zardoz-13 Review of Sartana Kills Them All

Sartana Kills Them All (1970)

A Spaghetti Western Version of "Jules and Jim"

[6/10 · 27 July 2020]

"Hands of a Gunfighter" writer & director Rafael Romero Marchent's "Sartana Kills Them All" with Gianni Garko as the eponymous gunslinger is a standard-issue, picaresque Spaghetti western about a couple of outlaws and a girl searching for a $100 thousand in loot from a robbery. The Spanish landscape is impeccable and Garko bears a close resemblance to Robert Redford. His brother in crime Marcos (Guglielmo Spoletini of "Last of the Badmen"), and he fight over the girl, María Anderson (María Silva of "Cavalry Charge"), and then she double-crosses them. Marchent's gritty (and it is gritty) seems like a rehash of François Truffaut's classic French comedy "Jules and Jim," though it isn't as carefree. The comedy is constantly interrupted by tragic gunfire. The subplot about the murderous Kirby clan, led by the crippled father Richard (Andrés Mejuto of "Chimes at Midnight"), who loves to guzzle whiskey when he isn't making his sadistic sons kill everybody in sight, belongs in another movie. However, these homicidal hombres meet their match in our anti-heroic heroes. Meantime, Sartana and Marcos are tirelessly pursued by a posse. Sheriff Laughton (Luis Induni of "Sabata the Killer") vows to follow them to Hell if necessary. Neither does Laughton catch them nor do Sartana and Marcos escape him, and the scenarists Mario Alabiso, Santiago Moncada, and Joaquín Romero Marchent adapted Marchent's story that he co-wrote with Rafael Romero Marchent. Mind you, this isn't "Trinity" type comedy. The body count is pretty high, running into double-digits and sometimes our heroes are a little trigger happy themselves. Marcello Giombini's orchestral score is a big, plus. By no means a top tier Spaghetti, "Sartana Kills Them All" could even be compared with "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" in some respects. The violence is rugged, especially with a stagecoach pulls into a relay station and they find everybody who worked there has been murdered by the Kirby clan. Incidentally, Andrés Mejuto reminded me of Piero Lulli.