D, S: Sergio Garrone, C: Franco Villa; M: Vasco & Mancuso; with: Antonio de Teffè (Anthony Steffen”), William Berger; Riccardo Garrone, Mario Brega

Well, there’s a big problem at the mexican border: Supported by greedy american businessmen, gangs of smugglers bring hundreds of illegal mexican workers to Texas. The gangsters don’t hesitate to kill their “passengers”, if one transport is detected by the US Army. It’s a good shoot for bountyhunters like Django (“Anthony Steffen”), Johnny Brandon in the original, who procures regular supplies of corpses for the regional undertakers. One day a rival enters the scene: Sartana (“William Berger”), a gunslinger, well-versed in the Bible and all dressed in black, who holds a bloody red harvest with his 7-barrelled rifle in the local sortiment of warranted gangsters. So it’s not far out, that both bountyhunters allies to visit the mexican village of Nogales, centre of the smugglers, and earn some money. In Nogales “honourable” bankowner Fargo (Riccardo Garrone) is leader of the pack. His gang is worth about 20.000 Dollars, good money for our small bountyhunter corporation. Fargo is really pissed, as Django and Sartana start to bring in their harvest. He pays 20k to each of them, to leave him and his business alone. But alliances are floating and words are of no value.

I 1969

The Gunslinger says:

Another cheapo SW by Sergio Garrone, which loses his actual and unusual plot around the smuggling of men to the benefit of action. Instead Garrone concentrates increasingly on the plumbiferous functioning of the two bountyhunters. The figures don’t have neither a history nor a future: They are completely indifferent. Not rare and not a problem in the SW, folx. But action in this case is as tenseless as the reduced plot and so boredom sneaks around, especially, because the film has no atmospherical values too. After all Franco Villa and his cameraman Aristide Massaccesi did a good job: beside the decent score by Vasco and Mancuso with its nice trumpet-theme one of the few pluses of the film.

Rating: $$$-

Bodycount: ca. 40 Gringos, ca. 30 Mexicanos + ca. 50 Fugitives, 1 Woman

Explicit Brutalities:

- Fargo kills an old Mexican, who wanted to safe his compadre, who coughed in the hideout during an army control. The compadre escapes wounded.

- Django gets the stick by Fargo’s men, inclusive some tortures like the pooring of Tequila in open wounds. Afterwards he has to dig his own grave.

Luv’

Poor mexican worker José and his wife (Mariangela Giordano) seem to be in love but only in a subplot and not for long: 1/10

Splatter:

The usual bunch of things: some bumps, a shot in the head …: 1/10

Specials:

Sartana has a coool 7-barrelled gun. He only drinks milk