Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot! (1967)

Like most European genre films of its era Giulio Questi’s 1967 spaghetti western Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot! was released under a variety of titles, including Oro Hondo. The title favoured by the director was If You Live, Shoot! (Se sei vivo spara). The movie certainly has no connection with the classic Django.

Being a spaghetti western, there is of course a Mysterious Stranger (played by Tomas Milian). And of course he’s sullen, broody and violent. And of course there’s greed and revenge. Whatever the director’s intentions the result is a pretty standard formula spaghetti western.

A big gold robbery nets a Mexican-American gang a huge fortune. The Americans, led by the brutal Oaks, then slaughter the Mexicans to avoid having to share the loot with them. They also think they’ve slaughtered a rather broody half-breed but as well will see that is not the case. The gang then arrives at a small western town, a town that turns out to be a very unfriendly and very unhappy place. However violent the gang may be they find they’re no match for these townsfolk.

By the time The Stranger arrives in town (having been nursed back to health by two Indians) it seems like the movie is all over and there’s no-one left for him to take revenge on. In fact the movie has just started and there’s lots of action, and lots of violence, still to come.

The action now centres on finding the gold. Two of the town’s notable citizens, Templer and Hagerman, both corrupt and selfish men, want to find the gold. Also after the gold is the obligatory rich corrupt landowner who runs the town, a man named Mr Sorrow. Mr Sorrow runs the town with the aid of his black-shirted henchmen (one of the many examples of clumsy political symbolism in this movie).

The Stranger’s motives are of course mysterious. He doesn’t seem all that interested in getting his hands on the stolen bullion. He does befriend a strange young boy named Evan (Ray Lovelock), and he does fall in love with the wife of Hagermann. Hagermann claims she is mad and keeps her locked up. We never really find out why - one of the many things that the rather unsatisfactory script fails to clear up.

There’s much intrigue over the location of the gold, with Mr Sorrow’s henchmen kidnapping Templer’s teenage son Evan in order to force Templer to reveal the location of the loot. The Stranger also gets kidnapped and tortured, for the same reasons. Lots of people get killed, usually very brutally.

The violence is graphic and frequent. As is usual with spaghetti westerns there aren’t too many charactera left alive by the end.

Director and co-writer Giulio Questi clearly has a political axe to grind. As Tomas Milian states in the accompanying interview, Questi was a communist and if he could spit on anything he would. It’s a tiresome attitude and makes for a tiresome movie. The movie is just too fashionably cynical for its own good and its political stance is much too heavy-handed. Every American character in the movie is evil. The Indian characters are good. The Mexican characters are mostly good. Tomas Milian remarks on Questi’s extreme political correctness, and it’s an element that detracts considerably from any enjoyment the movie might have to offer.

Questi claims (in common with every leftwing intellectual in Europe) to have fought for the Resistance during the Second World War and he clearly intends this movie to be some kind of anti-fascist allegory. Oddly enough Sorrow’s blackshirts are all homosexuals. This seems to be have been intended by Questi as a means of expressing his contempt for the western genre and everything it stands for, and for America and everything it stands for. There’s also a preacher in the movie, and of course he’s evil.

Blue Underground have presented this movie in a very good anamorphic transfer and with a brief documentary about the film.

This is really just another spaghetti western that tries too hard to be dark and edgy, and takes itself too seriously. I find that the more classic Hollywood westerns I see the less impressed I am by spaghetti westerns, especially by those that take themselves very seriously. I can’t personally recommend this movie unless you’re a spaghetti western completist.

Texas, addio (1967)

Texas, addio (Goodbye Texas) is a routine spaghetti western, neither a bad film or a good one. It’s simply average in every department.

Directed by Ferdinando Baldi in 1967, this Italian-Spanish co-production is a revenge story. Yes, another one of those.

Burt Sullivan (Franco Nero) is the sheriff of a small town in Texas not far from the Mexican border. The opening scene shows us Burt driving a bounty killer out of town, thus establishing his character as a man who believes in the rule of law. He then promptly sets off on a private mission of revenge, which undermines this initial impression just a little. His kid brother Jim manages to persuade Burt to let him tag along.

Many years earlier their father had been murdered by a man named Cisco Delgado. Now Burt has decided that it’s time justice was done. He believes Delgado is in Mexico, so that’s where they’re headed.

