IF YOU MEET SARTANA PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH was the first of five official films to feature the character. there were a number of films that featured the fellow that were mere ripoffs riding the coattails of the franchise. Gianni Garko played him in four of the spaghetti westerns and George Hilton essayed the role in the third entry.
This opening film is loaded with veterans of the genre in Klaus Kinski(Morgan), Fernando Sancho(Jose Manuel Mendoza), and William Berger(Lasky) being the main ones. A few other sprinkled through in minor roles.
The plot involves an insurance swindle perpetrated by those folks in charge, a bank director, rich men, hiring a Mexican gang, Mendoza’s, to steal a strong-box, and an American gang, led by Lasky, to kill the Mexicans. A mysterious stranger, Sartana, steps into the middle of this fight, revolving around rival gangs, the town’s bigwigs and the search for the missing loot. The usual sorts of double crosses follow, Sartana making sure he comes out on top.
The name “Sartana” first appeared in the film Blood at Sundown (Mille dollari sul nero, 1967), in which Garko played an antagonist called El General Sartana, completely unrelated to the later film series. But it was noticed, the film’s success in Germany, known by the short title Sartana. Italian producer Aldo Addobbati noticed that and set up a production deal with a German producer in Italy. Garko was signed with a clause giving him script approval.
See if this plot sounds at all familiar. A group of men protect a small town from a band of outlaws, helping them with weapons and a bit of teaching to defend themselves. Nah, couldn’t be.
The titular star is Giacomo Rossi-Stuart(billed as Jack Stuart) who plays Norman Sandel. He has the requisite good looks and blonde hair, but only minor acting skills. A bland, rather neutral expression on his face most of the time.
The standout is Dan Vadis as Ramon, the outlaw leader. He had the commanding presence thae Rossi-Stuart lacked to go with dark brooding looks.
As the film opens, Norman and his father are taking a break for lunch when they see a rider coming, slumped in his saddle. A neighbor, they get him down, only to have him killed by two other riders, masked, that managed to get on top of them without being seen. His dying breath mentions a Colonel Cook. The two killers are there to take Norman’s father with them and kill Norman. Norman gets them, but not before they kill his father.
Norman heads for town to find two of his father’s friends, Frank(Daniele Vargas, billed as Dan Vargas) and Logan(spaghetti veteran José Torres). They and his father served during the Civil War with Colonel Cook. The three men head to Cook’s home, Danger City, to find out what it was all about, picking up Dick Regan(Riccardo Garrone), a whiskry drummer whosr wagon had broke down and was then robbed by bandits while he hid. For me, he was suspicious from the start. He wore a short gun and was very good with it. We learn later he was more than just a drummer.
They arrive at Danger City only to find it apparently deserted. It’s not long before they learn it’s full of women and children. Ramon’s band had killed or taken prisoner all the men. When a young woman, Rosy(Rosy Zichel), Ramon’s girl friend who’d grown tired of his cruelty, arrives, they learn what’s up. Rumor had it that Cook had ten grand somewhere and Ramon wanted it. It went all the way back to the war. The townsmen, Cook included, he’d taken prisoner, were being tortured for information.
With Rosy’s help, Norman sneaks in and rescues Cook, who’s mind seems stuck in the Civil War.. They never make it clear whether he was already in that condition or it was the result of the torture inflicted on him. He refuses to tell them where the money might be, having promised Lee it would be used o buy arms for the South. Ramon wants the money and has promised to wipe out the town if he doesn’t get it.
The final sequence takes out most of the major players.
Not a terrible western. More than one reviewer noted that rookie director Giuseppe Vari might have done a better job with the script with a few more years of experience. That script, by the way, might have profited from another draft or two. It was by Sergio Garrone(as Willy Regan) and Vari.
As seems usual with films in the spaghetti western genre, multiple titles, depending on the release, was the norm. In the U.S., this one appeared under NO GRAVES ON BOOT HILL as well as the one heading the post. The director of this one was Sergio Garrone, the fifth Sergio to play the director role in a Euro western. His reputation seemed to vary among disparate reviewers. It was the second Garrone effort after The Outlaw Rider. It’s considered a minor gem in the genre by some, myself among them.
