Day Six: A Taste of Killing
I keep returning to this one. It’s just a fun romp with Craig Hill as this asshole sniper. Nico Fidenco score, hell yeah. Has a million subplots that barely come together.
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1971 - They Call Me Hallelujah
2/5
First time watch. George Hilton is Hallelujah, who is hired by revolutionaries to help acquire a fancy bag of riches. Opposing him is a motely crew that includes the Austrian empire, greedy American capitalists, and a Russian with a canon in his “guitar.”
Despite it being a first time watch, this is familiar spaghetti sauce–I felt like I knew everything before it would happen.
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Hey everyone. Greetings to all the spagvemberfesters. Writing this fromon board a shinkansen train 
Great to see so much activity here. Last year I compiled a Letterboxd list with all the movies tracked for spagvemberfest (both here as well as what I could find in social media with that hashtag search). Any LB nerds out there to take on this duty for this year or has one been started on LB already?
Cheers amigas y amigos.
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SPAGVEMBER FEST 2025
Day 5
C’e Sartana… Vendi Bara per un Pistola! (1970)
Rewatch.
Gianni Garko will always be Sartana, but George Hilton doesn’t do too bad in a non canon appearance as the character. He’s still got the cleverness and resourcefulness to survive any situation thrown at him. Not as gadget friendly, Hilton still does the cat stealth great.
Charles Southwood, a lesser known American actor is a blast as the nearly all white wearing poetry spouting gentleman gunslinger Sabata the Sabbath. He only has 40 minutes worth of screen time, but he uses it effectively.
Regular heavies Piero Lulli and Nello Pazzafini are great as the two villains Samuel Spencer and Mantas. Lulli’s the dapper crook and Pazzafini the Mexican bandido.
The lovely red haired Erika Blanc is always a welcome sight and actress in these films. Hard to believe she was pregnant at the time.
4/5 stars for being a fun little Western
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Day 5: I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death (1969) Directed by Giuliano Carnimeo (aka Anthony Ascot). Starring Gianni Garko, Frank Wolff, Etore Manni, Sal Borgese, Klaus Kinski, and Gordon Mitchell. The second film in the Sartana franchise, and not nearly as enjoyable as the original. I normally like Carnimeo/Ascot’s westerns. And I like the story being driven by someone robbing a bank (whose security guards look like New England Puritans, or “Pilgrims,” as they’re called in the US) and one of the robbers dressed up to look like Sartana. However, u the movie continued, the identity of the person(s7) who set Sartana up would make Kyzser Soze hijealous. I still enjoyed the action scenes, music and cinematography are breath-taking. Rating: 2/5.
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- Brescia: Cry of Death a.k.a If One Is Born a Swine… Kill Him
My previous comment about this film from 2007:
-With the Brescia you know that you’re not getting a quality film though he’s not among the worst directors either. I don’t think it was that bad, definitely not among the worst. There’s some interesting ideas, both Glenn Saxson’s and Gordon Mitchell’s characters feel like bystanders for most of the film and you keep waiting what is all building up to. Lynching scene was quite intense too. So, not one of the worst but still mostly quite dull. 4/10
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Spagvemberfest 2025
Day 6
Joaquin Murrieta (Sherman / 1965)
My eurowestern for 1965 and an interesting one. Directed by hack American George Sherman and starring Jeffrey Hunter and Arthur Kennedy you might expect a U.S. style B western but it’s actually quite an anti American story of racism and injustice against Mexicans after the California gold rush. It is not a top tier spag by any means but everyone delivers pretty well and I enjoyed it. Worth a watch.
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I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death is actually my favorite of the Garko entries. I’m sorry you didn’t find it more entertaining, but do give it a second chance. The double twist at the end is really well done
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- Fidani: Anything for a Friend
-Why? Oh, why did I chose this crappy film. Fidani should have stayed out of comedy westerns, his serious westerns were (mostly) unintentionally funny but when he’s trying to do comedy it’s like watching paint dry. Or actually watching paint drying is more intelligent, entertaining and don’t make you feel like total imbecile. 1/10
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I’ll give it another try. Sometimes I get caught up on comparing the sequels to the original film. I saw the other Sartana sequels and enjoyed them to a lesser degree or another. I’m surprised I’ve overlooked Angel of Death for so long 
Day Seven: Run, Man, Run
Rewatch. Lot of running in this one (obviously).
6 Likes
SPAGVEMBER FEST 2025
Day 7
Shango, la Pistola Infallibile (1970)
First time watch.
A pleasantly surprising SW made at the time the genre was starting to struggle. The story is pretty straightforward: a Texas Ranger is forced to take action to free a village bordering Mexico and the Southern United States from the tyranny of a mad Confederate Major and a greedy Mexican bandido. The film is a low budget affair, but not Fidani low budget, and director Edoardo Mulargia does a great job making the film look spectacular despite the limitations.
Anthony Steffen, who also co-wrote the screenplay, does a good job in trying to break away from his “Poor Man’s Clint Eastwood” image with the role of Shango. A Texas Ranger thrust into a difficult situation when a Southern Major refuses to accept the Confederacy’s defeat and teams with a Mexican bandit to keep the war going. Steffen plays Shango as a good man sick of war and just wants to end things peacefully. Realizing a peaceful resolution impossible, he takes action, though it pains him to. Steffen might not be the world’s greatest thespian, but he does do pretty well in the part.
Eduardo Fajardo, one of the favorite Spanish baddies of the genre, delivers another fine performance as Major Droster. At first looking like a “Poor Man’s” version of Major Jackson, Fajardo makes Droster interesting by really playing up the the South Shall Rise Again motif of Post Civil War set films, those Confederate soldiers so dedicated they refused to surrender even when the fight was lost. Fajardo has Droster looking like he could crack at any minute and does it finely.
