Bad Day at Black Rock is the best film I’ve seen by him; great performances from everyone involved (Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin) and taut direction; a terrific example of a modern-day Western. Sturges though, wasn’t would I would class an “auteur”; despite his financial success, even his finest Westerns aren’t as good as Mann’'s, Boetticher’s or even Wellman’s. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is pretty good and of course he made two films, The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape which are entirely iconic and essential viewing even if they aren’t “great”. Oh, and The Eagle Has Landed is enjoyable in a silly way.
Will give those a look. Also notice he has made “Chino” which I still have not watched
I like Chino. Maybe to slow for some folk though. Totally different to say Joe Kidd.
All of the westerns Sturges made in the 50s are pretty good. Alos Hour of the Gun and Chino (aka The Valdez Horses). I prefer them all to Mag 7, his most famous and most influential one. His weakest western is Sergeant’s Three, a minor Sinatra Clan outing. Joe Kidd comes next. And he with The Halleluja Trail made a long and rambling western comedy/parody, which is fun to watch.
Compared to Mann and Boetticher he is very underrated. And his best westerns are doubtless better than most of Boetticher’s and most of Mann’s. And most of Wellman’s too.
‘Fistful Of Dollars’ (1964)
-Clint Eastwood
Plot: Sergio Leone’s classic about a mysterious strangers involvement with warring factions in a Mexican border town
Phantoms Review: Nothing I can say, that hasn’t been said before…classic, brilliant, one of the best.
I’m enjoying my 31 Days of Halloween and I’m looking forward to the rather more challenging (imo) 31 Days of Christmas in December, but these magnificent endurance tests have left a rather ugly November-shaped hole in my calendar, so I’m going to plug the gap by resolving to watch a Spag every day from All Saint’s to St. Andrew’s. I’ve got thirty titles cued up already: Fifteen that I’ve never seen, plus the fifteen I feel are most in need of a re-watch here at casa.caress. And I’ll be kicking off a week on Saturday with A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die (The Autephex “WhoIsThisDoin’ThisSyntheticTypeOfAlphaBetaPsychedelicFunkin’?” Remix 
) (Giraldi, 1968).
Autephex’s version of A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die is incredible - having only ever viewed this version, I can only imagine how much of an improvement it must be over the U.S. cut; certainly when I next compose my Top 20 it’ll be in there.
Of course cannot take any credit for how good the film is, but always appreciate seeing that people are enjoying the edit
Its about time for me to also rewatch A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die - has been long enough since my last viewing to where it will be somewhat fresh again.
And I am also making November the month of spaghetti - I’m going to try & stick to mostly top shelf material to see where my top 20 stands. Its been a while since I tried to revise that list. But it will be hard to stick to only the best stuff for an entire month…
Barbarosa (1982)
Quirky little movie, fun and off-centre just like Willie.
‘Curse Of The Undead’ (1959)
-Michael Pate, Eric Fleming
Plot: Mysterious Gunfighter for hire Drake Robey is really a vampire, and it’s up to the town preacher to save it’s citizens and his girlfriend
Phantoms Review:
This is one of my annual Halloween movie treats. It appeals to both the horror and western fan in me. While it’s definitely a “B” movie, the film treats it’s respective genres very respectfully. It’s smartly written, has a great atmospheric feel to it , and has a wonderful, spooky music score. Filled with recognizable western character actors, who do a fine job. This film is worth watching.
A Man called Noon
Put my thoughts about it in the film’s thread
I tried a comedy western for a chance, the Martin and Lewis vehicle [size=12pt]PARDNERS[/size]
An enjoyable, if unmemorable effort
[size=12pt]http://westernsontheblog.blogspot.be/2014/10/pardners-1956.html[/size]
I just started Pardners today but I had to stop after 15 minutes because friend came to stop by. I’ve seen quite many Lewis films but I didn’t knew about this film before I found a dvd from library. Great supporting cast.
Over the weekend: a first look at A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die (Giraldi 1968) (autephex’s composite version) and a long-overdue re-watch of Sabata (Parolini, 1969). A Minute to Pray… was excellent imo, Sabata was considerably less so, but still a decent movie for a lazy or a rainy Sunday afternoon. I enjoyed William Berger’s performance far more than I recall having done so previously.
Today I shall be watching Death Sentence (Lanfranchi, 1968). Never seen it, really looking forward to finally seeing it.
