Welcome back to the Sunday Morning Movie! Today we are presenting a Western, a spaghetti Western to be precise, Death Rides a Horse.
Review:
Opinions diverge on this movie. Here’s a snippet of one reviewer’s take:
“But that’s the thing – if you like that style of storytelling and cinematography, Death Rides a Horse is a top-notch Spaghetti Western. It’s light on plot and huge on action, which is sometimes exactly what you want on a winter weeknight.”
while Roger Ebert had a harsher view of it:
“It’s hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie. Pauline Kael had a go at it a few months ago in Harper’s in an article titled “Trash, Art and the Movies,” but I think she set her sights too high. The bad movies she enjoyed (“The Scalphunters,” “Wild in the Streets“) weren’t within a hundred miles of the badness of “Death Rides a Horse,” which is a bad movie indeed.”
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/death-rides-a-horse-1969
I’m decidedly on the “good” side of this debate. I think Death Rides a Horse is qualitatively approaching that holy trinity of Spaghetti Westerns known collectively as The Man With No Name trilogy. You know them, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and it’s predecessors. All directed by Sergio Leone. The movies that got the genre going. I think Ebert was judging this movie by the standards of the much larger body of cinematic work he critiqued and I think that that is a mistake. It’s a simple yarn, as all good Spaghettis are, a tale of revenge. It has some standard Spaghetti Western attributes: a gritty environment, a youthful hero being counter-balanced by a grizzled gunslinger, sweaty faces, and lots of close-up explosive violence. (If these themes seem to describe all Westerns, it’s mostly because of the influence of the Spaghettis on the larger genre.)
There a only a handful of Spaghetti Westerns which can be considered decent movies. The VAST majority are badly acted, badly directed, and oftentimes just silly. I know because I’ve spent a bit of time looking for decent ones. I reckon there are under ten that are worth watching in full (but there are probably a few out there I’ve missed, to be honest.) I think Death Rides a Horse is in that select group. What do you think?
Written by Luciano Vicenzioni, who worked with Sergio Leone on The Man With No Name trilogy
Directed by Giulio Petroni
Notable Actors include John Phillip Law, Lee Van Cleef, and Mario Brega. Brega was a regular in a number of Spaghetti Westerns, including the Man With No Name trilogy.
Spoiler Warning!
Synopsis:
A young boy Bill (John Phillip Law) witnesses the murder of his family but escapes the raiders. Jumping ahead several years, the boy is now a man and a gunslinger looking for revenge. He has the spur of one of the raiders and clues to the identities of the others. Meanwhile a name Ryan (Lee Van Cleef) is released from prison. He was sent there after being sold out by his gang, ,the same raiders who killed Bill’s family. After encountering Ryan, and being tricked by him, the younger Bill proposes that they seek the raiders together. Ryan says no. After series of adventures one of the raiders is located by Ryan, who demands a large sum of money in payment for the betrayal. Bill finds the man as well and shoots him down. When Bill is about to be killed due to running out of bullets, Ryan appears and saves him. He leaves Bill horseless in order to avoid the other raiders from being killed before they can pay him.
Another raider and his cronies are located. Their leader, Wolcott, is a man of wealth and influence in town. Ryan confronts him but is captured and framed for a robbery. Bill rescues Ryan from jail and leaves him horseless in order to pursue the remaining raiders. He chases them to a small Mexican town where he is captured and buried up to his neck in the sand. He sends the raiders on a wild goose chase to find Ryan, who arrives at the town and saves Bill yet again. Then they and the men of the town prepare for the raiders return.
A huge gunfight ensues. Bill recognizes Ryan as one of the raiders and Ryan informs him that he arrived to late to save his family and that he had got the young Bill to safety. He tells Bill he will give him the justice he seeks when the fight is over. The raiders are all killed along with the towns menfolk. Ryan saves Bill yet again by killing Wolcott. After demanding Ryan fight him in a duel, Bill instead saves Ryan’s life and the two part friends, riding off in different directions.
lets not forget the inspiration for leones 1st spaghetti western “a fistful of dollars” was kurosawas “yojimbo”. i believe that kurosawa successfully sued leone over copyright issues.
