Black Jack(Un Uomo per cinque vendette)1968

It was a tightly planned bank robbery. Two men showed up just at closing time with $3,000 that had to be deposited. They did the actual robbery, killing the bank manager when the safe was opened. There was a man who used a recalcitrant horse to distract the guard while all that was going on. The fourth man had checked into the hotel next door earlier with the admonition that he was going to sleep for a while. He climbs out a window and leaps to the bank roof where he lowers a rope with a hoot down the chimney of the bank fireplace. He hauls the bag of cash up and drops it into a special wagon driven by the brains of the outfit, Jack Murphy(Robert Woods), where he was just an innocent bystander as the rest sped out of town pursued by a posse. In a canyon where they passed, the rest of the gang waited with dynamite to cut off the posse.

Jack spends a little time with his girl friend, Susan(Lucienne Bridou), before heading out to divide the money. The usual split was a quarter for Jack, the rest for the gang. But it was such a large haul, that didn’t satisfy them and a falling out ensues.

Jack manages to get the upper hand, then takes it all, riding out with their guns and pays off  Indian Joe(Mimmo Palmara) with the admonition to “keep your mouth shut.” Something of a joke as he never speaks a word in the film. He does, however, point though and directs them to the ghost town where Jack is headquartered with his sister and brother-in-law, Julie(Dali Bresciani) and Peter(Nino Fuscagni).

He gives up the money to save his sister, but it doesn’t. The new leader, Sanchez, rapes and murders Julie and Indian Joe scalps her for her blond hair. Jack is left hanging, balanced on one good foot(the right was shot up), and likely would have died had not Susan come looking for him.

The plot becomes a revenge motive after this, the way of most films in this genre. Jack walks with a cane, but is just as good with a gun as ever. His mind also seems to have come unhinged a bit as he laughs maniacally more than a few times as he goes about hunting the gang members. He declares Jack Murphy dead and buried in the small town and becomes the Black Jack of the title.

All but Sanchez are easy to find.He’s disappeared and Jack takes a different tack in locating him. He’s also promised his brother-in-law he would deliver him alive so that the husband can get his revenge.

A pretty good film that ended in a manner i never saw coming. The link below is for the film under the German title On Your Knees Django.

https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/YjdKimDRheA&source=uds

Sabata(Ehi Amico…C’E’ Sabata, Hai Chiuso)1969

Lee Van Cleef became a bigger star in Europe than he ever was in the States by appearing in a long series of spaghetti westerns. Here he [lays the gunman dressed in black with a plethora of odd weapons. A film that strikes a cord with most folks watching it even though the elements are all standard fare of the time. It is different, just a bit, with familiar actors in Van Cleef and Berger eschewing the roles of the good guy and the not-so-god guy.

One almost gets a feeling of Bond with all those gadgets Sabata uses in the course of the picture

The basic plot is that some of the community’s leading lights have stolen a hundred grand and plan to use it to buy up land  to sell to the railroad when they come through.

Sabata is out to stop them for his own reasons.

SABATA was the first of three films featuring the character, but the middle film  had Yul Brynner in the role. In an odd bit of coincidence, Van Cleef was playing a role that Brynner made famous in a sequel at the time which was why Brynner got he part: the sequel to the Magnificent Seven.

http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/Hq1b2EJA6Yo&source=uds

Fasthand(Mano Rapida)1973

Like most spaghetti westerns, FASTHAND appeared under a number of titles depending on where and how it was marketed. I went with the shorter versions, English and Spanish. It also showed in the U.S. as Fasthand is Still My Name and the original Italian was Mi Chiamavano Requiescat…ma avevano sbaglioto. A mouthful.

It’s a very violent film with several scenes of beating and torture. bloody(even more so than your standard spaghetti western).

Spaghetti vet William Berger plays Machedo, the leader of a band of ex-Confederates  marauding the countryside. Alan Steel(real name Sergio Ciani) was well known for a series of Italian Hercules films and plays Captain Jeff Madison. At least early in the film.

He’s leading a troop looking for the outlaw band when they are ambushed. They turn the tide, but only Madison and his sergeant survive. Returning to the fort, the find the main band has taken the small base and they are grabbed. Machedo wants revenge for all his comrades that have been hung or killed outright, He claims the war isn’t over.

Madison is left on his knees tied between two posts, his gun hand shot up, two fingers gone, and

spat on by the band for much to long in film time. Then, expecting him to die, they ride off. The only thing he sees of the leader is under a badly tied mask, the boots with an unusual jangly pair of spurs.

The film gives us a montage of the gang hitting stages, homes, always killing and looting as they go. Voice over narration tells us two years pass as all this is happening.

William Berger dominates the first half of the film with love scenes, more torture, and a lot of overacting. never seen Berger so hammy.

There’s also a dark figure, dressed all in black we spot in a few scenes. We know who it has to be, but they think we’re in the dark. \\About the middle, the band hit a bank with Machedo pretending to be a courier with the Union Pacific payroll to get inside the bank. They have a hearse where they toss bags of gold coins, newly minted, to a pair waiting  who drop them into a coffin.