Once across the border they arrive at the town where Burt believes Delgado can be found. It is not a happy town. It’s also not a peaceful town. Within ten minutes of arriving they witness a mass execution and Burt kills four men in a brawl in the local taverna. The town’s sheriff (or the equivalent of the sheriff), rather reasonably in the circumstances one might think, orders Burt and Jim to return to Texas. But Burt has no intention of doing do. He’s come to find Delgado, and that’s what he intends to do.

Getting information from the townspeople proves rather difficult. Everyone is too scared to talk to them. The town is under the control of an evil rich landowner, one of the many clichés which litter this film (in fact the entire movie is composed of a succession of standard western clichés). Predictably enough the evil rich landowner is none other than Cisco Delgado.

Burt and Jim eventually find Delgado, after killing a whole bunch of other bad guys. At this point they encounter the movie’s major plot twist. In fact it’s the movie’s only plot twist. It turns out that Delgado is rather more than just their father’s murderer. Since the movie only possesses this one plot twist I won’t reveal it, except to say that it makes the matter of   taking Delgado back to Texas to stand trial a bit complicated.

After that dozens of other bad guys get shot. There’s a revolution against the wicked Delgado which offers the opportunity for some fairly large-scale gun battles. Then comes the final showdown.

Baldi’s direction is entirely competent and entirely uninspired. The script is, as I’ve already indicated, nothing more than a string of clichés.

Technically it’s all very proficient but not very involving. Apart from its other flaws there is no attempt at characterisation so it’s hard to care very much about the outcome. Franco Nero appears to be too busy worrying about his pay cheque to bother with any actual acting and I can’t say I entirely blame him. The other actors are adequate enough considering the two-dimensionality of the characters they’re playing.

There’s a huge body count and there’s plenty of action. If you really love spaghetti westerns there’s nothing particularly to dislike other than the fact that you’ve seen everything this movie has to offer in countless other examples of the genre. It’s not a bad movie but it’s not one that’s likely to stay in your memory. For fans of the genre it’s maybe worth a rental or worth buying if you find it in the bargain bin but it’s certainly not worth actively seeking out.

The all-region PAL DVD from an outfit called Dixie Bell is a non-anamorphic widescreen transfer that is as average as the film.

Red Blood, Yellow Gold (1967)

Red Blood, Yellow Gold (Professionisti per un massacro, Professionals for a Massacre) is a fairly routine but still entertaining 1967 spaghetti western.

The basic plot idea is well-worn but there are enough twists to keep it reasonably interesting.

Three Confederate soldiers do a deal to sell Confederate arms to the Union but the Yankees find themselves double-crossed. Everybody in this movie gets double-crossed. Anyway their defence that their treason doesn’t count because they blew up the Union soldiers involved afterwards doesn’t help them and they are sentenced to be executed. They are reprieved at the last moment when the Confederate commander realises he can make use of these three resourceful thieves. So they’re sent on a sort of Dirty Dozen mission with the promise they will gain their freedom if it succeeds.

They have to track down a wagonload of gold that’s been stolen from the Confederacy by one of its own officers, Major Lloyd (who proves to be a very nasty piece of work). They’ll get a bonus if they bring back Major Lloyd’s head. Several plot twists later the gold has fallen into the hand of a cut-throat family of Mexican bandits. Everyone wants the gold and there will be a lot of corpses before this is over.

The three thieves are Chattanooga Jim (Edd Byrnes), Fidel Ramirez (George Martin) and defrocked priest and dynamite enthusiast Steel Downey (George Hilton). The acting is passable enough and Hilton is pretty good. Gérard Herter as Major Lloyd makes a suitably menacing and mendacious villain.

There are plenty of spaghetti western clichés in this one. There’s a Gatling Gun which serves no plot purpose except that Gatling Guns are cool so this movie has one. There are coffins. There are explosions. And then more explosions. Thousands of rounds of ammunition are expended.

Technically this movie is nothing special but the action moves along at a brisk pace. Director Nando Cicero does a competent job and while he does nothing to put any kind of personal stamp on the film he does understand the basic principles of the spaghetti western - if you’re not sure what should happen next blow something up or have a fist fight start for no reason at all.

This is a spaghetti western that plays things with tongue planted firmly in cheek. You don’t want to think too much about this one. It’s not going to tell you anything profound about the human condition so if you’re looking for art you’d best look elsewhere.

It’s extremely violent but the violence is not graphic at all by spaghetti western standards. The version I saw was presumably uncut or fairly close to it judging by the running time although I certainly can’t swear to it.

