I'd never heard of this one before its recent late-night Italian TV screening; on a hunch, I looked the film up on the "Spaghetti Western Database", where it's given a favorable write-up – and I'm glad I did, because this is a solid entry within the genre. I also wasn't familiar with director Bianchini – but, then, the same also held true for Mario Lanfranchi of DEATH SENTENCE (1968), another unconventional Spaghetti Western I was impressed by of late.
The film is enjoyable, reasonably stylish and displays plenty of invention throughout; at the same time, we have to contend with some resistible (albeit brief) humor. It's also quite a violent offering: the hero is dragged by a horse, tied to a tree and beaten-up en masse, buried alive and shot at a number of times (the film's single most startling moment – which I'm amazed wasn't cut for TV – involves the graphic extraction, in gloating close-up, of a bullet from his hand!). The action scenes are undeniably well-staged – with the hero always managing to outwit the villains and emerge victorious (despite being greatly outnumbered).
Having mentioned all of this, it's interesting that I should be following the film with the newest James Bond adventure – I may be wrong here, but this Western seems to have been inspired to some extent by that highly popular franchise (then in its heyday): the complex plot (involving espionage at the time of the American Civil War, having a Gatling gun for the obligatory "McGuffin", and where one of the characters is revealed to be a 'defector'), dour womanizing hero (with the leading lady typically picked out from the opposite side and another who's dispatched by the villains for her involvement with him), etc. Casting, too, is more than adequate: Robert Woods (who would feature in a dire Spaghetti Western I'd watched not too long ago, SAVAGE GUNS [1971], but also six Jess Franco movies – including the haunting THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR [1973]), John Ireland (excellent as an uncouth half-breed bandit who can throw a deadly knife with his toes{!} and, to feign a tough exterior, lights a match against his bare feet and eats an onion raw – though there's also an anti-racist angle surprisingly attached to his character), Evelyn Stewart, Georges Rigaud and Gerard Herter.
With respect to the soundtrack, apart from an effectively atypical jazzy score by Piero Piccioni, there's a nice atmospheric touch in the constant buzzing of flies (due to the oppressive heat). For the record, the framing on the edition I watched was slightly compromised by being opened up from the original Techniscope (2.35:1) to the 1.85:1 ratio. By the way, an alternate title for the film is GATLING GUN – another Western by that name was made in 1973 (and one which is readily available for DVD rental locally).
The film is enjoyable, reasonably stylish and displays plenty of invention throughout; at the same time, we have to contend with some resistible (albeit brief) humor. It's also quite a violent offering: the hero is dragged by a horse, tied to a tree and beaten-up en masse, buried alive and shot at a number of times (the film's single most startling moment – which I'm amazed wasn't cut for TV – involves the graphic extraction, in gloating close-up, of a bullet from his hand!). The action scenes are undeniably well-staged – with the hero always managing to outwit the villains and emerge victorious (despite being greatly outnumbered).
Having mentioned all of this, it's interesting that I should be following the film with the newest James Bond adventure – I may be wrong here, but this Western seems to have been inspired to some extent by that highly popular franchise (then in its heyday): the complex plot (involving espionage at the time of the American Civil War, having a Gatling gun for the obligatory "McGuffin", and where one of the characters is revealed to be a 'defector'), dour womanizing hero (with the leading lady typically picked out from the opposite side and another who's dispatched by the villains for her involvement with him), etc. Casting, too, is more than adequate: Robert Woods (who would feature in a dire Spaghetti Western I'd watched not too long ago, SAVAGE GUNS [1971], but also six Jess Franco movies – including the haunting THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR [1973]), John Ireland (excellent as an uncouth half-breed bandit who can throw a deadly knife with his toes{!} and, to feign a tough exterior, lights a match against his bare feet and eats an onion raw – though there's also an anti-racist angle surprisingly attached to his character), Evelyn Stewart, Georges Rigaud and Gerard Herter.
With respect to the soundtrack, apart from an effectively atypical jazzy score by Piero Piccioni, there's a nice atmospheric touch in the constant buzzing of flies (due to the oppressive heat). For the record, the framing on the edition I watched was slightly compromised by being opened up from the original Techniscope (2.35:1) to the 1.85:1 ratio. By the way, an alternate title for the film is GATLING GUN – another Western by that name was made in 1973 (and one which is readily available for DVD rental locally).