I Want Him Dead(Lo Voglio Morto)1968

Tags

Craig Hill, spaghetti western

The first thing I noticed when I started watching I WANT HIM DEAD was that it seemed far different from most in the spaghetti genre I’ve watched over the last few years. Everything about it was superior. Production values, costumes, the sets, the script. Far above the cheeziness found in the majority.

Don’t get me wrong. The cheese is part of the charm I’ve come to know and love.

This one was more on the level of the best of the genre: the Leones, the Carbuccis.

Craig Hill stars as Clayton, a man who wants to buy a ranch for his sister and himself. He’d been saving money for several years. One problem: it was Confederate currency. He becomes bent on revenge when he finds his sister Mercedes(Cristina Businari) raped and murdered, a tobacco pouch found lying by her side. A little investigation found it identified as belonging to a fellow named Jack Blood(José Manuel Martín). He and a friend had left just before Clayton arrived.

Now he had his target.

But that was only a subplot to the main one. Jack Blood worked for a businessman, Mallek(Andrea Bosic) who’d invested heavily in arms and ammunition. The Civil War was winding down and he’d gotten wind of a meeting between two generals, one from the north and one from the south, meeting to discuss terms for an armistice before Grant and Lee met. Mallek stood to lose a great deal of money should the war end before he could sell off his stock, estimated at a million dollars in rifles, ammunition, and heavy weapons. With that in mind, he was offering Blood and his team $50,000 to kill the generals and make both sides think the other was responsible.

All Clayton had on his mind was Blood until he meets two women held for the gang’s pleasure. Aloma(Lea Massari) and Marisa(Licia Calderón) were the pair and Clayton begins to fall for Aloma.

Of cpurse along the way he gets several beatings, whipped, and lays waste to most of the gang. A fight over the $50,000 leaves money scattered along the trail, nortern dollars, and Clayton gets his four thousand.

A pretty good western. Carlos Sarabia wrote the script and it was directed by Paolo Bianchini.