I picked up the DVD on a bargain table and apart from the fact that it’s all-region I can’t tell you anything about it. There’s no indication on the disc or the case of a company name. That’s not a good sign but at least it’s an acceptable print and in the correct aspect ratio. And it was cheap!

This is at best an average example of its genre but if you like mindless fun with machine-guns and dynamite (and what right-thinking person doesn’t) then there’s no reason you won’t enjoy this picture.

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

I saw Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars many years ago. Seeing it again I found it it to be more impressive than I’d remembered in some ways, and less impressive in others.

The plot was inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Kurosawa in fact sued the producers and in the settlement was given the Asian rights to the movie. As a result he made more money out of Sergio Leone’s movie than he made out of any of his own. The producers of A Fistful of Dollars probably should have fought the case more energetically since the resemblances are mostly superficial. Leone certainly got the idea from Kurosawa’s movie but the end result was a very different movie.

A mysterious stranger rides into a town on the US-Mexican border. The town is totally lawless and is dominated by two rival gangs, the Rojos (who deal in liquor) and the Baxters (who deal in guns). The stranger, the famous Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood), sets about playing both sides off against each other and enriching himself in the process.

Much bloodshed and mayhem ensues. By the end of the movie the coffin-maker, the bartender and the bell-ringer are pretty much the only ones left alive in the town of San Miguel.

Interestingly enough this wasn’t the first Italian western. There had been a couple of dozen Italian westerns made in the early 60s. They had been more or less straight copies of the style of American westerns. There had also been a string of German westerns, successful in Europe at the time but now entirely forgotten. A Fistful of Dollars became an international hit by breaking the mould and going its own way stylistically. In doing so it established the template for the spaghetti western genre. It has most of what would become the standard tropes of the spaghetti western - coffins, machine-guns, large amounts of very graphic violence, moral nihilism and extreme style.

Equally interestingly Clint Eastwood wasn’t the first choice for the lead role. He wasn’t even the fourth choice. Charles Bronson and James Coburn were among the actors who turned the role down or anted too much money. Eastwood got the part because he was cheap. It proved to be a stroke of good fortune for both Leone and Eastwood. Eastwood provided most of his own wardrobe and had a considerable influence on the way the central character was portrayed, most notably by arguing that he should have a lot fewer lines. So that whole image of the mysterious spaghetti western hero who has very little to say was as much Eastwood’s creation as Leone’s. Eastwood felt he needed to be much more enigmatic that he was in the original script.

Eastwood’s performance holds up exceptionally well. He redefined the western hero.

Stylistically the movie is a triumph in spite of the absurdly low budget. Leone and his director of photography, Massimo Dallamano, make great use of the Spanish locations. The visuals are superbly integrated with the sound design and the music of Ennio Morricone. Leone was probably the first director to realise the potential of post-dubbing to enhance action movies - you can make a pistol shot sound like a cannon!

While it’s often been lauded as the first of a new breed of adult westerns it is in fact the first of a new breed of adolescent westerns. It reflects a rebellious teenager’s view of the world. I happen to love spaghetti westerns but I certainly don’t regard them as being adult westerns in the sense that John Ford’s The Searchers is an adult western. The idea of the all-pervasiveness of corruption and the complete absence of any kind of moral compass might have been refreshingly different at the time but they quickly became clichés.

These are perhaps minor quibbles. This movie is all about style and the stye still stands up after nearly half a century. The spaghetti western did to a large extent save the western. That the western survived as a genre in American movies into the 21st century is largely due to Clint Eastwood, and to say that Eastwood was influenced by Leone would be a understatement of epic proportions. Eastwood’s first great western as a director, High Plains Drifter, is pure spaghetti western.

The Australian Blu-Ray release looks terrific and comes loaded with extras including a very informative commentary track by Sir Christopher Frayling. Among the many interesting snippets he gives us is that The Man With No Name did have a name. His name is Joe. The Man With No Name idea was thought up later by the American distributors and apparently the mention of his name was deleted from some prints.

The Great Silence (1968)

While it’s not Sergio Corbucci’s best-known spaghetti western (that honour goes to Django) there are many who believe that his 1968 movie The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio) is his greatest. Unfortunately those people are wrong.

