The Revenge of the Resurrected / Un dólar de recompensa / La preda e l'avvoltoio (Rafael Romero Marchent, 1972)

[Mickey13]

Copied from the Spagvemberfest 2022 thread:

@Mickey13

While it may seem a little fastidious to fuss about a gritty revenge yarn made as late as 1972, the fact of the matter is that its paper-thin storyline, odd contrapuntal score and hit-and-miss rendition mark this one as more of an amusing curiosity rather than a notable work capable of standing on its own. Few of the genre examples were able to conjure up a genuine atmosphere of suspense and mystery, but here genre’s one-dimensionality reaches its absolute nadir in the way the laughably perfunctory tale plays out.

Most of the more accomplished revenge stories diversify their otherwise shallow screenwriting mechanics with such motifs as the master-pupil theme or something to that effect, yet creative measures of this sort are hardly to be found here and most of it comes down to an otiose rehash of the same tropes you have seen dozens of times before in much better ventures, except that they are presented here in a merely okay fashion. The whodunit mystery, which has a depth of a toilet bowl, appears to be solely a pretext to encase a number of shootouts and other standard action filler. I guess it is preferable to some slapstick abomination, but do not expect an iota of nuance here, as this is strictly mediocre stuff.