The three of the title are Jerry(Craig Hill), a lothario caught putting the moves on another man’ wife, Paco(Pietro Tordi, billed as Peter White), a sneak thief caught stealing a horse), and Reno(Giovanni Cianfriglia, billed as Ken Wood, a bounty hunter picked up after killing three men trying to do the same to him. Each time we see a bald headed priest making notes in a small book.
They are locked in a cell with a well-dressed young Mexican man plagued by nightmares. Francisco Ortega(Giovanni Ivan Scratuglia) is scheduled to hang for murdering a father protecting his daughter’s honor. Caught standing over them with a gun in his hand, he maintains his innocence. In a dream sequence we see them murdered, never catching who holds the gun. His father and lawyer deliver the bad news. Clemency has been denied and the hanging will go ahead in ten days.
Later that night the three find their cell door unlocked, no guards around. Each succeeding door is unlocked until the last one. A door to one side opens and when they come through find the boy’s father. lawyer, and the priest we kept seeing. They are offered a deal. Prove the boy’s innocence in time and thirty thousand will be theirs. A bank draft is handed over, but can only be used if innocence is proved. Jerry tears it into three parts, so no one will be tempted, and gives his two partners a piece.
But the real murderer doesn’t want to be found. An earlier investigator has already been murdered and the three have to deal with a rigged lunch party for horse thief Pabo, followed by a mexican gang out to kill them. Paco knows them and as the leader is dying says they were paid a thousand dollars to kill them.
Sergio Garrone wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Franco Cobianchi. An excellent music score by Vasili Kojucharov (full name: Vasco Vassil Kojucharov) and Elsio Mancuso (as Vasco & Mancuso) filled out the movie.
Another western comedy made in the wake of the Trinity films successes in the late days of the spaghetti western.
Three men, Doctor Janus Saxon(Craig Hill), safe cracker Donovan(Carlos Otero), and a Mexican bandit named Carrasco (Chris Huerta) rob a bank. But Carrasco double crosses him with his brother Dog (Richard Melvill) and their gang waiting topside as they emerge from the bank. Saxon is somewhat of a philosopher and writes it off. He believes his day will come when the shoe is on the other foot. Donovan is more dramatic and attempts to hang himself, failing at that as the limb breaks.
Saxon is mainly a conman who fleeces folks at the pool table with a trick cue ball. They never really explain how it works though.
Our hero’s chance comes when Carrasco’s brother, nursing a hangover, doesn’t flee with his brother and the gang when the law is closing in. Now he is scheduled for a trial and a quick hanging. Carrasco wants to rescue him. Stupid as his brother is, he’s still blood. Dog is pretending an ailment for an attempt at escape and the sheriff. Appleton(spaghetti vet Luis Induni) is looking for a doctor, the town medico is passed out drunk, when someone mentions a new doctor in town that is winning at the pool table in the saloon. Saxon claims appendicitus and plans to operate> In privacy of course where he more or less tortures the location of the gold from Dog.
A trip to retrieve it brings a meeting with a young man who says his name is Louis Donovan(Pedro Mari Sánchez), the son of his old partner who was killed in a shootout with the law. The site proves false and sets off a chase for Dog, being moved to Louisville for trail and hanging.
That’s when Deborah Page(Claudie Lange) enters the picture, a beautiful young woman just as greedy as the men. She knows how to use her feminine wiles to get next to any man: first Carraso, then Saxon, then a banker late in the film. We get double cross piled on double cross as the film progresses.
Not a bad film, but some strange stuff goes on.