Not surprising that. The 1960 film “The Magnificent Seven” was a remake of a Japanese 1954 film called “Seven Samurai” after all-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Samurai
And a certain film called “Star Wars” was a part copy of another Kurosawa film from 1958 named “The Hidden Fortress.”
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress
Kurosawa has a lot to answer for.
Plus Lucas swiped a lot from the 1955 British film “The Dam Busters” for his attack on the Death Star scenes in the first Star Wars film-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdb03Hw18M (2:37 mins)
The attack on the Death Star is also a beat-by-beat remake of the climax to the film “633 Squadron”; there’s actually a mash-up on youtube with dialogue from Star Wars on top of the scenes from 633 Squadron that appears to fit perfectly.
Interesting, I knew Leone had “borrowed” from Yojimbo but I didn’t know he was sued for it.
Leone claimed that his producer lied to him, and told him that he’d bought the rights to Yojimbo, so he ‘borrowed’ liberally. But in turn Kurosawa had taken a lot of inspiration from the book Red Harvest by Dashiel Hammet. Its thought Hammet was inspired by the Anaconda Road massacre, a labor dispute in Butte.
True. Hammett worked for the Pinkertons in Butte at the time. His “fiction” is the best sort, based on true events and people.
I wonder what the “true story” is behind “The Maltese Falcon.”
This one has been on my watch-list for a while. Love me some John Philip Law (of Danger Diabolik & Barbarella), and Lee Van Cleef is always fun. Two others Spaghetti Westerns that need championing for those getting into the genre are The Great Silence (bleak as hell with a terrific Klaus Kinski) & the craziest of the unofficial Django sequels, the absurdly titled Django Kill: If You Live, Shoot.
The Great Silence is definitely on my list.
Hollywood…the great inverter of reality. Consider if you will the case of Lee Van Cleef. In his early films a terrific ‘bad-guy’. Worth the price of admission even in a minor role. Total menace. Rehabilitated into ambivalence. They did the same thing with Jack Palance…a seriously good, bad-guy. Mr. Menace. They tried the same thing with Neville Brand. Not worth watching in his later years, but he put together a hell of a bad-guy book.
It’s possible that Ebert was mis-judging the film in that way…. But throughout his years with Gene Siskel, he consistently reviewed movies according to their genre and goal. It’s one of the things that first impressed me with him as a reviewer. He and Siskel used to go around about that almost every week.
First of all, I should have written “was a mistake”. A side benefit of this project is that it will improve my writing. Since most of that takes place in the form of texting, I need the help. God I have come to hate texting.
“he consistently reviewed movies according to their genre and goal.”
This aligns with what I know of him, which isn’t a lot as I wasn’t into movie reviewers when he was active. I still wonder how he arrived at the notion that it was a bad Spaghetti Western. A bad movie sure, but a bad Spaghetti? The genre is packed with absolutely >terrible< movies so I'm assuming he is using The Man With No Name trilogy as his bar. They are better movies than Death Rides a Horse but as I noted above I think it approaches them. At least a lot more so than most others.
Have never seen it but Wiki says score by Ennio Morricone so this would be in line with Kael’s persistent “trash, art and the movies” theme that even bad movies give you something. Where would Leone himself have been without the great Ennio?
When I was a kid (1946 to 1949) I lived in a Home for Children who had only one parent who had to work. The Movie Man came to the Home every Saturday afternoon and we enjoyed the Comedies (The Bowery Boys) and the Cowboy films. I don’t remember the names of the films but I remember the characters: Johnny Mack Brown, Gene Autry, The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Roy Rogers, Tom Mix. The movies were great entertainment!
On the subject of Sergio, his movie “Duck, You Sucker!” aka “A Fistful of Dynamite” flew under my radar until I discovered it a few years ago. The revolutionary overtones are more pronounced in that Western.
Not as well known as many of his others, but worth the watch.
“Fistful Of Dynamite” is my favourite western. I first saw it in Mexico, and it changed my view of revolution altogether. At one point the bandito says to the IRA bomb specialist (paraphrasing) ‘in revolutions, the intellectuals convince the poor people to kill the rich people; then the intellectuals become the new rich people while many of the poor people are dead, and nothing changes.’