Now Death Sentence is one I really need to rewatch, I haven’t seen it in many years… great idea
Today, I’m going to be giving a second look to the much heralded And God Said to Cain (Margheriti, 1969). I always felt that there was a cracking movie hiding in the gloom there somewhere, but my copy (on the Spaghetti Western 44 Movie Collection cheapo boxset) was so very black and free of any detail that it rendered the movie nigh-on unwatchable and remains one of the only times when dodgy film quality has been an issue for me. Still, my recent acquisition of a decent copy of the film means I’m going to give And God Said to Cain a proper go at last.
As to Death Sentence, which I watched yesterday: Fugging brilliant, outstanding. One of the very best westerns, Italian or otherwise, that I’ve ever seen. Easily crashes my Spag Top Ten. Even the segment centered around a card game was tense and interesting, and I usually switch off for those scenes in other spags such as the Sartana pics or whatever. I noticed on here that Death Sentence was Robin Clarke’s only Spag, and what a shame that is, because I thought he was superb. To be honest I’m just itching to watch it all over again. I can see this finally settling as one of my three or four favourite spags of all time, eventually.
Today I’m going to try The Specialists (Corbucci, 1969). A little apprehensive with this one; part of me thinks, well, it’s a Corbucci movie so it’s bound to be a winner, but I also think that there must be a reason (beyond simple availability) why this pic is a relative minnow stacked up against the Corbucci pics that surround it, chronologically. Still, that’s all rather unfair until I’ve seen the movie, so let’s get to it.
Glad that I was actually able to SEE And God Said to Cain yesterday. The immeasurably improved picture quality with which I enjoyed it this time around saw the movie soar a good fifteen places or so up my personal list of favourite westerns but, ultimately, it’s still a strange picture, albeit one that definitely stands out from pretty-much all of the others. That “Horror Organ” score suits the “Castle Transylvania” look of the movie but bloody hell, it’s distracting. IMO, that is. Great turn from Klaus Kinski, though.
EDIT: Well, that’s The Specialists watched, and I have to say I was underwhelmed. Liked the Alpen backdrop, didn’t like much else I’m afraid. I didn’t connect with the story, I found Johnny Hallyday dull, lacking in charisma and tbh a bit wooden. “The French Elvis”, Wikipedia tells me. Hm. I’d say that an uninspired turn in a 1969 western marks him out more accurately as “The French Glen Campbell”, myself. And what were the hippies all about? I mean, I’ve seen anachronistic flared ‘n’ flowery late sixties/early seventies influences creep into the late 19th-century period costuming choices of a few Spags before (Four of the Apocalypse and ¡Matalo! spring immediately to mind), but this just felt purposely obstinate. They couldn’t have been more out of place if they’d begun freaking out to Steve Hillage or The Mothers of Invention, which they seemed on the verge of doing at any time. It didn’t help that the copy I watched snapped constantly between the Italian audio and the English dub; I had the subtitles on, I should really have just watched it in Italian, but it just wasn’t gripping me anyway.
Ah well. I guess they can’t all be zingers.
Today, it was a second look at Vengeance (Margheriti, 1968). It’s a movie I’d only previously seen in super-murky-vision on YouTube and, as with And God Said to Cain, I was looking forward to checking out a slightly more watchable copy (and as I write that, I only now realise that both pics were by Antonio Margheriti). Anyway I found it a far more enjoyable movie this time around and it’s catapulted into the lower reaches of my Spag Top 30 as a result. Messrs. Harrison and Camaso are both fantastic.
You’re not alone, last.caress. I didn’t find the flick too impressive as well. Seemed as though Corbucci had taken too much acid whilst making the movie.
Not sure what version of The Specialist you watched, but I did a fandub mixed with the French audio. It still isn’t perfect, but I spent quite a lot of time cleaning up the audio as best I could. Original english dub was in pretty bad shape. I’m guessing you went with Westernfan’s fandub which is Italian/english, no disrespect to WF, got a lot of love for his dedication, but his mixed dubs don’t use any kind of noise correction and can be distracting when they switch back and forth between lots of hiss and no hiss.
I actually trimmed the dialogue portions on that one down so that the english was used only for spoken words, with the silence in between being the french track. took forever.
These days if an english track is that bad, I prefer to just use it in its entirety instead as its less work and noise removal always produced warbly sound artefacts, unless its only a small amount of noise
Edit: surprised to see no one has added a rip of my fandub dvd at cg, I will do so soon