7/10
He's the Horstest with the Morstest
23 June 2017
This one doesn't seem too well rated on the IMDb, but it has cinematography by Stelvio Massi, has George Hilton in it, has a scene set in a creepy mansion just like the old Italian Gothic horror films, also has a couple of Giallo like twists at the end, and features Horst Frank as a sadistic homosexual sharp shooter. And the ending takes place in a slaughterhouse! That's real meat in there - don't tell Morrisey!

Hilton is Lord, his mate is Bull. Them are two tough guys who travel to a town to track down their mate, Judge Warren. However, the judge is missing, his daughter has been kidnapped, and no one is talking. The town is ruled by some douche called Forester and his campy son Horst Frank, and they might have kidnapped the girl because there's half a million dollars in gold missing and they want. It.

Isn't that always the case though? You just want a pint and a decent place to sleep and all of a sudden folks are surrounding you and laughing and spitting in your water and getting annoyed when you gun them down. It must have been a hard life, being a gunslinger.

Then the usual happens - double crosses, beatings, attempted rape, shootings, big gunfight in the end. What makes this one stand out a bit more than the usual is Stelvio Massi's endlessly inventive cinematography (people looking at others through the barrels of a shotgun, multiple Hiltons looking at a corpse via shattered mirror fragments - He's very good, Massi). Then you've Horst's character as a sadistic, but frustrated, sharpshooter. And a hidden bad guy we don't see until near the end. Plus, the lead bad guy gets dispatched in a manner I don't think I've seen in a Western before.

The film becomes rather violent in the last half hour too, and that's when Carnimeo throws in the Giallo twists. Good on you sir. Carnimeo would go on to make on of my favourite Giallo films ever - the Edwige-Fenech-With-Her-Clothes-Just-Painted-On film The Case Of The Bloody Iris.
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