Well worth watching.
Juan Miranda – a great character.
That movie formally belongs to the (sub)genre of “Zapata western”, which is itself worth a consideration.
Many find fault with the mix of humour and hard-boiled action, the latent cynicism, and the recurring formulaic plot elements (frequently including a poor Mexican peon who assumes a prominent role in the revolution, thanks to the help of a mysterious European/North American adventurer, while contending with the machinations of some cruel, devious Mexican officials).
In any case, the following movies are actually worth seeing:
Quién sabe? (A bullet for the general)
Corri uomo, corri (Run man, run)
Faccia a faccia (Face to face)
La resa dei conti (The big gundown)
These others are enjoyable, though distinctly a class below, a bit over the top and with the last on the zany side (but hey, it’s all Sergio Corbucci):
Il mercenario (The mercenary)
Vamos a matar, compañeros (Compañeros)
Che c’entriamo noi con la rivoluzione? (What am I doing in the middle of a revolution?)
I do not know about this one:
Tepepa (Long live the revolution)
There are others more obscure that I do not remember at the moment.
Tepepa is a very good revolution western directed by Giulio Petroni (who also directed Death Rides a Horse). It features Orson Welles as a villainous Mexican general, and he is very good in it. Oddly his biographers don’t seem to be aware of the film. It’s sometimes retitled Blood and Guns for the UK/US market.
That one I have seen.
Leone took the Western genre with its tendency toward self myth and moralizing and expanded everything to even bigger if more self aware myth and messaging. Meanwhile there was Morricone to supply the lyricism. The sixties were big on antiheroes.
Eastwood of course became H’wood’s uber rightwinger but has directed some good movies. He says he learned it all from Sergio.
“holy trinity of Spaghetti Westerns” The key word being ‘trinity’ and always good for a laugh.
Trinity – Poker scene (1972 Trinity Is Still My Name)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrG3lVrOFt4
Only ten good Italian Westerns? Please, Semper, there are numerous Italian or European Westerns worth your time (many of them even better than Death Rides a Horse). Here are a few titles:
The Dollars Trilogy (including The Good The Bad & the Ugly)
Once Upon a Time in the West
My Name is Nobody
A Pistol for Ringo
The Return of Ringo
Arizona Colt (unofficial third Ringo film, and the best of the three)
Django
The Bounty Killer
The Big Gundown
¿Quien Sabe? a.k.a. A Bullet for the General (political allegory)
Massacre Time
The Hills Run Red
Navajo Joe
Django Kill a.k.a. If You Live, Shoot! (surrealist masterpiece)
Requiescant (more surrealism, with Pasolini as a revolutionary priest)
$1,000 on the Black
Hellbenders
Face to Face
Bandidos
Death Sentence
A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die a.k.a. Escondido
The Great Silence
Tepepa
A Professional Gun
Black Jack
Johnny Hamlet (yup, a Western version of the Bard’s big hit)
Every Man for Himself
Today It’s Me, Tomorrow You (revenge Western with Tatsuyo Nakadai from Yojimbo)
Sartana
Belle Starr
The Price of Power (JFK assassination parable)
Cemetery Without Crosses
Django the Bastard
And God Said to Cain…
El Puro
Blindman
To Kill or Die
Don’t Touch The White Woman!
California
Cemetery Without Crosses and Don’t Touch The White Woman! are French art and politics Westerns. The latter takes place in Paris, France.
There are also some really mad Mexican Westerns from the early 1970s. I recommend El Tunco Maclovio!
I may be alone here, but I thought the musical score was great. The choral numbers enhanced the wide open beauty of the landcsape.
Agreed.
morricone loved using voices as instruments–choruses and especially women soloists–that plaintive, mournful or soaring, ecstatic sound you recognize.
when wong kar wei took the final theme from leone’s ‘once upon a time in america’ for ip man’s melancholy mourning ending ‘grandmaster’ perhaps it was also to elide the two films.
(a few nights ago i lucked onto a documentary of morricone by tornatore on italian tv. do watch if you can.)