“I am your pallbearer.”

Well, the previous Sartana movie got me hungry for more, so I tracked down the first in the series, If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death AKA Se incontri Sartana prega per la tua morte from 1968. Starring the original Sartana, Gianni Garko.

Story
It all starts with a stagecoach getting ambushed by a gang of bandits. A mysterious, impeccably dressed drifter deals with most of them and examines the wreckage before traveling to the small town of Goldspring where the plot begins in earnest and swiftly spirals into a game who’s going to double cross whom. There’s a Mexican general who entrusts his money to two crooked bankers, who are in league with a gang that’s raiding stage coaches. It all comes down to a large stack of gold and who’s going to walk away with it.

Characters
Sartana: Gianni/“Johnny” Garko plays our protagonist; a soft-spoken, well-dressed anti-hero with a dark sense of humor. He’s well armed, great at poker, and constantly prepared for any situation. My earlier assessment of him as a Western Batman stands. The four-barreled palm gun also gets a lot of spotlight, and even that thing’s got some surprising tricks up its sleeve. There’s also a hint that Sartana is more than a mere mortal. A smooth, cool badass in every way.

Dusty: Franco Pesce plays the short, elderly undertaker of the town. He latches onto Sartana as soon as the gunslinger rides into town. Dusty was once an artist in Boston but its hinted he threw that away in favor of booze. Provides comic relief, but the voice dubbed for him is gratingly annoying.

General Tampico: Fernando Sancho plays the Mexican general with a comically overlong name (shorted to General Tampico). He’s somewhat comical, but little more than a thug with a bunch of goons that sure don’t act like soldiers. He invests his gold with the bank and gets understandably upset when it vanishes.

Lasky: William Berger hams it up royally as the real villain of the movie. Lasky is a great counterpoint to Sartana since he’s an emotional psychopath who thinks on the fly. Berger’s great in this, whether he’s swaggering into town, smugly cheating at cards, mowing down his own gang with a Gatling gun, or freaking out when Sartana plays a musical watch from some hiding place just to mess with him. Carrying forward the Batman analogy, there’s a fair amount of the modern Joker in his performance as an untamed psychopath. A great villain.

Morgan: Hey, its Klaus Kinsky! He’s Lasky’s right hand man and fond of knife throwing and wears bells on his spurs, which in fact DO go jingle-jangle-jingle. Not a major character, but a fun one.

Jeff Stewal and Al Alman: Sydney Chaplin and Gianni Rizzo are the pair of bankers who are scheming to get away with the gold through an insurance fraud scheme. Alman’s a fat fellow with a fondness for candy and Stewal is juggling two affairs: one with the widow of the mayor, and the other with Alman’s wife Evelyn (Heidi Fischer). Pillars of the community, they are.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini (as “Frank Kramer”) and with Cinematography by Sandro Mancori, the movie has some nice shots here and there, but is otherwise fairly standard as a Spaghetti Western, with a few spots that are rough around the edges. The pacing is nice and we never forget that its all about the gold. The action sequences are a definite positive for the film, since they show off Sartana’s resourcefulness and cleverness. Probably the most amusing is where Sartana has set up a trap in his hotel room where he can snare anyone coming in through the window.

Writing
Adolfo Cagnacci, Luigi De Santis, and Fabio Piccioni on story and Werner Hauff, Renato Izzo, and Gianfranco Parolini as writers. That’s a lot of people working on one script, but things seem to work out okay. The plot is horribly convoluted, but that’s not the real draw here. Solid character work, reprehensible villains and Sartana being awesome are the draw.

Sound
The score by Piero Picconi is serviceable but sparse. The musical watch gets a lot of screen time and those scenes work, but that kind of thing gets done better in For A Few Dollars More (I’ll get to that review when I can). The music’s not bad and has a few high points that dips into that whole “swingin’ sixties” vibe, but not one of the film’s strong points.

Conclusion
If You Meet Sartana Pray For Your Death is a solid foundation for a “franchise” of nearly 20 movies with the gunslinger’s name attached. The action’s good, the plot is confusing (par for the course with a lot of Spaghetti Westerns, I‘m noticing), and the characters are well realized, even if they are caricatures. What it may lack in budget it more than makes up for in attitude and charm. Sartana is, frankly, an Awesome character and thoroughly entertaining.


