I've seen quite a few spaghetti westerns and can usually find something interesting in them; genre movies are improvisational. They must deliver a familiar formula, images, and music while at the same time altering the performance enough to make it interesting – they need to be different, but not too different. Because over 500 westerns were made in Italy and Spain the 1960s and 1970s and the prescription of "intellectual property rights" was not exactly observed, the mutation rate and variation was incredible. They almost have to be spoken of in Darwinian terms: a Cincecitta film cycle (western, peplum, giallo, etc) were like the Pre-Cambrian explosion. Some were very good and others were like Un colt por cuatro cirios (Four Candles For My Colt) – just nutty.
A gang holds up a tax shipment of gold. That night, when celebrating, Farley steals the gold, but is found dead the next morning. The gang and the sheriff (Woods) believe that Rogers and Farley's wife conspired to steal the loot and run off together. The sheriff stands between the gang and Rogers while investigating the robbery and murder. Hangings, gunfights, beatings and other mayhem ensue.
Not as quite as badly made as some other late spaghetti westerns which are amateurish (though there were some high quality productions still, like the later Keoma or Four of the Apocalypse), this movie is simply chaotic. There are elements of giallo, mystery, Gothic western or hard-bitten spaghetti mixed into a film that could not decide if it wanted to be a brutal vicious Italian western or a comedy western. All of this is wrapped in a sleazy package that actually may recommend the movie to fans of "trash cinema." The movie can't quite make up its mind whether misogyny and (threatened) rape is funny or not.
Based on a novel, the screenwriters seem to have been doing whatever they could to fill the running time. The plot bounces around the Italian countryside like a pinball. Italian westerns have a tendency to be episodic in structure, as in Sabata (1970) or The Big Gundown (1967). Death Sentence (1968) used this structure to incredible effect. However, in this movie it simply leads to incoherence. The last 15-20 minutes of the movie appear to have been an afterthought tacked on simply to pad the running length.
In other words, this movie emptily goes through the motions at a frantic pace - but it really rushes nowhere.
This cut-and-paste approach makes the movie entertainingly bad but does not allow for the usual subtexts and undercurrents to develop that can make these movies.
The opening scenes, a stage robbery, were actually fairly well-done in a no-budget sort of way. Camera angles and editing are interesting. There is gunfight in a bar which is also well-executed. Though there are some of the static staging that is common in later eurowesterns, presumably to cut down on cost, this movie is much more dynamic than many of its contemporaries. Though it is far from good, it is the sort of movie that you can watch ironically, mock the insanity, and have a good time (if you are into that sort of thing).
Most of Ignacio F. Iquino's credits were as writer, though he did direct a number of fairly undistinguished westerns during the western boom. His best directorial effort was the very entertaining God in Heaven. . .Arizona on Earth with Peter Lee Lawerence. He was involved in writing the interesting El Puro.
Robert Woods was one of the more popular leading men in the genre, starring in the enjoyable if wacky Starblack and the grimy, brutal My Name Is Pecos.
Maria Martin was also in the classic Sergio Corbucci western The Hellbenders (1966).
Antonio Rameriz aka Lou Carrigan, who wrote the novel that this was based on, also wrote the novels on which several other euro-westerns were based on including 20 Steps to Death and Stagecoach of the Condemmned.
Top spaghetti western list http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849907 Average SWs http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849889 For fanatics only (bottom of the barrel) http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849890
A gang holds up a tax shipment of gold. That night, when celebrating, Farley steals the gold, but is found dead the next morning. The gang and the sheriff (Woods) believe that Rogers and Farley's wife conspired to steal the loot and run off together. The sheriff stands between the gang and Rogers while investigating the robbery and murder. Hangings, gunfights, beatings and other mayhem ensue.
Not as quite as badly made as some other late spaghetti westerns which are amateurish (though there were some high quality productions still, like the later Keoma or Four of the Apocalypse), this movie is simply chaotic. There are elements of giallo, mystery, Gothic western or hard-bitten spaghetti mixed into a film that could not decide if it wanted to be a brutal vicious Italian western or a comedy western. All of this is wrapped in a sleazy package that actually may recommend the movie to fans of "trash cinema." The movie can't quite make up its mind whether misogyny and (threatened) rape is funny or not.
Based on a novel, the screenwriters seem to have been doing whatever they could to fill the running time. The plot bounces around the Italian countryside like a pinball. Italian westerns have a tendency to be episodic in structure, as in Sabata (1970) or The Big Gundown (1967). Death Sentence (1968) used this structure to incredible effect. However, in this movie it simply leads to incoherence. The last 15-20 minutes of the movie appear to have been an afterthought tacked on simply to pad the running length.
In other words, this movie emptily goes through the motions at a frantic pace - but it really rushes nowhere.
This cut-and-paste approach makes the movie entertainingly bad but does not allow for the usual subtexts and undercurrents to develop that can make these movies.
The opening scenes, a stage robbery, were actually fairly well-done in a no-budget sort of way. Camera angles and editing are interesting. There is gunfight in a bar which is also well-executed. Though there are some of the static staging that is common in later eurowesterns, presumably to cut down on cost, this movie is much more dynamic than many of its contemporaries. Though it is far from good, it is the sort of movie that you can watch ironically, mock the insanity, and have a good time (if you are into that sort of thing).
Most of Ignacio F. Iquino's credits were as writer, though he did direct a number of fairly undistinguished westerns during the western boom. His best directorial effort was the very entertaining God in Heaven. . .Arizona on Earth with Peter Lee Lawerence. He was involved in writing the interesting El Puro.
Robert Woods was one of the more popular leading men in the genre, starring in the enjoyable if wacky Starblack and the grimy, brutal My Name Is Pecos.
Maria Martin was also in the classic Sergio Corbucci western The Hellbenders (1966).
Antonio Rameriz aka Lou Carrigan, who wrote the novel that this was based on, also wrote the novels on which several other euro-westerns were based on including 20 Steps to Death and Stagecoach of the Condemmned.
Top spaghetti western list http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849907 Average SWs http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849889 For fanatics only (bottom of the barrel) http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849890