Mille Dollari sul Nero

Blood at Sundown
Sartana / Sartana: Sangue e la Penna / One Thousend Dollars on the Black One / Zwei Brüder in Erbittertem Kampf

Italy/West Germany 1966
produced by
Mario Siciliano, Karl Spiehs, Antonio Morelli (executive) for Metheus Film, Lisa Film
directed by Alberto Cardone
starring Anthony Steffen (= Antonio De Teffè), Gianni Garko (as John Garko), Erika Blanc, Franco Fantasia, Sieghardt Rupp, Angelica Ott, Daniela Igliozzi, Roberto Miali (as Jerry Wilson), Carla Calò (as Carol Brown), Carlo D'Angelo (as Charles Angel), Chris Howland, Gino Marturano, Ettore Arena, Sal Borgese, Mario Dionisi, Gaetano Scala, Gianni Solaro, Olga Solbelli
written by Ernesto Gastaldi, Rolf Olsen, Vittorio Salerno, Giorgio Stegani, music by Michele Lacerenza

Sartana

review by
Mike Haberfelner

After ten years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, Johnny (Anthony Steffen) returns to his hometown to find out his brother Sartana (Gianni Garko) has meanwhile taken over the whole region and is ruling his land like a rotten, greedy dictator who bleeds the populace dry with made up taxes (which are actually little more than protection money), plus Sartana has also enslaved Johnny's former girlfriend Manuela (Angelica Ott), who only stays with Sartana to protect her brother, deaf-mute Jeff (Robert Miali), whom Sartana just loves to humiliate. Johnny wants to build up an opposition, but soon has to realize that even his and Sartana's mother is on Sartana's side, because he has made her from a maid into the town's first lady - even if it was by way of blood. The other villagers are either intimidated by Sartana or don't trust Johnny because he is Sartana's brother - and the one woman who has courage enough to go against Sartana, Joselita (Erika Blanc), despises Johnny because she thinks he has killed her father (the murder Johnny went to jail for, actually). Plus, Sartana tries to have Johnny killed numerous times.

However, Johnny fights on, and eventually he manages to win Joselita's respect and to free Jeff from Sartana's clutches, who soon becomes his loyal ally. HoweverJoselita also puts her trust in the local judge, Waldorf (Carlo D'Angelo), not knowing that the judge is actually secretly in league with Sartana, and he not only leads her into one trap after the other, he also tries to suppress all opposition in town against Sartana and seriously discredit Johnny with the villagers - and after all it was him who had thrown Johnny into prison all those years ago for a murder he didn't commit.

Eventually though, the judge is revealed for the traitor he is, and the villagers finally rise against Sartana's evil rule - which ultimately leads to his men being killed by an angry mob while he faces his own brother Johnny in a duel, a duel that Sartana tries to win by cheating - but ultimately he is gunned down by Manuela ...

Chris Holwand plays a kind of comic relief as the village's trader, but he doesn't have to do all that much.

No masterpiece perhaps but a pretty decent spaghetti Western that works because of its familiar yet somewhat unusual storyline (especially the oedipal subplot is of interest), because of the wonderfully evil Sartana character, and because of Gianni Garko's wonderfully unrestrained performance as Sartana, who even manages to add some depth and psychological undercurrents to what would have been a clichéd baddie in lesser hands.

Worth a look, at least.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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