The movie concerns bounty hunters at the close of the 19th century. A large group of criminals is holed up in mountainous snowbound terrain waiting for a government amnesty. Before the amnesty arrives though they have to survive the attentions of a gang of bounty hunters. The most notorious of these is a man known variously as Loco or Tigrero (the subtitles on the Region 4 DVD insist that he’s called Tigrero). Either way he’s played by Klaus Kinski. He’s the movie’s chief bad guy (although his occupation happens to be hunting down criminals).

The bandits have a champion however, a mysterious stranger known as Silenzio or Silence. We later find out that his nickname comes from the fact that he’s mute as the result of having his vocal cords destroyed by wicked bounty hunters when he was a child. The bounty hunters had killed his father. Silenzio is now a crusader for the rights of criminals sought by bounty hunters. He pursues his crusade by taunting them into drawing first and then shooting them with his nifty machine pistol. He’s the hero of the movie (although his occupation happens to be defending criminals).

When a black woman’s husband, a thief, is shot by Tigrero she employs Silenzio to avenge him. She and Silenzio fall in love.

While this is happening a new idealistic sheriff has arrived in the town of Snow Hill. He doesn’t like bounty hunters and he wants to see Tigrero behind bars. The fact that Tigrero is actually pursuing a perfectly legal if rather unpleasant occupation doesn’t trouble the sheriff too much. He’s sympathetic to the rights of the poor and downtrodden, and he clearly considers that criminals fall within that category.

There’s also a wicked capitalist oppressor, Pollicut, who is in league with the bounty hunters.

With both Silenzio and the sheriff against him you might think that Tigrero would be in trouble, but in fact he’s a whole lot smarter than either of his antagonists.

The Great Silence has strong claims to being the most miserable spaghetti western ever made. Its famously downbeat ending is part of the film’s problem, but not for the reason you might suppose. The fact that it’s downbeat isn’t the problem but the fact that it lacks any dramatic punch certainly is. The whole plot just doesn’t quite develop the necessary dramatic tension. Silenzio is just too inept, too helpless. You really have to buy the naïve political message if you’re going to enjoy this movie.

Jean-Lois Trintignant plays Silenzio. His performance is presumably intended to be moody and intense. It doesn’t quite come off. As a deadly killer he is less than entirely convincing.

The movie’s saving grace is Klaus Kinski. He’s magnificent. He’s gloriously wicked, a man who really loves his job, especially the part that involves shooting people.

Technically the movie is an odd mix of brilliance and incompetence. There’s some stunning location photography, and the mountains and the remorseless snow create a superb atmosphere. But then there are scenes where Corbucci couldn’t even be bothered to make sure the camera is in focus.

This is a movie that the film school crowd will adore. It has the kind of heavy-handed political message that they love so much. And it has those moments of technical incompetence that will have them talking excitedly about cinéma vérité.

A film worth seeing for Kinski’s terrific performance, and for some impressive visuals.

The Region 4 DVD from Force Video is in Italian with English sub-titles.

Payment In Blood (1967)

Payment In Blood (Sette winchester per un massacro) may not be one of the great spaghetti westerns but fans of the genre will still find plenty to enjoy.

In the aftermath of the American Civil War former Confederate officer Colonel Blake leads a gang of brigands in Texas just north of the Mexican border. They operate on both sides of the border and both the US and Mexican governments have put a price on their heads. Blake and his men like to give the impression they’re Confederate loyalists continuing the good fight against the damned Yankees but in reality they’re murdering cut-throats.

It seems as if time has run out for one of these bandits. Chamaco is about to be executed by a firing squad. Just in time a Mysterious Stranger appears and Chamaco is rescued. The Mysterious Stranger is named Stuart and he says he wants to join Blake’s gang. To take a stranger to Blake’s secret headquarters is against all the rules but then Stuart mentions that he just happens to know where the treasure of General P. G. T. Beauregard is buried. This much-rumoured fortune in gold disappeared in the closing days of the Clvil War and Blake has long cherished a desire to find it.

So Stuart gets to join Blake’s bandit gang. Blake doesn’t entirely trust him but he wants that gold. A plan is hatched. It will require the gang to get through a pass heavily guarded by US soldiers and then through the nearby town to reach the Indian cemetery where the treasure is hidden.

Of course there has to be a double-cross in there somewhere, and along the way there are ample opportunities for mayhem. There’s also a touch of romance, not something you necessarily expect in a spaghetti western. The beautiful Manuela claims to be as loyal to the Confederate cause as Blake but she causes considerable dissension. The other bandits believe that women and loot should be equally shared while Colonel Blake has decided that Manuela should be exclusively his. Manuela has ideas of her own as will soon become apparent.

