Just watched The Drifting Avenger (1968) starring Ken Takakura and featuring a small role from the legendary Takashi Shimura.
Apart from the Japanese origins and the Japanese bloke playing the starring role, it’s exactly like a spaghetti western with the usual tropes and story beats. Ken’s family is killed by a group of bandits, so he plans to get revenge, and is trained by a gunfighter along the way. It loses way too much steam around the second half though, as it shifts focus to a boring melodrama plot about one of the bandits wife and child who steal the focus for far too much of the end.
Still worth a watch though! Has some good shootouts and is shot very nicely. I watched a very nice DVD rip from Rarelust, if anyone wants it, shoot me a DM and I can send you a Google Drive link or something (avoids having to deal with Rarelust’s 60kb/s download cap )
It’s been a while since I’ve written here. These last few days I’ve been watching a lot of Spaghetti that I hadn’t seen yet or that I didn’t remember well.
Here they go (I’ll use the original names because I’m Spanish and I don’t know the exact name of the films in the United States or the United Kingdom):
Il pistolero dell’Ave Maria: I saw it a few years ago, when I first started with the genre. I have to say that I remembered it as a better film. For me it doesn’t stand the test of time like others. 5 out of 10.
The quick and the dead: OK, it’s not a spaghetti western but I consider it a good homage to the genre by Sam Raimi. 6 out of 10.
Un uomo, un cavallo, una pistola: simple and boring, I don’t like Tony Anthony, nor the Italian locations, nor the plot (a copy of “A Fistful of Dollars”). 4 out of 10.
Un par de asesinos: solid western by Rafael Romero Marchent with Garko. Small doses of comedy in an entertaining film in the vein of his other works, but also forgettable. Marchent has better films like “Dos cruces en Danger Pass”, “Garringo” or “¿Quién grita venganza?”. 5 out of 10.
Shalako: well directed and well acted by Connery and Bardot but this film said absolutely nothing to me and I don’t consider it a spaghetti western at all. 4 out of 10.
Al di la’ Della legge: it’s sad to say, but I expected more from this one. Van cleef and 1968, good combination…but no. Bad film, boring, it seems to me that it has two films in one (at least in the Spanish cut), one with more comedy and another more dramatic and the transition from the more comical part to the serious one is not well carried out and it doesn’t work either in the comedy or in the drama. 3 out of 10
Minnesota Clay: Primitive spaghetti by Corbucci. It’s not bad, but you don’t get the Corbucci style like in other films pre-Django like Johnny Oro. Only in the final shootout can we discern the hidden talent behind the camera that we will see in later films. 4 out of 10.
La morte sull’alta collina: extremely boring film with Peter Lee. It’s not worth investing an hour and a half in it (and not worth writing more either). 2 out of 10
Se vuoi vivere… spara: a simple B-series spaghetti western (if that term exists). Cheap, tacky, Ivan Rassimov does everything possible to make the film sink irremediably…very forgettable, but if you have low expectations and just want to enjoy a spaghetti full of clichés, maybe you’ll like it. 4 out of 10.
Abre tu fosa amigo… llega Sabata: probably one of the worst spaghetti I’ve seen. It’s a kind of “parody” of a spaghetti western but without any fun. Very cheesy production by the Balcazar brothers and Juan Bosch. I didn’t even finish it… 2 out of 10.
Il suo nome gridava vendetta: predictable but entertaining spaghetti by Mario Caiano. Steffen is good as always (at least when he plays that kind of role) and seeing William Berger is always a good thing. Maybe a little more serious than I usually like in a spaghetti, but it’s okay. 5 out of 10.
Il West ti va stretto, amico… è arrivato Hallelujah: God, I don’t know why I ended up watching that movie… I have to say that I enjoyed the first Hallelujah movie and I like how this second one starts, but it gets messy and boring at times. The worst of all is that the main character doesn’t have all the prominence that one would expect from this kind of movie. 3 out of 10.
