In short: Light The Fuse…Sartana Is Coming (1971)

aka Cloud Of Dust…Cry Of Death…Sartana Is Coming

The gunman Sartana (Gianni Garko) and his organ come into one of these deadly, corrupt Old West towns. First item on Sartana's agenda is to kill three members of the local army of corrupt sheriffs and deputies, and turn himself into the local penitentiary for the deed.

Of course, this is part of a harebrained scheme of Sartana's to bust an old buddy out of prison. Granville (Piero Lulli), as the man is called, is held captive by evil Sheriff Manassas because Manassas thinks he knows the hiding place of five-hundred thousand dollars in gold that have disappeared during a highly illegal transaction between the Sheriff's brother, Granville's partner, and a follower of the local bandit general Monk (Jose Jaspe).

Stupid as his plan may be, Sartana breaks his friend out without much of a problem. Granville professes not to know anything about the gold or the murders connected to it, so Sartana decides to send him off to safety, and make his own way to town to see if he can't find out where the gold is hidden.

Sartana's job is not going to be easy. He will have to juggle quite a few different factions, the widow of the dead Manassas brother (Susan Scott/Nieves Navarro), the "best gunman in the west", a mysterious killer wearing gloves, a shady one-eyed character and assorted armed thugs. Fortunately, our hero is rather clever, the best gunman in the west without ironic quotation marks, and owns a very interesting secret weapon that will make Django intensely envious.

Light the Fuse is supposed to be the best of Giuliano Carnimeo's Sartana films, and this might very well be the case.

As is the case with other of Carnimeo's movies I've seen, this one too suffers a bit from being a light piece of fluff that doesn't want to really engage with the darker sides of humanity or the political themes the Sergios of the Spaghetti Western often liked to ponder. That doesn't mean the darker sides of humanity aren't in here at all. In fact there's torture, betrayal and untrustworthiness in spades, and the film's body count must lie at about fifty people, but Carnimeo treats it all as a lark, avoiding any attempts to make an emotional impact above the feeling of "fun".

Luckily, I am able to cope with a film that doesn't want to take sociopathy and mass murder seriously, especially when it is so hell-bent on being entertaining as Light The Fuse is. Carnimeo ensures that there is never a dull moment on screen. When Sartana isn't in one of the film's rather inventive shoot-outs, he might very well be seen pole-vaulting onto the back of his horse or using a little mechanical Indian as a booby trap. The film's certainly not afraid of silliness, but utilizes it with such a well developed sense of timing that it never feels preposterous, but rather delightful. If you want to call an organ that moonlights as a cannon and a machine gun delightful, that is.

An abundance of shady and slightly bizarre characters - all well played by the usual suspects - helps keep the film's pacing up and the action varied. While there's never a deep or moving moment on screen, there's also never a dull one.

Add to that Carnimeo's sprightly, zoom-loving direction and a nearly absurdly typical Spaghetti Western soundtrack by Bruno Nicolai, and you have yourself an excellent ninety minutes of fun.

 

Technorati-Tags: spaghetti western,in short,giuliano carnimeo,gianni garko,piero lulli,nieves navarro

In short: A Pistol For Ringo (1965)

A gang of Mexican bandits (as always lead by Fernando Sancho, whose character is called Sancho too) robs the bank of a nameless American town near the border. Sancho is hurt by the posse chasing him and his men and probably won't make it back to Mexico alive without taking care of his wounds first, so the gang (minus the one now very dead guy who wanted to leave Sancho behind), attacks the nearest farm and takes the inhabitants hostage. In a stroke of good luck for the bad guys, the farm belongs to Major Clyde (Antonio Casas) whose daughter Ruby (Lorella De Luca) just happens to be the local Sheriff's (George Martin) fiancee. It also is built (or so the film says) like a fortress and will need to be attacked by the regular military and not just any old posse before it will fall.

The sheriff would really like to get his fiancee and the other hostages back alive, so he is not content with just waiting until the cavallary arrives to blow everyone up. Instead, he has the glorious idea of hiring the dubious yet honorable gunman "Angel Face" Ringo (Giuliano Gemma) to work the gang as an undercover agent (and rogue doctor, just like Black Jack).

Ringo's mission isn't exactly made easier by the fact that the Major decides to fall in love with gunmoll Dolores (Nieves Navarro) who just happens to be Sancho's girlfriend.

A Pistol For Ringo was directed and written by Duccio Tessari, a man whose scripts sometimes have the - very atypical for Italian genre film - virtue of being well paced and rather tightly scripted. Pistol has one of those scripts, which sounds all nice and good on paper but left me a little nonplussed, because this tightness does not leave as much room for the mad or just plain strange flourishes I often love about the Spaghetti Western. The intensity the Sergios brought to their work is of course nowhere to be found either.

In other words: it's a well crafted script, but also a bit on the conservative and riskless side.

The same can be said about Tessari's direction. He is a much less sloppy director than many of his contemporaries, but his film also isn't as stylish or grimy or just plain European as their films are. Tessari's style is at times closer to that of a competent American Western director (so I'm not talking Boetticher or de Toth here) than what I am used to from the Italian arm of the genre.

It is patently unfair of me to feel as lukewarm about A Pistol For Ringo as I do. After all, Tessari probably set out to make just another well-crafted Western, and mostly succeeded in that. So the problem really is mine alone, in that I would have preferred a film that shows a little less competence and slickness and had more of a personality of its own.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,spaghetti western,giuliano gemma,nieves navarro,in short,duccio tessari