As you expect from a spaghetti western there’s a great deal of violence. Everyone has unlimited ammunition which they expend lavishly, no-one ever has to stop to reload and the body count mounts steadily culminating in a huge gunfight which turns into a massacre.

Guy Madison walks off with the acting honours as Blake, giving a wonderfully cynical and vicious performance. Luisa Baratto is fiery and memorable as Manuela. Edd Byrnes as Stuart is the weak link - he just doesn’t seem mean enough or grungy enough.

Enzo G. Castellari’s energetic direction isn’t brilliant but it gets the job done. The climactic set-piece in the Indian tomb is certainly impressive.

This is another of the spaghetti western mystery DVDs I picked up recently in a bargain bin recently. There’s nothing on the discs or the cases to identify the company that released them but they’re NTSC discs so they’re obviously American imports. I assume they’re from Wild East productions since that company seems to be the only possibility. In any case they’re all, including this one, quite reasonable widescreen transfers. No extras, but appealingly cheap.

Don’t set your expectations too high for this one. Castellari is no Sergio Leone. If you approach it with that caveat in mind and you’re in the mood for a spaghetti western then you could do a lot worse.

3 Bullets for Ringo (1966)

3 Bullets for Ringo (3 colpi di Winchester per Ringo, AKA Three Graves for a Winchester) won’t appeal to all spaghetti western fans. The key to enjoying this movie is to release that although it certainly looks like a spaghetti western that’s not quite what it is.

The hero of this movie, Ringo, isn’t really a western hero. He’s more akin to the heroes of an Italian Hercules or Maciste movie. Like the heroes of peplums he is in effect a superhuman hero, someone with powers beyond those of ordinary mortals.

It takes a while to figure this out, but then you notice that twenty bad guys just fired at Ringo and they all missed, then he drew his two six-shooters and shot all twenty bad guys. Without reloading. In fact even though he fires literally thousands of rounds during the course of the movie Ringo never once reloads his guns. Of course six-shooters with unlimited ammunition supplies are seen in some early B-westerns and western serials, but this movie takes it to an extreme. It could be annoying, but then the penny drops that realism plays no part in this movie and that it’s really more like a fantasy film.

Director Emimmo Salvi actually started his brief career making peplums and when you find that out it pretty much confirms the suspicion that what he’s doing here is a peplum with six-guns.

The plot is also filled with absurdities which make more sense if you treat it as part spaghetti western and part heroic fantasy. Ringo Carson (Mickey Hargitay, best known today for having been married to Jayne Mansfield) and Frank Sanders (Gordon Mitchell) are gunslingers on the wrong side of the law.

The difference between them is that Ringo is basically good and it’s his destiny to become a True Hero. Frank on the other hand is much more tempted by the Dark Side of the Force. Their partnership breaks up over a woman. Jane Walcom chooses Ringo and Frank rides off into the sunset but their paths are destined to cross again. Ringo becomes the town sheriff and establishes law and order but the peace is threatened by the machinations of the corrupt and generally wicked banker Daniels who wants to get his hands on various parcel of land that he suspects contain gold. Among the people whose land he wants to steal is Ringo’s mum. There’s also the complication that Ringo’s father-in-law is a shady businessman who is involved in Daniels’ scheming.

In a battle with renegade soldiers Ringo is struck a blow on the head that leaves him blind. The doctor tells the family that the only possible way he could recover his sight would be by being dealt another blow on the head. This medical pronouncement will prove to have major Plot Significance. This battle also results in the return of Frank Sanders who takes over as sheriff, but he is the evil sheriff as opposed to Ringo’s good sheriff. Somehow the blind Ringo must find a way to stop the triumph of evil.

It’s all very silly, with outrageous coincidences and impossible feats of gunslinging prowess and more-than-human bravery. You’ll either find this too ridiculous to bother with or you’ll find a way to not only accept but to embrace the silliness. If you can do that then it’s an enjoyable enough romp. And the six-barreled dynamite cannon is fun.

The acting is two-dimensional but it hardly matters. Mickey Hargitay at least seems to be enjoying himself. There’s an enormous amount of action, all of which is very cartoonish. This is a movie that makes no concessions to realism. There’s no gore at all. The body count though is incredibly high, another clue perhaps that what we’re seeing is not meant to be taken at all seriously.

