Hellbenders, The (1967)

Confederate officer Jonas (Joseph Cotten) along with his sons rob a convoy carrying shit load of money. They brutally kill everyone in the convoy so there will be no witnesses. Jonas wants to use the money to revive "the south" again. They hid the money inside a coffin that they have in their wagon as they plan to travel back to their home territory. They also have "grieving widow" (Norma Bengell) along for the ride just in case they get stopped by the army or the law.

The film felt too "American" for me. Maybe it was the leading actors or something. I just couldn't get into that good ol' spaghetti mood when i was watching this film. Story was good and acting was fine, but there was something holding back for me about this film.

Directed by Sergio Corbucci. He did ok job, nothing really special to say about the direction. At this point the best one from him was yet to come, The Great Silence.

Face to Face (1967)

Professor Brett Fletcher (Gian Maria Volonté) quits his teaching job due to health problems and heads west. On the way he meets outlaw Bennet (Thomas Milian) and ends up saving his life in a gun fight. Fletcher joins "Bennets raiders" and starts to enjoy this outlaw way of life. Flether's slow tranformation from good to evil starts.

At first i didn't like Gian Maria Volonté's character. To me it felt like wrong casting. It was odd to see Volonté play a good and well-spoken character. But then when his character started show his evil side things got way better. Tomas Milian (oh man that hair cut/wig) did a pretty solid job as an outlaw who still has something good in him.

Ennio Morricone's score is ok, nothing special if you ask me. The main score was good, but rest of it was pretty standard.

Directed by Sergio Sollima. All in all, Face to Face is a good spaghetti western, the story about good guy turning bad and vice versa is pretty interesting, but not nearly as good as Sollima's Big Gundown.

Specialisti, Gli (1969)

Gunslinger Hud (Johnny Hallyday) returns home to seek revenge for this brother's death. Town people have lynched Hud's brother because they think he was involved in robbery. The money from that robbery is still missing.

Directed by Sergio Corbucci, he does a pretty good job. Although Corbucci was totally fed up with westerns at this point (Alex Cox speaks about this in his great book "10 000 ways to die", if you are interested in spaghetti westerns get that book!) i think this was pretty good movie. Johnny Hallyday gives a solid performance as vengeance driven gunslinger.

One of the best (or maybe just weird) scenes in the movie is when bunch of hippies(were there hippies in the wild west?) take over the town and tell everyone to strip naked and hand over their money. So there are about 30 extras lying butt naked in the old western town street at the final scene.

All in all, good western from Corbucci.

Django the Bastard (1969)

Django (Anthony Steffen) walks into a town and he is about make everyone pay who had betrayed him and left him for death in the battlefield.

Film starts with terrific scene. Django has a wooden cross with him as he walks into town. Cross has a "dead soon to be" guy's name written on it. Django calls out the guy and shoots him. He falls next to the cross, dead. Classic stuff.

Django is this ghost like character, now you see him, now you don't, BANG! You're dead. Look and feel of this film is not like your typical spaghetti western, there is also some horror/gothic stuff thrown in.

To be honest, i was not that impressed by Anthony Steffen's performance. He lacks some of that big screen presence that is totally essential for these kind of roles. Now his character Django is somewhat shallow.

Luciano Rossi makes one of his biggest roles as the madman brother of one of the betraying officers. All the euro fans might wanna check out Kier-La Janisse's book about Luciano Rossi, "A Violent Professional, The Films of Luciano Rossi". Good book about one of the unsung heroes of Italian film industry.

All in all, pretty decent spaghetti western that has some horror/gothic stuff too. If you like this one, you might also wanna check out "And God said to Cain..." , starring Klaus Kinski, it also a revenge story with some horror feel thrown in.

If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death (1968)

Couple of stagecoaches are robbed by two different gangs, a gang led by Morgan (Klaus Kinski) and another gang led by Lasky (William Berger). Both robberies go awry, Sartana kills all the Morgans men, except Morgan and Lasky's gang is killed by Lasky himself, but it turn out that the strongbox they robbed is full of stones and not gold. Morgan and Lasky team up to get Sartana out of their way.

I have to say that i didn't like this film. The main character was just too slick. Sort of poor man's version of the characters played usually by the great Lee Van Cleef. Kinski was as stable as ever, but that just was not enough to save the film. Lots of things happening all the time in this movie, everybody betraying everybody, everyone is after the gold. Sartana stepping in and killing the bad guys. It gets pretty confusing after a while...

Like i said this one was not my "bowl of spaghetti". Maybe i give it another spin sometime in future just to see if it gets any better when you have some kind of crasp of the story. Directed by Gianfranco Parolini.

Cut-Throats Nine (1972)

Group of inmates, all sentenced for life, are heading back to prison from the gold mines. They are escorted by the troops, Sgt. Brown (Claudio Undari) as their leading officer. They are attacked by the bandits, who are convinced that there is gold on the wagon where the inmates are traveling. When they can't find the gold, bandits kill everyone except the inmates and Sgt. Brown and his daughter who are traveling in the wagon. Bandits stampede the horses leading the wagon and the wagon crashed into the woods.

Now the inmates, Sgt. Brown and his daughter are left in the wilderness to walk back to the prison. Tension rises between the inmates and Sgt. Brown as they travel through the mountains in the cold winter weather.

Really brutal western. I think that one of the reasons why this film is one of cult favorites is it's over the top violence. Lots of gory/graphic scenes. This is also pretty minimalistic western, no big crowd scenes. Only the odd little traveling company trying to survive in the wilderness. Yet still highly enjoyable movie.

Directed by Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent.

Big Gundown, The (1966)

Mexican peasant Cuchillo Sanchez (Tomas Milian) is accused of murdering and raping 12-year old girl. Bounty hunter/temporary deputy John Corbett (Lee Van Cleef) is send after his.

Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian as leads and great story equals one of the best spaghetti westerns ever made. Lee Van Cleef had just filmed another classic-to-be (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) before making this film. Van Cleef makes a helluva job as the leading character and delivers the goods in spades. Tomas Milian is also great in this one. Milian "taking the bull by the horns"- scene is one of the highlights.

The title score/song is just all the way classic stuff, easily one of the best scores Ennio Morricone has ever written. Well, what the hell, in fact the whole movie brilliantly scored.

Directed by Sergio Sollimo who directed also couple of other Spaghetti westerns in the late '60s,  "Face to Face" and "Run, Man, Run". He also directed the brilliant Charles Bronson actioner, Violent City (1970).

It it easy to join all the praise this movie has gotten over the years, because this is one of the best Spaghetti Westerns ever made.

Day Of Anger (1967)

Lee Van Cleef has been dirty, "ugly" and downright mean... now watch him get violent. 

Giuliano Gemma plays town stable boy Scott who sweeps the floors and takes out the shit buckets. Probably not the best job in the world. Gun slinger Talby (Lee Van Cleef) rides into town and eventually takes Scott under his wings. Together they take the town under their control, but in the end Scott has to face Talby...

Lee Van Ceef is the man. He is good as always. All he have to do is smoke his pipe and take out couple of gringos to be cool. Gemma also delivers. Story is somewhat slow at the beginning but once they get the ball rolling there is no stopping there.