ouch, ten years - one channel here broadcast SWs from time to time (sometimes almost every week), but it´s not very diverse, they repeat stuff over and over (mainly SWs with Hill and Spencer)
I’m just wondering have you ever been to the ruins where they filmed the blind dead movies?
Well I just didn't like it, I think they just put some out of the normal elements like a japanese actor and some gothic/terror feeling and drop them in the plot in a clumsy easy way, without a clever background story to support them.Agree, the story isn't elaborate at all, very predictable, but it isn't problem for me. Because of great atmosphere I would rate it so high, besides we've got here very nice landscapes, that gives an outstanding and unique impression.
In the end I was expecting more I guess, and got disappointed, perhaps that's why I'm being so critic on this oneI can understand it. I sometimes have too big expectations and it ends in the same way to me. That's why I dislike Un fiume di dollari so much. :-\
Actually yes and many times Col. some of my Mountain Bikes rides were many times near by the place, I’ll try to find if I have some pics. In any case I would only move to Slovenia for the nice looking girls they have there, couldn’t care less about the fact Portuguese not shown any spags, I have them anyway
Thanks for the info, would love to see pics if you have em. I hope nobody got their blood sucked on any of those mountain bike excursions.
movies4men in the UK showed it a few years ago as “Today It’s Me… Tomorrow It’s You”. Was a good looking full wide print.
An enjoyable enough title. Half of the fun is him trying to recrute the men. The last part was in rather plain looking woods. I guess it makes it different than the usual western town showdown setting.
Whilst I am here, the same channel is now showing Terrence Hill - Doc West western in two-parts (2009). Italian production but I believe filmed in New Mexico.
Saw this one along time ago, don’t remember much about it. Will try to watch it again soon.
Well, after a second viewing it’s an okay western. Halsey was good enough for me and the cast was good too, especially Berger. The only let down was the villain Nakadai, he overacts a bit and he doesn’t wear a hat. Is this a japenese thing or what? Also, what kind sword was that! That’s something you find at a butcher shop. Anyways, in my opinion
Jeff Cameron would have been a better lead villain. 4/5
Nakadai was the main reason i watched this. The rest of the cast is not bad, but there is barely a story there, full of common places, and the pacing is weak. The climax feels empty and hardly memorable at all. Overall, the movie doesn’t deliver enough goods to move from the “average” area.
I thought this was good looking but average stuff for most of the movie, until they got in the woods. I liked that part a lot, I thought it was something different for an otherwise so typical SW, specially the night scenes. I also liked the fact that the Japanese villain wasn’t a stereotype. Yes it’s over the top and overacted, but that’s how most SW villains are.
I enjoyed it overall and I’d say it’s a bit avobe average, but it would’ve been better if the members of the gang would’ve had more screen time, specially Berger and Spencer who are wasted in my opinion.
Oh, and I also liked the cello in the soundtrack. Quite different from the usual SW sounds, and fitted the autumn atmosphere very well.
Bill Kiowa (Brett Halsey) practices his pistol-handling everyday in prison, using a carefully carved wooden replica gun. Kiowa was framed, we learn, and up to the very morning of his release, he repeatedly whips the gun up and out of an imaginary holster, hoping to perfect his draw for the one moment he has dreamt of: facing the man who framed him.
TODAY WE KILL opens as Kiowa gets his release, and the story unfolds with Kiowa rounding up a gang of mercenaries to help track down and confront the man who framed him, James Elfego. (The character’s nationality is never mentioned but he is played by the Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai. Elfego dresses and acts like the other cowpokes in his gang – minus a hat – so the casting might be a lark, or meant to have some deeper subtext.)