As an added attraction there’s a voodoo ceremony that makes no sense whatever in the context of the plot but gratuitous voodoo ceremonies are something I have no problem with.

The DVD from Wild East Productions presents the movie in its correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio and generally looks pretty good.

Definitely not one of the classics of the spaghetti western genre but while it’s a bad movie when judged by any conventional standards it’s kind of fun if you’re in the mood for some slightly tongue-in-cheek action fun.

The Forgotten Pistolero (1969)

The Forgotten Pistolero (Il pistolero dell'Ave Maria) is a fairly obscure spaghetti western, and it’s quite a pleasant surprise.

Rafael and Sebastian are two young men who encounter one another and at first it appears they have little in common. In fact Rafael has been searching for Sebastian for years. They were childhood friends. A lengthy flashback sequence now intervenes.

Sebastian and his sister were the children of a famous Mexican general. When he returned from the war (and I’m not entirely sure which war this was) he received an unexpected welcome from his wife Anna. She and her lover Tomas proceeded to murder him. Sebastian and his friend Rafael (the son of a servant) had fled after the murder and had not been seen since. But while vengeance might be delayed it cannot be avoided indefinitely.

Sebastian will eventually discover that his family situation was actually even more complicated than it seemed.

The plot is based vaguely on the story of the murder of King Agamemnon after his return from the Trojan War.

Director Ferdinando Baldi had a lengthy career that seems to have spent largely making peplums and spaghetti westerns. There’s nothing flashy about this movie but Baldi’s direction is more than competent. The script is clever and (by the standards of 1960s Italian genre movies) fairly coherent. The pacing is excellent and technically the movie is very very solid.

The acting is also quite strong. Leonard Mann as Sebastian, Pietro Martellanza as Rafael, Luciano Paluzzi as the murderous Anna and Alberto de Mendoza as the treacherous but smooth Tomas all give fine performances.

Roberto Pregadio’s score does its best to sound like an Ennio Morricone score but it works extremely well.

There’s no one element that really stands out, this Italian-Spanish co-production is simply a well-made and very entertaining example of its genre with no obvious faults and it all holds together nicely.

This movie has been released under various alternative titles, including Gunman of Ave Maria.

I picked this one up, along with a stack of other spaghetti westerns, in a bargain bin. There’s absolutely no indication on either the disc or the box as to its origin or who released it except that it’s an NTSC all-region disc. It’s letterboxed and the picture quality is exceptionally good for a bargain DVD.

Navajo Joe (1966)

Sergio Corbucci’s Django is my favourite spaghetti western so I felt I was entitled to have fairly high hopes for his Navajo Joe, made in the same year (1966). And while it’s not in the same league as Django it’s still a decent entry in the genre.

A guy called Duncan leads a gang of cut-throats and bandits. Their favourite means of income is killing Indians and selling the scalps to the local townspeople for a dollar a head. Their preference is for butchering defenceless Indians in surprise attacks. One raid on an Indian village turns out to be a very bad mistake. They leave one survivor, an Indian known as Navajo Joe (Burt Reynolds). And Navajo Joe turns out to be a one-man army, and he’s bent on vengeance.

Duncan has discovered that a train carrying half a million dollars is headed for the town of Esperanza. The town’s doctor has a shady criminal past and he makes a deal with Duncan to help steal the money. This is a peaceful little town where no-one carries guns and they are going to be entirely unable to defend themselves against Duncan’s gang. Unless they can get some assistance. Some assistance from one-man mayhem machine like Navajo Joe, for instance. And Navajo Joe is willing to help since it’s likely to provide a convenient opportunity for him to take his revenge.

Joe gets little help from the townsfolk in general, but he does have a few unlikely allies. The saloon-keeper and his saloon girls display more courage than the rest of the townspeople combined and get Joe out of a particularly tight spot. And a beautiful half-Indian woman also lends a hand. She sees like she’s being set up as the love interest for Joe but nothing eventuates, and eventually we find out why. But mostly Joe is a one-man band and pitting this one Indian against a gang of several dozen hardened outlaws is hardly a fair fight - the outlaws don’t really stand a chance!

There’s very little substance to this film. It’s mostly an excuse for lots of action sequences and lots of gunplay and assorted carnage. Fortunately Corbucci is very good indeed at this sort of thing and the action scenes are exceptionally well executed. And there are enough of them to keep any spaghetti western fan very happy. The ambush of the train is a standout.

