo to be him. She also wants the handsome stranger despite her involvement with Esteban. Ringo gets his footing and appears to find the man who he was after being taken in by the eccentric and benevolent florist, Morning Glory (Muniz). Through working for Morning Glory, Ringo begins to work in the Fuentes household and gets closer in proximity to Hallie and his daughter. Through his budding friendships with the world weary Sheriff Carson (Casas), Morning Glory, Rosita, a friendly saloon owner and his Apache medicine man friend, Ringo must fight back against the Fuentes brothers’ iron rule over the town. Equally in importance, he must show Hallie that he is still alive and fight for her love as well as their children and his home.

I forgot that Fernando Sancho was in Return of Ringo and what a humorless thug he plays as Esteban. He is known for playing banditos and generals of the lovable scoundrel mold. There is no charm or endearment with the character Esteban. It took a adjustment but I thought he played the straight up smug, overconfident rogue in the movie very well. Rating: 5/5.

[Toscano]

‘Per Qualche Dollaro in Piu’ (1965)

This film has had such a f…-up time since Sergio Leone directed it in 1965…what with innumerable cuts, and more cuts etc.
Trying to find a decent copy of Leone’s original conception has been nigh impossible, and it has been akin to Indiana Jones locating the Ark and Holy Grail…

Perhaps because of this, I was never so much a fan of it as 'Fistful and ‘GBU’…My opinion has now changed. I still put ‘GBU’ first and foremost, but ‘FAFDM’ has now edged out ‘AFOD’ into third place…

Having said that, it’s like asking a doting father to name his favourite of three sons…nigh impossible, for each one has their own DNA, their own magic and high and low notes that make up their persona.

I find it a shame that some people occasionally look down on ‘Fistful’, simply because it was a re-make of ‘Yojimbo’. In my humble, this doesn’t detract from the undeniable fact that withgout Sergio’s mind blowing re-imagination, we would now have no ‘SWDB’…and thank God we do!

‘Arrow’s’ recent BD release of ‘For a Few Dolars More’ has done the film (and the 1965 gifted crew behind it) immensely proud…and, my goodness…hasn’t that added to the enjoyment of this near as dammit perfect SW?
It has most certainly gone up astronomically high in my humble opinion.

I find it hard to believe that’s it’s 46 years ago since I first watched it on BBC TV, in a pan and scan version -but still fell in love with it. That speaks volumes.

It’s even harder to believe that it is now 25 years ago that the NFT hosted a Sergio Leone event, at which Sir Christoper Frayling and Alex Cox attended…
“Time sure flies…”

The ‘Dollars Trilogy’…the eighth wonder of the world…where would we be without it?

I’m saving a viewing of ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ until the last day of Spagvemberfest…After all, such a landmark in film history deserves a banquet of ‘San Miguel’, ‘Rioja’ wine, Manchego cheese, Serrano ham, and olives…