They never explain why Saxon steals a bicycle from a wandering painter, abandoning his horse to do so. Made no sense to me. And the time was during the Civil War. The bicycle in the film had a too modern look for the time period of the movie. And most gun handlers used a Colt Peacemaker, not introduced until years after the war. At the end, the three men are arrested by Confederate soldiers, we’re treated to a montage of war photographs before Saxon, Donovan, and Carrasco appear at a bank in Confederate garb to take possession of the bank’s money(gold, paper, and silver) ostensibly to move it to another bank before it’s lost to the North amid the ongoing battle. No explanantion for how they go from being arrested to having Confederate uniforms and replacing the unit sent to move the bank funds. One review site hinted they’s been in jail for several years, but it doesn’t work for me. Not enough years for the war to make that happen.
TEQUILA!, or the other American title FUZZY THE HERO, is an odd movie. It came at the end of the reign of the spaghetti western. The genre did drag through a few more years with a handful of films, but was mostly played out. It had it’s comedic elements introduced with the success of the Trinity films amid a great deal of violence. Roberto Camardiel plays the sidekick Fuzzy and Anthony Steffen the redoubtable bad man Shoshena. I say redoubtable because, as usual with this type, he inevitably does the right thing in the end.
When the film opens in an old ghost town, we find Fuzzy scurrying around in the middle of a gun battle, men trying to kill him and each other. Fuzzy ends up robbing the dead when it’s all over, including a pocket watch and chain. When the cover opens, it plays a musical tune, one known all over the west. It had belonged to a deadly gunman named Jaguar, so dangerous that the sound of that tune was enough to freeze everyone that heard it in their tracks.
Shoshena is a bank robber looking for a new partner, one to watch his back, while he worked. He was a well known safe cracker that utilized a doctor’s stethoscope to listen for the clicks of the tumblers as he spun the dial on a safe.
The town they pick has an officious banker, DeKovan, played by spaghetti vet Eduardo Fajardo, who’s making a play to grab the whole valley. He’s grabbed most of the ranchers’ mortgages by less than honest means and is demanding payment. He doesn’t really expect, or want them paid off. Just the land. He has a son, Rush(José Luis Zalde), with the hots for the daughter of one of the ranchers. Beatrice Lohsman(Maria Elena Arpon) has no interest in the young man who comes off like a spoiled brat, believing because he wants something he’s supposed to get it.
Shoshena and Fuzzy’s first attempt to rob the bank ends badly. You see, the ranchers’ money is put in on the same day each month, then transferred first thing the next day to a more fortified bank in a larger city. There’s only a limited window for them to get the job done. Shoshena is successful, unlocking the safe amid a large number of guards surrounding the building, only to have Fuzzy accidentally bump the door in his joy to hug his partner at the sight of over seventy thousand in cash. Not enough time left to do it again and they sneak out, leaving evidence of their work behind.
DeKovan is alerted and when word comes that a gang of brothers is robbing banks in the area, headed their way, he decides to move the cash to his ranch for safety. Our two bank robbers have to wangle a job guarding the money to get at it. No easy task as Shoshena had already turned DeKovan down on an earlier job offer.
And the gang of brothers coming didn’t help either. The watch the infamous Jaguar had sported had once belonged to the eldest brother until the outlaw had killed him for it. Fuzzy, as the supposed Jaguar, was forging a reputation, aided mostly by Shoshena who knew the truth, though he kept that to himself. The watch alone did most of the work for him.
The violent finale leaves evryone but our two herose dead and the ranchers about to string them up until Shoshena buys their freedom with the bank loot.
The film must be a rarity these days. The Spaghetti Western Database listing has no review and a link to a Spanish language review site, 800 Spaghetti Westerns. The IMDb’s listing has no reviews at all. And there’s not a trailer on Youtube either.
HANDS OF A GUNFIGHTER is an early spaghetti western, pre-Leone success, with one foot still in Hollywood. The literal translation of the Italian title is TWILIGHT OF A GUNFIGHTER which fit the movie much better than the American. It used some of the same sets that Leone did for A Fistful of Dollars.
Craig Hill stars as Dan Murphy, a retired gunfighter trying to live a straight life with his wife and son, but haunted by nightmares of an incident four years before when a sheriff had tried to arrest him when he had his infant son in his arms. As he quickly turns, the sheriff fires, hitting and killing the baby.
How can this be?