Corbucci and his director of photography Silvano Ippoliti (who has had an impressive career) have crafted a visually extremely impressive movie. Something is always happening, and they always film it in an interesting way but without appearing gimmicky. The violence is relentless but without much in the way of gore. The movie generates sufficient excitement not to require the gore.

Despite some dodgy makeup Burt Reynolds does a solid job as Joe. He’s a convincing action hero and he isn’t required to do much more. The characterisation in this movie is basic to say the least. Aldo Sambrell makes a suitably villainous bad guy as Duncan.

And as an added bonus it has a score by Ennio Morricone.

Surprisingly enough the Region 4 DVD release is excellent with a beautiful transfer preserving the correct Technicope aspect ratio.

Not one of the all-time classic spaghetti westerns but fans of the genre will find plenty to enjoy despite some deficiencies in plotting and characterisation. Recommended.

Bad Man’s River (1971)

I’ve decided to explore the spaghetti western genre further but I’m not sure if Bad Man’s River (originally released as Hunt the Man Down) qualifies. This 1971 Franco-Spanish-Italian co-production was filmed in Spain with a Spanish director. But it’s definitely a euro-western, and it does star Lee van Cleef.

There are two major problems that made this movie very difficult to enjoy. The first was the quality of the Region 4 DVD release from a company called Reel Entertainment. This is the most disgracefully shoddy DVD I’ve ever encountered. The picture quality is terrible and the colours are all wrong. That’s just for starters. Not only is it pan-and-scanned, the top of the image has been cropped. Not only are the tops of characters’ heads missing, in many scenes their entire heads are missing!

The second problem is the truly awful soundtrack. There are several incredibly irritating songs that will have you reaching for the nearest Gatling gun so you can blow away everyone involved. All the music in this film is atrocious, and it’s all intrusive and annoying.

As to the movie itself, it has a plot so convoluted that most of the time I had very little idea what was going on. Lee van Cleef is Roy King, leader of a gang of bank robbers. They specialise in blowing stuff up. He meets a beautiful woman named Alicia (Gina Lollobrigida). She persuades him to marry her, on the spot (she travels with a priest in case she suddenly needs to get married). King gets more than he bargained for when she has him put into strait-jacket and committed to an asylum for the insane.

After he gets out of the asylum he gets another job offer, from a Mexican revolutionary named Montero. And the go-between is none other than Alicia, who has also managed to marry Montero. There’s a plan to blow up an armoury and then steal a shipment of money that the Mexican government is sending to replace the guns destroyed in the explosion. There are rival groups of revolutionaries, rival bandit gangs and government troops all fighting it out from this point on and keep tracking of who’s allied with whom becomes rather bewildering.

But of course coherent plot isn’t really an absolute requirement in European cult cinema. Style matters far more. Writer-director Eugenio Martín made a couple of superb horror movies at around the same time as this movie - A Candle for the Devil and Horror Express. And he demonstrated in both those films that he is a very stylish and skillful director. Horror Express is perhaps the best point of comparison since it’s a fast-paced adventure romp with comic elements as well as a horror film. And in Bad Man’s River he seemed to be aiming at a similar result - an exciting adventure romp but with an even heavier emphasis on comedy.

I’m not sure it entirely succeeds but it does have its moments. And there are some nice visual set-pieces. Fans of explosions will be left well satisfied, and there’s plenty of mayhem. The mayhem is strictly of the non-gore variety but it’s done with panache.

James Mason plays Montero and it’s the first disappointing performance I’ve ever seen from him. Lee van Cleef on the other hand is extremely good. But Gina Lollobrigida totally steals the picture. She’s delightfully wicked, outrageously devious, very sexy and very amusing. The screen lights up whenever she appears. Diana Lorys plays the film’s second femme fatale and she’s also very good.

I believe this movie is available in a widescreen DVD edition in Region 1. It’s not easy to formulate a hard-and-fast judgment on this movie based on the horrible Region 4 disc. Seeing it in a decent transfer it might well turn out to be a highly entertaining movie indeed. Even in the butchered version I saw it’s not without its charms despite the incomprehensibility of the plot.

Shalako (1968)

Shalako is a bit of an oddity. It has a spaghetti western look, but it’s actually a British/German a spaghetti western wannabe. With a rather odd cast for a western. You don’t really expect Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot as the stars of a western. It’s also considerably more entertaining than its somewhat negative reputation would suggest.