Maurice Poli, a French-Tunisian expate living in Italy, exudes a fine presence as bandit leader Martinez. While in league with Major Droster, he doesn’t fully trust the man, apparently content with just terrorizing and throwing his authority around the village. He meets his match with Shango, and tries every dirty trick to keep his advantage.
Somber at times, but no less entertaining and engaging
The Koch DVD looks really good.
On cool note, this film came out March 21 - my birthday, albeit 10 plus years earlier.
4/5 stars
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Day 6: Joe L’Implacabile (aka Dynamite Joe)(1967) Directed Antonio Margheriti (aka Anthony Dawson). Starring Rik Van Nutter, Santiago Rivero, Halina Zalewska, and Merce Castro. Rik Van Nutter (who played Felix in one of the early Bond movies) plays explosives expert, Joe Ford. Ford is enlisted by a wealthy senator and his banking/gold mining cronies to transport the largest stache of gold in the country from the threat of bandits in the Southwest to government coffers in the east. I had heard subpar reviews about Dynamite Joe in the past, and didn’t have any interest trying it myself. At first, Nutter looked too clean cut and Boy Scout for my taste. The song numbers during the movie by his showgirl love interest, Eva (Castro), were kind of lame. When I decided to embrace it, silly parts and all, I enjoyed it more. I thought the idea of Dynamite Joe to melt down all the gold and construct a carriage made out of the precious metal was a cool idea. It’s also good to know that Margheriti went on to make better SW’s and other genre entries (e.g. Vengeance, And God Said to Cain, Death Rage, Cannibals in the Streets, and Code Name: Wild Geese). Rating: 1/5.
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Day 7: Django the Bastard (1969) Directed by Sergio Garrone. Starring Anthony Steffen, Paolo Gozlino, Luciano Rossi, and Rada Rassimov. My cinematic introduction to Steffen the Stoical. I’m surprised I never noticed, but he produced and co-wrote the screenplay with director Garrone! A mysterious, vengeful, figure in a black cloak starts haunting former Confederate officers (who saved their own skins in an act of cowardice while in combat) and their deaths soon follow. It was referred to a Gothic SW, and I think it has horror elements in it, like Se Sei Vivo Spara, And God Said to Cain, and The Cut-Throats Nine. Django the Bastard was also my introduction to Luciano Rossi, who gives a superb performance as, Jack, the deranged, violent brother of one of the Confederate officers, Rod Murdoch (Gozlino). The lovely Rada Rassimov, a starlet whose presence graced many SW’s, is superb as the damaged, melancholic wife of Rod Murdoch. Rating: 4/5.
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I sometimes feel fatigue and hypertension after watching Fidani movies, lol 
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Go with God, Gringo (1966) (orig. Vayas con Dios, gringo) - Director: Edoardo Mulargia - 4/10.
On the one hand, Mulargia sporadically exhibits a solid sense of style with some tasteful tracking and low-angle shots as well as some atmospheric lighting in addition to snappy editing energizing the composition. On the other hand, the production evidently displays a plagiaristic streak, what with its soundtrack being almost a direct copy of Morricone’s composing style and the whole story being fashioned here so as to resemble works of higher quality, yet without the nicety of rendering consequential details along the line. In other words, the project at hand is a simple-minded imitation aimed at capturing genre’s stylistic essence minus the effort of actually producing novel plot devices and fresh ideas to juice it all up.
For want of three-dimensional characters and a meaningfully elaborated intrigue of some kind, the plot boils down to a simplistic narration about a pack of convicts breaking out of jail and then having various adventures whilst en route to Mexico, absent any real attempts at genuinely substantiating the characterization here. Glenn Saxson’s character represents the good-natured outlaw, who antagonizes gang’s other members while trying to exonerate himself and to avenge his brother’s death. As opposed to Lupo’s Arizona Colt or Tessari’s A Pistol for Ringo, whose protagonists would differentiate themselves by virtue of their self-interestedness or cynicism, the male lead here proves to be a cookie-cutter gunfighter of the unequivocally good kind, meaning his redemption arc comes out extremely perfunctory in terms of general narrative progression; all the consecutive plot points consequently hinge upon this basic, schmaltzy characterological outline, becoming an extension and a function of the premise which does not feel all that substantial to begin with and comes to be so soporifically developed as to barely register in the end.
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Day Eight: The Relentless Four
Rewatch. Decent print on Tubi.
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Spagvemberfest 2025
Day 7
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone / 1966)
Nothing needs to be said about this one really except that the new Arrow Bluray does look very good indeed. Expensive but worth it. Watched the International cut which is still my favourite version.
7 Likes
Spagvemberfest 2025
Day 8
Seven Guns for Timothy (Guerrieri / 1966)
Guerrieri’s first western so I’ll cut him some slack because he went on to give us Johnny Yuma and $10,000 Blood Money. This one is a bit of a mess though as it can’t decide between violent action and silly comedy. Ida Galli looks gorgeous and Fernando Sancho is…well…Fernando Sancho. Been a good few years since I saw it last and it will be a similar time before I try it again.
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- Klimovsky: Rattler Kid
-This seems to have a bad reputation but I don’t think it’s that bad. Good quality print helps, I started with crappy Wham dvd but changed half-way to superior youtube version. Richard Wyler is really wooden in the lead though and it’s funny that he’s called Kid while being around 45 at the time of the filming. Femi Benussi looks good but her role is disappointingly unimportant. Otherwise good supporting cast too. The fight with the cacti is the highpoint of the film 4/10
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