Boy that trailer sure asks a lot of questions. Don't expect most of them to get answered.

“You’re lucky today. I never kill on Thursdays. I promised.”

Ah Spaghetti Westerns. Movies Italians made about the American Southwest in the Italian countryside with mostly-Italian casts and crews and a few American lead actors. The very concept is a bit on the surreal side and I’ll admit before recently, I’ve not seen any of them. Inherent goofiness aside, I suppose its time to change that. Now where to start?
I’ll just be an ass and not pick The Man With No Name Trilogy and instead take one of the Sartana films. Who’s Sartana? From what I’ve gathered he’s another mysterious bounty hunting drifter who’s been the focus of a great many awesomely titled films with several actors playing the lead over time (and several knockoff films of much lesser quality). Guy’s got a cult following. Today’s entry is I Am Sartana, Trade Your Guns For A Coffin, AKA C’e Sartana…vendi la pistola e comprati la bara AKA Fistful of Lead from 1970. It’s not one of the “Big 4” of the Sartana movies, but it definitely leaves an impression.

Story
We start out with an impeccably dressed rider sitting down for a lunchtime picnic on his travels and witnessing a stagecoach get ambushed, slaughtered, robbed and a stick of dynamite thrown into the wagon to destroy it. Deciding to investigate, since a bounty he was looking to claim just got shot dead, he throws his canteen up into the air and shoots it, the water from it landing squarely on the dynamite, diffusing it. This told me two things: That Sartana is one hell of a shot, and that it’s going to be THAT kind of movie.

Sartana (George Hilton here as opposed to Gianni/“Johnny” Garko who was the original and definitive Sartana) discovers that the bags of gold the coach was carrying were full of sand. He follows the trail of a bandit leader named Mantas (Nello Pazzafini) clearing out one of his hideouts of henchmen and heading to the crooked town of Appaloosa where the head of the local mining company, Samuel Spencer (Piero Lulli as Peter Carter) and his henchman Baxter (Carlo Gaddi) are looking for hired guns to protect the gold shipments to Dodge City. Sartana quickly finds himself surrounded by intrigue and backstabbing and catches the eye of local hotel owner Trixie (Erika Blanc).

Sartana proceeds to outfox his enemies with Batman-like resourcefulness and planning. Things take another turn when another gunman rides into town; the poetry reading English dandy Sabbath (Charles Southwood) who’s no slouch himself when it comes to elaborately planned badassery.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Giuliano Carnimeo (as “Anthony Ascot”), there are some interesting camera angles used (mostly spins and whip-pans) that add some different touches. Otherwise, visually the film’s not what I’d call innovative, though still well shot.

Writing
Tito Carpi on writing duty and the film mixes equal parts badassery and cheesiness. There’s a lot of entertainment to be found between the occasional cheesy one-liners, Sartana’s crazy preparedness for any given situation, and interesting little touches, like the four-barreled Derringer he carries around and a friendly game of checkers…using shot glasses. That’s badass. Horribly, horribly bad for your, but still pretty awesome.

Sound
Music by Francesco De Masi, and you know, its pretty good. Nice and catchy with a fair amount of swagger that fits the character nicely.

Conclusion
Fistful of Lead was a fantastic surprise. Sartana is one hell of an interesting gunslinger and I’m going to make it my mission to track down the rest of these films. Totally recommended both as a Spaghetti Western and as a part of “Cinema of the Awesome.”



BONUS REVIEW!

Oh, and the disc also contained Trinity and Sartana Are Coming AKA Trinità e Sartana figli di... from 1972. You would think it was connected in some way, but no. It’s not. It’s a long, dull, Buddy Comedy Western about two thieves/bank robbers who get into all sorts of not-actually-hilarious hijinks as they score loot and can’t seem to keep any of it. They pretty much used the names of popular gunslinger characters (Trinity’s another Spaghetti Western badass). The fights are childish (and I presume targeted at a younger audience), the music annoying, and everybody seems to have graduated from the A-Team School of Marksmanship. The one interesting thing it does is make “Trinity” a native of Trinidad, but its really not worth putting up with the rest of the movie. This film really isn’t worth your time, nor is it worth a full review write-up.