Un minuto per pregare, un instante per morire: I saw this movie several years ago and I didn’t like it very much, I think it was a censored TV-rip edition because I didn’t remember much of what happened in the movie. I watched it again a few weeks ago and although I’m not entirely convinced by Alex Cord’s performance, I think it has some purely spaghetti moments that are quite good. Very entertaining and with a discouraging ending. 6 out of 10.
A man called Noon: just seen today. I think it’s a pretty decent movie, multiple locations (in fact, it has all the recognizable locations in a spaghetti western: Tabernas desert, La Pedriza in Madrid, the three different Western towns in Almería…), well filmed, with a good soundtrack by Luis Bacalov… I feel that it’s more American western than Eurowestern, but it’s okay. The bad thing is that it has a confusing plot and I think that the final shootout is not up to the level of the rest of the movie. It could have been a little better. 6 out of 10.
Le goût de la violence: very surprised with this little masterpiece by Robert Hossein. Maybe we can’t consider it a spaghetti as such, it’s more like a kind of Viva Zapata by Elia Kazan. Awesome black and white photography, well acted by Hossein, an artistic film with moments of great beauty and intensity. Highly recommended for all kinds of film buffs. 8 out of 10.
You’re right, I confused it with “Un dollaro tra i denti”. I don’t like either of them (I haven’t seen “Lo straniero di silenzio” yet, but I don’t think I will do it)
Watched a double bill of Anthony Steffen and Peter Lee Lawrence… Sabata the Killer (the Hard Boxed X-rated release, thoroughly enjoyed the Peckinpah-esque finale) and Garringo
The a rewatch of two of my favourite Spaghetti fliks, Django the Bastard and The Big Gundown
Watched Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog on Netflix a few days ago. Handsomely filmed but was expecting a little more given the 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Casting upper class British actor, Benedict Cumberbatch as grizzled ranch owner Phil Burbank was quite daring (and successful). It covers new ground, but the pace seemed unnecessarily glacial and the main plot twist rather poorly contrived (how did Peter know in advance to save those strips of hide?).
Partly in view of the director, I was expecting Rose, the only significant female character, who starts off independent and strong, to be more dynamic, and not to collapse into self-pity and alcoholism at the sight of a piano!
Just finished watching Gunfight at Red Sands and I loved it The pace of the film is good, the plot is interesting, soundtrack cool and there’s a cute sheriff (He’s such a douche, though.) I’m on my period and my hormones are going crazy over Giacomo Rossi Stuart. Don’t mind me
An excellent pairing of Giuliano Gemma and Lee Van Cleef, courtesy of the ‘Arrow’ BD.
Great gun-play, an intelligent script, and featuring an engaging soundtrack by Riz Ortolani.
This is, in effect, a unique SW take on ‘The Sorcerer and the Apprentice’ tale…and a highly enjoyable one it is.
I just recently rewatched Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) with Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Jeff Bridges, and Mickey Rourke. When I had last watched the movie, I had gotten on board with many of the critics who trashed it for Cimino’s use of sepia tones and poor lighting used throughout the film as well as Cimino’s overall vision and its bombing at the box office. The film wound up bankrupting United Artists. Heaven’s Gate takes place during the violent 1890’s Johnson County War in Wyoming. In particular the infamous chapter when an association of wealthy cattlemen in Cheyenne plotted to have a growing number of poor Eastern European immigrant cattle owners killed off by an army of mercenaries and Pinkerton agents. All with the complicity of the governor and state legislators. I enjoyed the film after having given it another try.
I’ve come to believe that when it comes to Michael Cimino and his filmmaking style, viewers either like him or they don’t. I’ve rarely met a fellow movie buff that has taken a neutral position with Cimino’s films, like The Deer Hunter (1978) or Year of the Dragon (1987). Either they like them or hate them. I think Heaven’s Gate is looked at in the same light. There are viewers who will either like it or they won’t.
)
The pace of the film is good, the plot is interesting, soundtrack cool and there’s a cute sheriff 
(He’s such a douche, though.) I’m on my period and my hormones are going crazy over Giacomo Rossi Stuart. Don’t mind me 
