One of the more conflicting watch experiences I’ve had in a while. On one hand I loved nearly everything about this, the story is quite simple for this genre in a lot of ways but it also subverts it in some others which is fun, Jack Palance dominates the screen with one of my new favorite western villain performances, the music from Sante Maria Romitelli embodies everything I love about western scores, and Gianfranco Parolini’s vision as a director remains of the most intriguing I’ve ever seen which makes watching anything of his a delight. On the other hand there’s one real problem holding this back, it sounds crazy to be conflicted about one part when I just listed nearly a half-dozen I thought were great but it’s unfortunately impossible to ignore that grossly long, completely unnecessary, and excruciating-to-watch SA scene. Thankfully it’s not graphic so it’s not excruciating to watch in that sense, the ridiculous length of the scene and its nonexistent impact on anything in the movie is what really made it distasteful to me. It’s not just that somehow, during that scene a character flashes back to yet another SA scene which we get the misfortune of seeing as well, it makes this movie almost impossible to recommend despite how much of it I thought was shockingly well made. I will say I understand having a scene like that to enhance the hatred of a villain (for example the Tim Roth scene in Rob Roy) but the hate for Palance’s gang was already more than established and that scene accomplished exactly nothing for the story, it’s like we lost the plot for a good TWENTY minutes just to show something that they’d have to know would do nothing but make the audiences uncomfortable, I just don’t get it whatsoever, especially in this context. Now to get back to the other 80% of the movie which I loved, it was really nice seeing Lee Van Cleef appearing visually different even if his soul wasn’t fully in this performance, I hope he has more roles like this out there because even though I love him as the badass gunslinger I think he had acting chops beyond that typecast. Palance is easily the standout like I said earlier with his maniacal screen presence adding a chaotic tone to the climactic and tense scenes which was so entertaining, he did very well in making the audience despise him just by the way he carried himself and spoke. From the supporting cast Robert Lipton and Sybil Danning stand out the most, the former gave another solid villain performance next to Palance’s and Danning was good when she was on screen, the child actor for Johnny wasn’t bad either, the acting being this decent was one of the more shocking things about it to me. The script is okay, it is mostly one-liners which fail to land sometimes but you’re not here for the high-level writing, you’re here for the story and action, both of which I thought were fantastic. The story is where the “subversion” I mentioned comes in, this follows the instruction manual for the late 60’s early 70’s westerns in plenty of ways, mostly in the overall arc the story takes, but the themes of non-violence, Lee’s dual role, and Parolini’s unique way of filming action make this seemingly typical western feel not-so-typical while watching. Like I said earlier that one huge negative makes it tough to recommend this on a wide scale but if you’re able to stomach that and if you love this genre as much as I do I’d certainly say it’s worth a try.

One of the more conflicting watch experiences I’ve had in a while. On one hand I loved nearly everything about this, the story is quite simple for this genre in a lot of ways but it also subverts it in some others which is fun, Jack Palance dominates the screen with one of my new favorite western villain performances, the music from Sante Maria Romitelli embodies everything I love about western scores, and Gianfranco Parolini’s vision as a director remains of the most intriguing I’ve ever seen which makes watching anything of his a delight. On the other hand there’s one real problem holding this back, it sounds crazy to be conflicted about one part when I just listed nearly a half-dozen I thought were great but it’s unfortunately impossible to ignore that grossly long, completely unnecessary, and excruciating-to-watch SA scene. Thankfully it’s not graphic so it’s not excruciating to watch in that sense, the ridiculous length of the scene and its nonexistent impact on anything in the movie is what really made it distasteful to me. It’s not just that somehow, during that scene a character flashes back to yet another SA scene which we get the misfortune of seeing as well, it makes this movie almost impossible to recommend despite how much of it I thought was shockingly well made. I will say I understand having a scene like that to enhance the hatred of a villain (for example the Tim Roth scene in Rob Roy) but the hate for Palance’s gang was already more than established and that scene accomplished exactly nothing for the story, it’s like we lost the plot for a good TWENTY minutes just to show something that they’d have to know would do nothing but make the audiences uncomfortable, I just don’t get it whatsoever, especially in this context. Now to get back to the other 80% of the movie which I loved, it was really nice seeing Lee Van Cleef appearing visually different even if his soul wasn’t fully in this performance, I hope he has more roles like this out there because even though I love him as the badass gunslinger I think he had acting chops beyond that typecast. Palance is easily the standout like I said earlier with his maniacal screen presence adding a chaotic tone to the climactic and tense scenes which was so entertaining, he did very well in making the audience despise him just by the way he carried himself and spoke. From the supporting cast Robert Lipton and Sybil Danning stand out the most, the former gave another solid villain performance next to Palance’s and Danning was good when she was on screen, the child actor for Johnny wasn’t bad either, the acting being this decent was one of the more shocking things about it to me. The script is okay, it is mostly one-liners which fail to land sometimes but you’re not here for the high-level writing, you’re here for the story and action, both of which I thought were fantastic. The story is where the “subversion” I mentioned comes in, this follows the instruction manual for the late 60’s early 70’s westerns in plenty of ways, mostly in the overall arc the story takes, but the themes of non-violence, Lee’s dual role, and Parolini’s unique way of filming action make this seemingly typical western feel not-so-typical while watching. Like I said earlier that one huge negative makes it tough to recommend this on a wide scale but if you’re able to stomach that and if you love this genre as much as I do I’d certainly say it’s worth a try.