Lee Van Cleef is Sabata, a cool character who is brilliant, an amazing shot as well as incredibly dexterous with his hands. In this film, he and his group of freaks enter a town where the townspeople have been paying taxes through their noses in the promise of an all-new and beautiful town. However, the town's boss is actually planning on substituting the money with counterfeit and absconding with all of it. So it's up to Sabata and his odd team to expose the lie and return the money.
I was prepared to like this movie far more than I did. The first SABATA movie was pretty good and I particularly liked watching the ultra-slick Lee Van Cleef in Westerns, as he was super-cool and menacing. Here, however, in the final appearance by Van Cleef in the Sabata series, he is pretty dull and the film seems to be more a parody of Italian Westerns instead of a serious or well thought-out film. Ultimately, the film is sunk by a horrible script--with strange and anachronistic characters, an incomprehensible plot and a lot of magical hocus-pocus that gets in the way of the characters.
So what, specifically, did I dislike? Well, the two circus performers made no sense. They could tumble and jump and spin and jump on and off roofs at will as well as shoot more accurately at great distances with a giant slingshot than anyone could with a gun and all this had absolutely no place in a Western. It was just silly and confusing. Unfortunately, too much of the film focused on them and other secondary characters and Sabata was relegated to a more secondary role. Also, the plot really, really went all over the place and it was exceptionally hard to follow. And, to top it off, the film had one of the worst soundtracks I've heard in years. Usually, with a so-called "Spaghetti Western", you have haunting tunes by the great Ennio Morricone, but here some knucklehead Italian composer came up with songs with horrid 1970s backup singers (something NOT needed in these films) and in the title song, half the words are "boom, boom, boom, boom, boom" and this is heard again and again throughout the film! Yecch! This film was listed among the chosen few in the great book "The Fifty Worst Films" (1979) and I could see why, though I don't think it was quite bad enough to make the list. It was, however, the worst Spaghetti Western ever made and perhaps helped to kill the genre. It's a shame, as some of the best Westerns ever made were made by the Italians--and many even starred Van Cleef before he agreed to appear in this sort of bone-headed film.
By the way, was it just me or did you, too, think it was pretty funny that Sabata had such a tiny, stubby little gun? I just kept thinking how Freud might have enjoyed laughing at or analyzing this movie character!
I was prepared to like this movie far more than I did. The first SABATA movie was pretty good and I particularly liked watching the ultra-slick Lee Van Cleef in Westerns, as he was super-cool and menacing. Here, however, in the final appearance by Van Cleef in the Sabata series, he is pretty dull and the film seems to be more a parody of Italian Westerns instead of a serious or well thought-out film. Ultimately, the film is sunk by a horrible script--with strange and anachronistic characters, an incomprehensible plot and a lot of magical hocus-pocus that gets in the way of the characters.
So what, specifically, did I dislike? Well, the two circus performers made no sense. They could tumble and jump and spin and jump on and off roofs at will as well as shoot more accurately at great distances with a giant slingshot than anyone could with a gun and all this had absolutely no place in a Western. It was just silly and confusing. Unfortunately, too much of the film focused on them and other secondary characters and Sabata was relegated to a more secondary role. Also, the plot really, really went all over the place and it was exceptionally hard to follow. And, to top it off, the film had one of the worst soundtracks I've heard in years. Usually, with a so-called "Spaghetti Western", you have haunting tunes by the great Ennio Morricone, but here some knucklehead Italian composer came up with songs with horrid 1970s backup singers (something NOT needed in these films) and in the title song, half the words are "boom, boom, boom, boom, boom" and this is heard again and again throughout the film! Yecch! This film was listed among the chosen few in the great book "The Fifty Worst Films" (1979) and I could see why, though I don't think it was quite bad enough to make the list. It was, however, the worst Spaghetti Western ever made and perhaps helped to kill the genre. It's a shame, as some of the best Westerns ever made were made by the Italians--and many even starred Van Cleef before he agreed to appear in this sort of bone-headed film.
By the way, was it just me or did you, too, think it was pretty funny that Sabata had such a tiny, stubby little gun? I just kept thinking how Freud might have enjoyed laughing at or analyzing this movie character!