Murphy got his measure of revenge after escaping by coming back and taking the sheriff’s baby boy and raising him with his wife as their own!
All that is coming to an end as a gunman, a sympathetic one, finds them and makes an offer. Return the boy and the sheriff will pretend Murphy was killed and the ten thousand bounty would be gone. Dan’s wife, Laura(Gloria Milland) convinces him that might be best for the boy.
Murphy had been living the straight life and packed his two gun rig away. He’d avoided trouble to the extent that some believe him a coward. That would be the four Carter brothers, the bully boys of the town. As usual in this set-up, the worst was the youngest. always looking for trouble, then whining to his brothers to help him out.
Friends of Murphy and his wife are about to be married. Pat Davis(Carlos Romero Marchent, related to the director and screenwriter) is to marry Margaret Dixon(Conchita Núñez), daughter of saloon keeper Alex(Francisco Sanz). That younger Carter brother had always fancied her and shortly after the wedding, the two men get into a fist fight. with father-in-law Alex killing Carter when he’s about to shoot Pat.
That sets the three brothers into a killing rage, shooting te Davis clan and burning the house.
Murphy’s nerves are already tightly wound from giving up the boy he’d been raising and he straps the guns back on to go after the brothers. Drinking takes him further down until he goes for the boy at the end.
A decidedly odd spaghetti western made before Leone’s style changed so much.
Anthony Steffen was born Antonio Luiz De Teffè, the son of the Formula 1 champion and then ambassador Manoel de Teffe. He was one of the stars of the spaghetti western genre, appearing in a large number of them. One thing I noticed is that Steffen must have owned the hat he wore in every one of them. Less a ten gallon stetson, more on the order of four or five maybe, I’ve never seen him without it.
A COFFIN FOR THE SHERIFF was not a great picture, but still entertaining. It had it’s moments. The ground was familiar, the revenge motif of virtually every spaghetti film I’ve seen.
Steffen plays a mysterious character known as Shenandoah that rides into town and gets immediately braced by a pair in the saloon, they trying to force him into a fight with a pretended slight. He won’t bite, flashing a big roll of bills and getting himself invited to a poker game with the two men and a gambler named Jerry Krueger(Arturo Dominici, billed as Arthur Kent). Of course, cheating goes on and gets a saloon brawl started between Shenandoah and the two men, which our hero wins. The gambler notes an interesting fact to a fellow outlaw, Murdock(another spaghetti vet, Eduardo Fajardo): the roll of bills in Shenandoah’s been using are counterfeit. They resolve to keep an eye on him.
Shenandoah worms his way into the gang when he forces a soft bank robbery into a full assault. Two men were to quietly take the bank late at night while the gang waited outside of town as back-up if anything went wrong. What went wrong was Shenandoah firing a couple of shots in the air from concealment. As the gng is storming out of town, one is wounded and left behind, to be rescued by Shenandoah himself.
In order to gain full partnership in the gang, Shenandoah must pass an initiation. He has a gun with two bullets, the opponent he must kill has two loaded six guns. They are sent into a valley for the hunt. Here’s where we begin to learn about Shenandoah’s motivations. Two years before, the gang had held up a stage and one passenger, a woman, had been brutalized, then killed. She was Shenandoah’s wife and he wants the killer.
The only man who knows his true identity, and we don’t learn that until the finale, is a rancher named Wilson. Shenandoah risks his life to warn the man when the gang sets out to rob him and gets caught at it. Here’s another staple of one of Steffen’s westerns: he’ beaten bloody and senseless by the gang. It seems to happen in every one, though he of course prevails in the end.
The finale is well staged with the last confrontation between Joe Logan(Shenandoah’ real name) and the killer he’s been hunting for two years.
As mentioned, entertaining but not terribly original. One final note: the review over at FISTFUL OF PASTA asks one thing I’ve thought about often. What did Steffen’s voice really sound like. All the big stars for that matter. The English voice was rarely the same and often sounded totally off for a particular actor.
