Two gunslingers, one young and one old, team-up to mete out vicious retribution, one by one, against a group of greedy bandits now turned mostly upstanding community members for a horrific series of events fifteen years before that saw a family brutally slaughtered and a gang member betrayed.

The opening gothic horror-tinged ten minutes of this stunningly gorgeous 35mm presentation (reminding me again how great projected film is as a medium when you’re lucky enough to see one in pristine shape), with the pouring rain and mud, Ennio Morricone’s terror-inducing horns and the high contrast lighting and evocatively rich colors, as the main bandits, bathed in shadows and hidden in dark colored garb, show up to steal a load of cash, kill the men guarding it and then proceed to sadistically destroy the innocent family, are just enthralling. As the only surviving little boy cowers in the corner watching in horror as his family is raped and murdered, the close-ups on his eyes (with the urgent blatting sounds of those terrible, magnificent horns) and the images of the terrifying glimpses and fragments from his hiding spot (including defining characteristics, either physical or something worn, of each of the marauders that will prove their downfall fifteen years later) made me think of the emphasis on children being traumatized and psychically destroyed by the unforgivingly harsh world in much of Lucio Fulci’s later work, while the lighting and movements within the scene brought to mind the mood-drenched setting of the terror-stricken family dreading the return of their missing head patriarch, played by Boris Karloff, in the ‘The Wurdalak’ segment of Mario Bava’s brilliant horror triptych Black Sabbath. It’s a spaghetti western/Italian horror hybrid opening that’s brilliant, right up there with the best of any of the greatest of cinematic output those Italian westerns have given us, and I include all of Leone’s work.

The rest of the film, shifting that fifteen years later, with the traumatized boy now grown-up (and played by the always strikingly handsome John Phillip Law), silently practicing his marksmanship with clear-eyed (and revenge-minded) accuracy, and an older grizzled outlaw (Lee Van Cleef) getting released from a long rock quarry prison sentence and the eventual coming together of their revenge plans, may not hit the heights of that opening, but it’s still up there in delivering the goods. Morricone’s score switches from horror-based ambient to something more appropriately high-flying and catchy, and it’s just as memorable.

The story itself is fairly conventional; a simple revenge tale common to a lot of the genre. It also contains the familiar narrative element of the old man mentoring the younger rambunctious acolyte (as well as has a ton of recognizable — though never unwelcome! — grizzled western faces in it), but the warm, playfully antagonistic interplay between the two characters — with each wanting to beat the other to the punch to kill the next man in the next town — is really well played by both performers, with Cleef delivering the acting chops and the much less dynamic Law able to work off that just fine. Though the further revelation that eventually creates a blood rift between the two isn’t exactly surprising (you see it coming long before the Law character does), it’s still well played and has impact. There seemed to have been a decently sized budget for this one, as there is a nice scale to the proceedings, with the story moving from one Western town to the next, followed by torrential rainstorms and scenes with massive winds. The number of men at one time on horseback in a few scenes is really quite impressive.

It dawned on me while watching that Van Cleef may lack the star quality of Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name in the Leone films, but he’s in fact a better actor and also loaded with screen presence in his own right. The real difference is while the camera appreciates this great character actor, it just doesn’t want to make him a star like the more traditionally rugged and handsome Eastwood.

Buck A Review