Black Killer (1971)
4/10
Kinski!
12 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Lucky Moore is really Carlo Croccolo, who acted in around 137 movies and made two of his own, this one and Gunman of One Hundred Crosses, and they're both on the low end of the Italian Western but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't watch them, learn something and perhaps be entertained.

The main reason for me watching this is that the camera operator was a young - well, thirty-five - Aristide Massaccesi using his real name. The footage that he shot for this movie would find its way into a movie that he directed early in his career, Bounty Hunter In Trinity.

The O'Hara brothers run a small town in the west and despite the bounty on their heads, they're working with Judge Wilson to make farmers sign his name to their land deeds and then kill they kill them and split the will. It seems like a great scam, but then Burt Collins comes to town and after a rigged game of cards, he kills two of the O'Hara's men. On his way to escape from the town, he runs into the mysterious lawyer James Webb (yes, Klaus Kinski is on the side of the angels and I feel very strange about it). After killing three more gang members, Burt gets the job of sheriff instead of going to trial.

Meanwhile, the O'Haras are told that Burt is visiting his brother Peter, who lives in the wilderness with his Native American wife Sarah (Marina Malfatti, All the Colors of the Dark, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave). They kill him, set the house on fire and - yes, an Italian movie - assault his wife but she lives. That's their big mistake, because she's probably the deadliest person in this movie, using a knife and firing explosive arrows (that become a major part of Bounty Hunter In Trinity) to kill just about everyone that's done her wrong.

Look - Klaus Kinski is a lawyer who hides hundreds of his guns inside hollowed out law books and one assumes he goes from town to town in the west and finds situations where people of low morals need to be dealt with harshly while having no real morals himself. If we forget most of the rest of the movie - I'm also all for Malfatti killing those that so grossly wronged her and yes, that assault scene is really rough - and just think about a movie where Klaus tries cases, then opens a book, stares at someone and shoots them, your watch of this film is worth it.
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