D: Giuseppe Vari; S: Adriano Bolzoni; C: Amerigo Gengarelli; M: Roberto Pregadio; with: Dragomir Bojanic („Anthony Ghidra“), Claudio Undari („Robert Hundar“), Jhon Bryan, Giorgio Gargiullo

An exhausted gunslinger (“Anthony Ghidra”) named Bill Blood (sic!) reachs the isolated cloister of San Juan. There he “plunders” the monk’s storage of food and – of course – wine. During his meal another surprise-guest arrives, but the wounded mexican bandido (Bruna Cattaneo) is much cheaper for the poor monks as Blood, because he dies immediately. He was hunted by some Mexicanos, working for “General” Munguya (Claudio Undari). These arrive at the cloister by night: They exhume the body of their victim and find the little thing, they chase after: a playing card, which is part of a trio showing the hideout of a gold-treasure, once salaries of the mexican Santa-Ana-Army. But the bandidos haven’t got as much fun with their find, because Blood, who feels disturbed in his sleep, enforces his wish for an untroubled night with his colt. With the playing-card he heads for Sonora to reunite the card-trio and sack in the gold. The two other cards are in possession of local bandido-chief “General” Munguya and his former comrade and now enemy Garrincha (Luigi Maturano), all following the same goal.

I 1968

The Gunslinger says:

The Westerns of Giuseppe Vari obviously divide themselves sharply into rough B-classics, like “Shoot the Living and pray for the Dead”, and crappy damp squibs, as “Death rides along”. This film adds in to the latter: Beside its nice “organized”, sacrally touched score, added by acoustic guitars and strings, there’s not much worth mentioning. The story is slow and not much inventive, the acting efforts at most are mediocre, and the atmosphere of the film suffers more than a bit from the dreaded “gravel-pit-look”, if you know, what I mean. But otherwise it features a nice and typical example of food intake in the SW. At the beginning Bill ploughs the food nearly violent into his mouth with the obligatory wooden spoon, banking it with giant pieces of bread and swallow it down with wine: grreat! Spencer/Hill climaxed it later by adding sounds out of their different body orifices.

Rating: $$

Bodycount

ca. 2 Gringos, ca. 50 Mexicanos, 2 Women

Explicit Brutalities:

- Munguya executes five prisoners just to test a looted gatling-gun

- Munguya’s men terrorise the inhabitants of Sonora
- Bill is „questioned“ by Munguya about playing cards
- Munguya drowns Blacida (Corinne Fontaine) in bowl of bear, as she declines his offer for a free drink

Specials:

- Bill always shoots his victims a hole in the forehead
- A lamp, filled with the powder of broken round serves as a hand grenade – nearly uneffective