Kiowa’s father gives him a stash of loot to use for paying off the hired guns, and dad is happy to recommend four top-shelf men for the job. Each man is a colorful, distinct personality, and each is played by a legitimate Euro-Western leading man, making the team an all-star squad of sorts. We have Franco “Chet Davis” Borelli, star of DEAD MEN DON’T MAKE SHADOWS, as a clean-cut ladies man; Wayde Preston from BALLAD OF DEATH VALLEY portraying the no-nonsense sheriff; Western stalwart William “(Banjo)” Berger as a frilled, bejeweled, fancy-boy card-shark; and lastly, the legendary Bud Spencer in full-on “Bambino” mode in the part of a bearded Herculean giant.
The first third of the film, wherein Kiowa assembles the gang, is kind of light-hearted, and has a BLUES BROTHERS-esque “let’s get the old band back together” feel to it. Despite Halsey’s menacing demeanor, the gang is seemingly primed more for a rip-roaring good ol’ Western adventure than a fierce, intense showdown with a band of violent savages. Particularly curious is the conceit where Kiowa will meet with a prospective gunman, lay out the terms of the job, and, BANG, we cut to a shot of them riding together side-by-side. So first it is Kiowa alone, then he picks up his first hire and it’s two men riding, then another hire and bang, three men riding, etc. Set to the pic’s spritely, bouncy, main theme, it’s definitely more mirthful than menacing, though hard to determine if that’s due to the director’s intent or his clumsy touch.
Once the crew is in place, we are shown a sepia-toned flashback as to the source of our star’s anger: Elfego viciously raping and murdering Kiowa’s halfbreed wife, then announcing his intent to have Kiowa framed for the murder and a robbery he was about to commit.
Finally, Kiowa’s gang set out on their cat-and-mouse chase of Elfego and his gang. After a long series of tricks and ambushes, the good guys have whittled down the bad to a single man, Elfego himself. Kiowa finally gets his chance after the long years in jail practicing for the moment … and despite the need to deliver a mini-monologue before doing it, he at last disarms and kills his rival.
The story has been given much attention by fans and students of cinema, due to it being an early writing effort of horror film master Dario Argento. But truth told, it is a very ordinary and generic revenge story, one that could have been done by anybody. The interesting aspect of a Japanese man playing the villain is never really addressed within the story itself, so we don’t know if it’s a “choice” by the writer, or what.
Direction by Tonino Cervi is efficient if unremarkable. This film is the only Western on his resume, and its direction is straightforward, and notwithstanding the sepia flashback setpiece, pretty ordinary. The scenery lends a bit of moody and distinctive ambience to the action, especially in the final showdown sequence, which is set in a lovely, densely-wooded forest. And as mentioned previous, the pic’s recurring title music is a little bit too bright and happy to be a good match for the revenge setting of the story. Angelo Lavagnino is the composer. Yet despite the ill fit of the pic, it is a catchy theme.
Brett Halsey (billed as Montgomery Ford), an American TV veteran leads the cast as the morose and intense Bill Kiowa. This is the first I’ve seen of him in a Western, and I am impressed. His style here is straight from the Franco Nero Django school, with bright brooding eyes, stubbly beard, and big oversized scarf. He is the lone member of the “good guys” that is played straight, that is to say, without a wink or smirk, and he’s very good in the part. Wayde Preston is good, bringing a John Wayne-type swagger as the quick-shooting lawman. Bud Spencer is as ever, the wry, sarcastic behemoth of a man, always fighting with his fists rather than engaging in gunplay. (And just an aside, but why does Spencer never wear a hat in any of his roles? Vanity? Who knows.) The standout among Kiowa’s men is the delightful William Berger as Colt Moran. His sideways grin and dapper styling are a delight to watch, especially in a scene where he confronts an underhanded poker cheater in a saloon. Toward the film’s climax, Berger dispatches a bad guy and betrays no emotion other than to bemoan the blood splatter on his fine, frilly shirt.