It’s this wagon that Madison hijacks to use as a lure to draw the gang to a trap he’s set for them. He’s aided by one of those sidekick types. You know, a skinny little bearded older man, somewhat crochety and wearing the remnants of a Union uniform. He insists on calling Madison captain though neither are in the service any longer. The old man is also a gunsmith, building  fantastic weapons that Madison uses for his crippled hand.

One thing I found amusing was the final showdown between Machedo and Madison, entertaining though it was. And that is the matter of the never-ending bullets in Machedo’s six gun. He had only the one gun and the only chance he had to reload was after he’d fired six shots initially. The rest of the time the camera was focused on him all but a second or two at a time and he eventually fired thirteen more shots.

I enjoyed this one despite the problems I had with it. But then I’m a sucker for this stuff.

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I’ll Sell My Skin Dearly(vendo cara la pelle)1968

When I sat down to watch I’LL SELL MY SKIN DEARLY, I wasn’t sure what it would be. The title suggests one of those low budget horror films of the early sixties.

it turned out to be a fairly decent spaghetti western, a revenge story as the bulk of them were.

Shane is your standard spaghetti gunman, few of words, quick on action. It served  Mike Marshall well as he didn’t seem to be that good an actor, making some godawful faces at various times during the picture when some sort of emotion was required.

He’s a man come to home to settle something he’d

tried to forget, but kept eating at him. His family, mother, father, and little sister, had been murdered for their land. Specifically an old mine the father had been working for years with little result, but had finally struck a vein. It’s not explained how, but a man named Ralph Magdalena(Dane Savours) had found out and showed up to help him out . He wanted the land for grazing he said and offers him a paltry five hundred for it, quick claim in hand to be signed. Adding another two hundred, he says he’ll give him a few minutes to talk it over with his wife, going outside, knowing all the time the answer. he had half a dozen men hidden waiting, gunning him down when he comes outside and the wife and daughter after him.

Young Shane had been away at the time and had stayed away for a dozen years until it ate away at his insides and he’d come for revenge.

At times he seems mad, as when he buries the first one he finds alive, other times he seems soft and gentle. Wounded in an ambush, he drives the assailant off and digs the bullet out of his leg himself, tough guy, with a dagger he keeps in a sheath up his left sleeve. Quite good with the knife, he uses it several times to escape death.

He’s found by a young boy, Kristian, who gets him home to his mother, the widow Georgiana

Bennett(Michele Giradon), who nurses him back to health. She becomes the focal point from then as Magdalena’s lieutenant, Benson(Spartaco Conversi) , has the hots for her and keeps trying, even to the point of killing two off his men who dared go out there and mess with her, only to be soundly whipped by shane and sent packing. The fact that widow Bennett makes it quite clear she’s not interested, Benson keeps trying.

The final showdown happens in a monastery where Magdalena’s brother, Domenique(Grant Laramy), is a priest. He was in on the raid twelve years before, but had found God since and went into the priesthood. he’d spent the years trying to make up for what he’d done.

Not a bad film directed by Ettore Maria Fizzarotti with script by Giovanni Simonelli and music by Enrico Ciacci and Marcelo Mirocchi

The print I watched had the German title in the credits, ZUM ABSCHIED NOCH EIN TOTENHEMD,  and the trailer below is in German, but gives a nice bit of the action

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The Stranger Returns(Un Uomo, Un Cavallo,Una Pistola)1967

THE STRANGER RETURNS, aka A Man, A Horse, A Gun, has a strange looking hero for it’s lead. At first glance, one can’t help but wonder at him. He’s riding a big black horse, which he calls Pussy, carries a pink parasol with white lace, though it is a bit tattered. And as the poster implies, he can’t roll a cigarette, a fact that emphasize several times:  a sloppily rolled cylinder, a couple of puffs, then throws it down in disgust.

Tony Powers is The Stranger(no name is ever mentioned), and he finds a dead man in a water trough when he investigates a gun shot. He’s pulling him out when a pistol falls from the body’s jacket. At that moment, the Stranger is accosted by three men who force him to dig a grave.

“Always happy to accommodate a man,” is his laconic reply. When ordered to dig a second grave, he measures off one, getting asked isn’t that a little wide? They should have listened when he answers, “No, it’s not.”

After disposing of them, he searches the first dead man and finds a postal inspector’s I.D., taking that and heads off.

He gets involved in a stage robbery. An unusual stage at that. One made of gold and covered with a thin veneer of wood to simulate a regular stage. It belongs to a banker fleeing his failed bank with his wife ahead of a pursuing army patrol. Pulled by six white horses and with a contingent of hired thugs, the dead postal inspector had let them know and they were to pay him for the information.

They did.

There’s an identical coach made, it keeps getting switched, double-dealing keeps going on. The Stranger is aided by an old Preacher(Marco Guglielmi), who carries around a big box loaded wit fireworks and a bandolier of buckshot shells for the strangest looking shotgun I’ve ever seen. Four barrels that revolve  like a cylinder, though they must be turned by hand.

The showdown between the pair and the outlaw band led by a man named En Plein(Dan Vardis) is quite well done with a lot of organ music backgrounding it> Music by Stelvio Cipriani and directed by Luigi Vanzi, the script was based on a story by star Tony Anthony.

Quite liked this one.