User Reviews

QUINTANA is a VERY low budget spaghetti western which feels like a Zorro movie with a western backdrop. A masked avenger fights back against a ruthless and corrupt governer and takes time out to romance the ladies along the way. Although this film has all of the correct trappings one associates with the genre, it lacks the spark of excitement and interest that makes a film worth watching. The plotting is plodding and long-winded and the characters unremarkable. The romantic sub-plot really drags the thing down to a snail's pace, and the viewer's patience is tested by the endless tedium. Just as bad, the action is nothing to write home about.

Writer & director Vincenzo Musolino's gritty Spaghetti western "Quintana: Dead or Alive" ranks as an above-average entry in the genre, and "Blood at Sundown" lenser Vitaliano Natalucci enhances the action with some eye-catching, Dutch-title angles that accentuate the larger-than-life heroics. The production design and the dubbing are just as exemplary. Composer Felice Di Stefano furnishes a lively orchestral score with lots of adroit guitar strumming for dramatic effect. This rugged frontier tale set in a repressive Mexico plays like a variation on the popular Zorro epics that initially helped spawn the Euro-western genre. The striking protagonist, Quintana (George Stevenson, aka Tony Di Mitri of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"), plans to free Manuel de la Loma (Celso Faria of "Four Came to Kill Sartana"), a man wrongly accused of shooting three Rurale soldiers. Wealthy landowner and provincial governor Don Juan (Aldo Bufi Landi of "The Perfect Killer") had Manuel arrested and imprisoned so he could lure our hero into a trap. Quintana goes in alone to rescue Manuel. At first, everything goes according to plan with no bloodshed as our hero gets the drop on the solidary soldier carrying the keys to Manuel's cell. Don Juan has scheduled execution by hanging for Manuel, so our poncho-clad champion must act quickly before he is hanged at dawn. Quintana not only releases Manuel but also a horde of other unjustly arrested peons. As the prisoners scramble triumphantly out the front door, Winchester-wielding Rurale soldiers who have been awaiting them mow them down in a fusillade of gunfire. Naturally, our hero displays his customary aplomb with a six-gun and wipes out those guards. Quintana isn't happy about the massacre. Meantime, Don Juan forces the beautiful Virginia de Leon (Femi Benussi of "Syndicate Sadists") to marry him against her will. The marriage is foiled, however, when Quintana with a small army of revolutionaries arrive and start shooting and killing Rurales. The cowardly Don Juan flees on horseback and Quintana pursues him. Meanwhile, Rurales and revolutionaries blast away at each other without mercy. You can tell that this is Spaghetti western from the way that Vincenzo Musolino orchestrates the gunfights. Men on both sides throw up their hands and spin around before they hit the dirt. The final confrontation between Quintana and Don Juan resembles a joust as they charge each other on horseback with their revolvers held at their sides. Clocking in at 80 minutes, "Quintana, Dead or Alive" qualifies as an entertaining Spaghetti western with a double-digit body count.