This has nothing to do with Django. As was the usual thing back in those days, the spaghetti films tried to ride the coattails of the more successful entries in the genre. There were something like thirty, maybe more, films that had Django in the title. The only official sequel, with original star Franco Nero, came more than twenty years after the original. It also appeared under the title A FISTFUL OF DEATH and the world-wide English title was ADIOS COMPANEROS.
It was written and directed by Demofilo Fidani under his pseudonym Miles Deem. Fidani specialized in low budget movies and this one scraped the bottom of the barrel. Dirty and filled with a saloon brawl, a staple of the spaghetti western, bad fist fights in other places, and a lot of gun play.
Jeff Cameron plays Macho Callaghan, the lone survivor of an ambush by Butch Cassidy(Jack Betts), billed as Hunt Powers), the Sundance Kid(Giancarlo Prete, billed as Philip Garner), and their gang, who needed horses, food, and ammunition. Wounded by a bullet, he plays dead until they leave. He’s rescued and heals, then goes looking for revenge.
In that interim, Butch and the gang have had a falling out and split, half going with Ironhead(spaghetti vet Gordon Mitchell). Here’s where it gets weird. Ironhead has become respectable, planning the jobs and letting his gang pull them, take the risks, and gets the biggest cut. He doesn’t mind if some of them get killed, even helping out in that a bit. A bigger cut for him. At the same time, Butch and Sundance are posing as a veterinarian and his assistant.
Macho meets and befriends one of the outlaws, Buck O’Sullivan(Benito Pacifico, billed as Dennis Colt), in the above mentioned saloon brawl, the two mwn fighting to a standstill, then getting drunk together. It’s his in to Ironhead’s band and there he begins his plan against the two bands, helping pull a job, then playing the two off against each other. Ironhead hates Butch for beating him out of the proceeds in a crooked poker game.
We learn a secret at the end about Macho as he continues his hunt for Butch and Sundance, the only survivors, who escaped, minus a big pile of loot.
I’ve said before that the spaghettis had good, bad, and just plain ugly entries. This one falls closer to ugly than bad, For the spaghetti purist, as I am, only. The best thing about it was the presence of Klaus Kinski, a favorite, playing against type as a mild mannered, mostly, priest. Restrained for once, he’s always a joy to watch.
By 1973, even the boost from the comedic Trinity films had started to wear thin. Fewer spaghetti westerns were being made and even fewer really good ones. CHARGE!(This was the U.K> title. I liked it better than the American one, THOSE DIRTY GUYS, which had a, I don’t know, comedic bent that didn’t fit) was a movie that starred Stephen Boyd and Gianni Garko(billed as Johnny Garko). Boyd plays Captain Chadwell, sent by President Garfield to help stop Mexican bandits and a leftover crackpot General from the Maximillian years who worshiped Napoleon. Garko is a Muslim, Koran quoting bounty hunter known only as Korano.
Chadwell is accompanied by two men: Lt, Younger(Howard Ross) and a black enlisted man, Corporal Washington smith(Harry Baird).
They arrive in time to find a massacred troop and missing munitions(two hundred rifles, two gatling guns, and two hundred thousand rounds of ammunition. Thr troop had been slaughtered by an outlaw band led by Angelo Sanchez(Simón Andreu). Also taken was the blonde daughter of the fort’s doctor, Miss Adams(Teresa Gimpera).
The three army men are out to find the arms and rescue the woman. Korano is onlt interested in Angelo Sanchez, specifically the thousand on his head.
This wasn’t a great film, but not bad. It tried to be too many things, even a couple of minor comedy bits, to be completely satisfying. It did have pretty good music with the theme song sung by star Stephen Boyd.
Korano, as happened in a lot of these spaghetti westerns used some exotic weapons: a machine gun in the shaft of his sun umbrella and a long rile that appeared to shoot sticks of dynamite without them having to be lit.
By the seventies, the spaghetti western genre had started to fade a bit. But the two Trinity films had breathed new life into it. Comedies became the go-to and, as was usual in the genre, other producers tried to cash in on popular franchises. We got a slew of Trinities in titles, although sometimes they had nothing to do with the films. At least here, there was a town named Trinity. Star Richard Harrison wrote, produced, and mostly directed this one. First director Renzo Geta was fired several days into the shoot with Harrison taking the reins.
