A Colt in the Hand of the Devil (Una colt in mano al diavolo; "Frank G. Carrol" [Rafael Baldanello], 1973)

At a prison rock quarry, Roy Koster (Seven Guns for the MacGregors' Robert Woods) gets into an altercation with a guard. Fellow inmate "Sulky" Jeremiah Scott (stage-turned-screen actor Attilio Dottesio) kills the guard with a pickax, and tells Roy he wants him to repay the debt when he gets out of jail. Jeremiah is brutally flogged for the killing, but before dying he says the word "Silvertown" to Roy, and gives him his cufflink. After his sentence ends, Roy rides into Silvertown, a town in Texas. At the saloon owned by Dennis McCorney (spaghetti western icon William Berger, sporting long hair and a mustache), Roy plays cards with three men, who seem alarmed when he produces the cufflink. Roy gives the alcoholic Thomas $10 in exchange for the location of Jeremiah's ranch. Thomas tells Roy the town is under the control of a gang led by a man named Warner, of which Roy's fellow card-players were members. Soon after, Thomas is found hanged with two $5 bills clenched between his teeth. Roy gives the undertaker money for his funeral, then goes out to the ranch, where he meets Jeremiah's grieving widow Martha (Giovanna Mainardi) and her children Grace (Fiorella Mannoia) and Phil (Ursus' Nino Fuscagni), who hold their late father in contempt. Phil is a member of Warner's gang. Warner's henchmen attempt to prevent Thomas' funeral from taking place, saying that he committed suicide and they are "good Christians," but Roy knows it was murder and guns them down. Martha reveals to Roy that Jeremiah was accused of robbery and murder after telling Warner (George Wang) and McCorney about his need for money. The duo, along with McCorney's dishwasher Sam Dayton (W Django!'s Mario Dardanelli) did not corroborate Jeremiah's story, and he was sentenced to ten years in prison. Convinced the man who saved his life was framed, Roy seeks to bring Warner to justice, in his own way...

The 1970s are generally considered a low period for the Spaghetti Western. The genre largely devolved into self-parody, in the wake of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer's Trinity films. Despite this, there were a few last great films of the genre, such as Enzo G. Castellari's Keoma (despite its infamous songs, which I personally find grow on repeated viewings) and Lucio Fulci's underappreciated Four of the Apocalypse. A Colt in the Hand of the Devil isn't on the level of those two films, but it is certainly one of the more watchable '70s SWs. Robert Woods and William Berger were both old hands at the genre at this point, and both turn in good performances, the debonair Berger in particular. (Curiously, although his character is listed on IMDB and the excellent Spaghetti Western Database as Isaac McCorney, he is referred to as "Dennis McCorney" at one point during the trial flashback, and therefore that's the name I'm going with for this review. This is somewhat similar to Berger's character in Lamberto Bava's Devil Fish, whose name initially appears on a sign as Dr. Donald West, but is later called "Walter" by his wife.) Popular singer Fiorella Mannoia as our hero's love interest is attractive and a talented actress. She was also, interestingly, a frequent stand-in for actress Monica Vitti, as well as Candice Bergen in The Hunting Party. There is a scene where Grace is treating Roy with contempt, which causes him to slap her twice, then force a kiss on her, which of course causes her to immediately fall in love with him and return it. Given the current #MeToo movement, this made me cringe a bit. As is often the case in SWs, the law is too incompetent and/or corrupt to stop the gang that runs the town. Thomas provides a few bits of lame drunk comedy relief, but luckily Baldanello has the good sense to kill him off early. One thing I wondered about was the obviously Chinese George Wang playing a bad guy named Warner. Is his character supposed to be completely white, or half-Asian? It seems hard to believe his men would follow him in those times if that were the case, if the likes of the television series Kung Fu and the SW My Name is Shanghai Joe (also featuring Wang in a small role) are any indication. Curiously, there was an earlier SW called Colt in the Hand of the Devil, directed by Sergio Bergonzelli, but apart from having a character with the surname Scott and George Wang being in the cast, Baldanello's film does not appear to be a remake. There are lots of shootings, though not much blood. Piero Piccioni's music is superb. A Colt in the Hand of the Devil may be a fairly standard story lacking in some of the more flamboyant touches SWs were known for, but it's better than the likes of such '70s genre nadirs as God's Gun and Cry Onion any day.

The film can be viewed on Amazon Prime.

Yankee (Tinto Brass, 1966)

A bounty hunter identified only as "Yankee" (Philippe Leroy from Jean-Luc Godard's A Married Woman) rides into a New Mexico town ruled by a bandit called Grand Cougar (Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man's Adolfo Celi, sporting dyed black hair and a mustache, as well as a whip). He decides to collect the bounties for the Cougar's gang, which has members with names like Gold Teeth, Tattoo, Painter (who wears a paint-stained smock), Philosopher, and Portuguese. Yankee kidnaps the Cougar's fortune-telling girlfriend Rosita (Mirella Martin in her only film role) in order to lure him into a trap.

Holy shit, has it really taken me this long to review a Spaghetti Western here? You can probably tell I'm a fan from the fact that I've seen a whopping 129 of them, counting this one. That's more than double the amount of American ones I've seen. The Spaghettis have a unique style all their own that make them entertaining to me. This one is not great, but very interesting for a number of reasons. It was directed by Tinto Brass, who later directed a number of erotic films, including the prostitution-in-Nazi Germany tale Salon Kitty and the Penthouse-produced Caligula (before he got fired). Not a director I would've thought of doing a Western, and perhaps as a result of being out of his element there are several peculiar elements of the movie. It begins with an outlaw, who we later learn is a member of Grand Cougar's gang, riding into a saloon on his horse to rob it, where our hero, who is getting a shave right there, shoots him and collects his stolen gold. Yankee is the only Spaghetti Western hero I've ever seen clad in pinstripes. The town's barber is also its undertaker, and he has a coffin in the barbershop. For no apparent reason, Grand Cougar's lair has a rooster in it. During a scene where Yankee is being held prisoner by Cougar and his men, the film is tinted red in a couple different frames. Tattoo, who has a face drawn on his stomach, puts a cigarette in his navel, and smoke comes out of his mouth. It's not as weird as Giulio Questi's Django, Kill...If You Live, Shoot! or Cesare Canevari's Matalo!, but definitely one of the odder films I've seen in the genre. Leroy isn't particularly intense, nor does he look the part, but nevertheless he does well with the material. He did go on to do two more Spaghettis, Panhandle 38 (which I have not seen) and A Man Called Blade (which I have). Celi clearly had fun with the role, chewing lots of scenery. It's also interesting to note that two scenes in this film may have influenced later, superior westerns. Grand Cougar's men burning a scorpion in a ring of fire anticipates Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Another scene where the bad guys try to obtain Yankee's whereabouts from one of the townsfolk, who has his wife standing on his shoulders with a noose around her neck, calls to mind Once Upon a Time in the West, in this reviewer's opinion Leone's finest hour. This will never be one of my favorites of the genre, but it has a lot of noteworthy elements that make it well worth your time. The music by Nino Rossi is nicely understated, including a cool whistling theme that Leroy himself takes up at a few points. So do what I did and head to Amazon Prime (they have a ton of great movies for Streaming, including tons of Spaghettis) and check it out.