The villains are led by the evil Elfego, played by Tatsuya Nakadai, a veteran of the Japanese screen including several appearances in Kurosawa pics. His performance here is pretty brilliant, all wide-eyed, intense, and deeply felt. He is a good match for Halsey’s low-key, brooding hero. Elfego is dressed like a western gentleman (no hat, though) and packs a big machete in addition to his pair of six-shooters. Was the machete intended to bring to mind a samurai sword? Maybe, but I really wish we had some explanation to his character’s origin and backstory. It might have opened up a new level of intrigue to an ordinary plot.
I saw this pic on a widescreen 35mm digital remaster (on a US DVD from VCI). The picture is good but not great; a murkier version of the full film can be found on YouTube as of this writing.
It’s not an essential eurowestern, but I would call TODAY WE KILL, TOMORROW WE DIE a solid entry in the genre. Worth seeking out for a standard tale efficiently done, and for fine turns by Halsey, Berger, and especially Tatsuya Nakadai.
B-, 7 out of 10 stars.
The direction is good, not unremarkable. It has a few interesting and stylish moments (for instance when Kiowa faces Elfego - or El Fuego - for the first time).
The biggest drawback was straight-forward, almost lousy plot, but not the direction IMHO.
Rewatched this one yesterday.
This time around I watched a torrent recently uploaded on CG. Remarkably, it had much better video quality than my very mediocre Dutch DVD.
I also gathered some new info on the movie, so i’ll be reworking my review of it the next few days
The movie is still one of those spaghettis that feel like ‘the real spaghetti deal’, just like, for instance, Pistoleros, Arizona Colt, Navajo Joe or Minnesota Clay: they’re not particularly great, but they have the right ingredients, plus that little bit of extra (in this case those autumnal colors and the blade wielding Nakadai)
That’s strange, but this was my first Nakadai movie. Now the guy has become one of my very favorite actors.
And Oggi a me… isn’t great, but very entertaining indeed.
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I’ve fully revised the whole thing. I was finally able to figure out where this beautifully looking Spagh was actually filmed, so there’s a lot of new location info:
[size=12pt][url=http://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Today_It%27s_Me…_Tomorrow_It%27s_You_Review]http://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Today_It's_Me…_Tomorrow_It%27s_You_Review[url]http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/525/newoggiame1.jpg/[/url][/size]
![http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/525/newoggiame1.jpg/[/url][/size]](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/525/newoggiame1.jpg/%5B/url%5D%5B/size%5D){kind=link}
I love this movie. It’s not groundbreaking, and the story is pretty straight foward, but like scherpschutter stated, it has the Spaghetti Western feel. I really enjoyed the cast. Any movie with Berger, Spencer, and Nakadai is gold ;D ! Too bad they couldn’t flesh out the characters a bit more tough. The location/scenery is also a welcome change of pace. 4 Stars for me.
I just finished rewatching this. Is it just me or did Wayde Preston put on the best acting performance among that whole all star cast?
He gets overshadowed by Spencer, Berger, Nakadai etc…because he put on a more subtle and understated performance but if you watch the film closely, he seems to be the best actor in the movie.
[quote=“Col. Douglas Mortimer, post:77, topic:189”]I just finished rewatching this. Is it just me or did Wayde Preston put on the best acting performance among that whole all star cast?
He gets overshadowed by Spencer, Berger, Nakadai etc…because he put on a more subtle and understated performance but if you watch the film closely, he seems to be the best actor in the movie.[/quote]
I don’t know about Today It’s Me… Tomorrow It’s You!/Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die!, but I thought his performance in A Long Ride from Hell was the best thing about that movie. I’m certainly curious to see more of his films.
I think Preston was one of the best actors in the whole movie along with Nakadai and Berger. As regards Spencer, I never considered him to be that great in this one. He belongs more to comedies than to serious spags IMO.
Geez, I forgot he was even in Long Ride from Hell lol. Preston is one of those guys that just slipped past my radar, I just haven’t taken notice of him for some reason. I’ll definitely will be paying more attention to him in the future. He’s a great actor.