Jesse Smith(Richard Harrison) and Lester O’Hara(Donal O’Brien) were half brothers: same mother, different fathers. And as different as two men could possibly be. Jesse was a fun loving fellow, especially with the ladies, and very good with a gun. Lester was raised a Mormon and strictly nonviolent, trusting of authority in all it’s forms.
As the film opens, Lester is looking for his brother to inform him that their mother had died and left them a ranch in the town of Trinity. The ywo hadn’t seen each other since they were boys. Lester is a scary looking fellow with a thick beard and perpetual scowl.
They hook up when Jesse tries to rob Lester one night after beating a hasty retreat from an old man who caught him with his daughter. All he got away with was the long johns he wore and his gun belt. Lester recognizes him from the picture he carried, sent by Jesse to their mother. Jesse doesn’t believe Lester is his brother until he sees a scar on his brother’s butt that he remembers.
As the two brothers get to know each other, we learn they have opposite aims for their inheritance. Lester wants to build a church and Jesse the best whore house in the world. Their problem is the town of Trinity is mostly filled with crooks. Not to mention it’s the end of a gold rush in the area.
They find their land is held by three men employing virtual slave labor hunting for gold, mostly played out by this time. Lester tries to talk them out of it, getting dunked for his troubles and Jesse has to step in, blasting guns from thier hands and running them off.
The humor in the film, such as it is, comes from Lester trying to reform his brother and Jesse’s resistance. They find a bit of gold, only to have it stolen on the bank’s horse train, all the guards and officials killed. Jesse tries to save it, only to learn that Lester has unloaded his gun. Lester gets them into a prize fight(fifty dollar entry fee, four hundred if they can knock the champ out). Lester has all kinds of excuses why he can’t fight the man(nonviolent, a hernia, etec.)They are forced to wash dishes to pay for their meal after the bank is robbed, where Lester has deposited their winnings. Next they take a job from a man promising they can shovel their way to wealth. The shoveling part turns out to be scooping up buffalo turds to be dried and sold as fuel.
Two outlaw gangs control the area. Poker(Gino Marturano), so known for his skill at gambling, controls one. Blondie(Federico Boido, billed as rick Boyd) the other. They are meeting to settle who will reign. Jesse and Lester slip in and call Poker on his claim to be the best gambler. A dice game follows with Jesse switching the dice at opportune times to clean the man out. They manage to outwit the gangs and escape.
The pair split up and Lester manages to get away with all the money. Still trying to reform his brother away from the whore house idea. The stage is held up, Lester wounded in the head just as Jesse arrives to claim his half of the money. One gets away with the loot as Jesse tries to help Lester. Turning him over to a traveling doctor, who says he can take out the brain, remove the bullet, and put the brain back into Lester’s head. “A simple operation!” He declares.
Jesse realizes his dream, Lester returns to destroy it, and the final shoot-out is decently staged. The music by Carlo Savina is a bit goofy, but perfectly fits the style of the movie. Not a great western, but decent. About a C.
IF YOU MEET SARTANA PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH was the first of five official films to feature the character. there were a number of films that featured the fellow that were mere ripoffs riding the coattails of the franchise. Gianni Garko played him in four of the spaghetti westerns and George Hilton essayed the role in the third entry.
bank director, rich men, hiring a Mexican gang, Mendoza’s, to steal a strong-box, and an American gang, led by Lasky, to kill the Mexicans. A mysterious stranger, Sartana, steps into the middle of this fight, revolving around rival gangs, the town’s bigwigs and the search for the missing loot. The usual sorts of double crosses follow, Sartana making sure he comes out on top.
sul nero, 1967), in which Garko played an antagonist called El General Sartana, completely unrelated to the later film series. But it was noticed, the film’s success in Germany, known by the short title Sartana. Italian producer Aldo Addobbati noticed that and set up a production deal with a German producer in Italy. Garko was signed with a clause giving him script approval. 