A mixed group of European aristocrats has organised a lavish hunting party in the Wild West, apparently a few years after the end of the Civil War. They’re doing things in style. They’ve brought a butler with them, and an extensive collection of fine wines and gourmet foods. And just because they’re in the Wild West doesn’t mean they going to get up the habits of civilisation. They still dress for dinner.

Baron Frederick Von Hallstatt (Peter van Eyck) is the de facto leader of the expedition, but he’s hired some local guides and hunters. The party also includes the beautiful Countess Irina Lazaar (Brigitte Bardot) whom the Baron hopes to marry. There’s also a US senator and an impoverished English nobleman (Jack Hawkins) and his attractive but rather immoral wife (Honor Blackman).

Unfortunately their hunting party has strayed into Apache territory, in violation of a treaty made with the Apaches several years earlier. The Apaches don’t take kindly to this, and when the Countess and one of the hired cowboys find themselves isolated from the rest of the party they are attacked. The cowboy meets a grisly death, but the Countess proves to be a much tougher customer. She’s a crack shot and manages to hold off her attacker until help arrives in the unexpected form of Shalako (Sean Connery). Shalako is actually a former colonel in the US Army who now lives a rather mysterious roving life. When lots more Apaches arrive on the scene Shalako and the Countess can no longer hold them off, but they make an agreement with the Indians. The hunting party will leave Apache territory by sunrise. The Countess gives her word.

But alas the rather arrogant collection of wealthy and aristocratic hunters don’t believe in backing down in the face of threats from mere “savages” and they’re not inclined to move on. Shalako realises it’s going to be a major fight with the Apaches, and dies his best to organise some kind of defence around the abandoned fort that the hunting party is using as a base.

It turns out that there’s plenty of shady dealing and double-crossing going on among both the hunters and their hired guns, and pretty soon the situation becomes desperate as Shalako is forced to lead the noble hunters and a few of the more faithful hired guns to safety on foot.

There’s plenty of action, and plenty of intrigue. I really don’t understand why this movie isn’t more highly thought of. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s entertaining and it looks good. The scenes of the noble sportsmen and women all dressed for dinner seated around an elegant dining table and attended by a uniformed butler (played by Eric Sykes of all people) adds a definite surreal touch.

The acting from the exceptionally strong cast is generally extremely good. Jack Hawkins had lost his voice to cancer by this time and had to be dubbed by another actor but he still makes a fine blustering aristocrat Sir Charles Daggett. Honor Blackman has great fun as the wicked, lustful, completely untrustworthy Lady Julia Daggett. Peter van Eyck gives a nicely subtle performance as the Baron, a man who is going to have to learn some hard lessons that are going to knock a good deal of the arrogance out of him. He’s potentially a very unsympathetic character but van Eyck makes him human at least.

Sean Connery seems a bit out of place, and not entirely sure of himself. He’s competent but it’s not a role that suits him.

The movie really belongs to Brigitte Bardot. She has the advantage of playing the most interesting character in the movie, and her performance is typically eccentric but succeeds through sheer bravado and charisma. And she makes a surprisingly convincing gunfighter in the battle scenes.

There isn’t much real sexual chemistry generated between Connery and Bardot, and the movie may have disappointed audiences expecting something a good deal sexier. Oddly though the lack of sexual heat turns out to be an advantage, as the attraction between them is based more on a growing mutual respect than on lust.

They’re both in their own way outsiders. Shalako has turned his back on civilisation, while Countess Irina is unwilling to accept the role she’s expected to play as a woman and as a member of her class. While the Baron knows all the rules of honour, he sees honour as essentially a matter of following those rules. Irina recognises Shalako as a man whose understanding of honour is more like her own - it means you have to actually behave with honour. When she gave her word to the Apaches she had every intention of keeping it, and she has no difficulty understanding Shalako’s desire to honour the treaty with them. The other members of her party show a disturbing inclination to regard shooting Apaches as a particularly challenging sport. While she’s both willing and able to kill to defend herself she never loses sight of the fact that this is not sport, this is killing real people.

The DVD release is less than stellar, although at least it’s in the correct aspect ratio.

It’s an enjoyable movie in the spaghetti western style, obviously made on a reasonable budget and worth seeing for Peter van Eyck’s performance, and even more especially for Bardot’s strangely magnetic presence and unconventional but oddly effective acting.