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The desert: At an oasis, a mercenary (Pany Herod) sees a beautiful
woman, Sheila (Laura Gemser) bathing, almost in the nude. When he
approaches her, she seems quite willing to give herself to him, until all
of a sudden she runs off, and teases him to catch her. Going after her
frustrates him so much, that eventually he pulls his knife and threatens
her .. but she makes him fall down a ravine and into his own knife - dead.
Soon enough, the mercenary's friends - the mercenaries Falk (Angelo
Infanti), Marcus (Giovanni Brusadori) and Marcel (Vassili Karis) and the
civilian Bony (Gabriele Tinti) - come looking for him and only find his
dead body, and Sheila, who offers herself as a guide. Somehow none of the
mercenaries think that Sheila could have killed him, instead they start to
suspect each other.
Before long, Sheila uses her charms on each of the mercenaries, who
soon each want to claim her for himself, and eventually the situation
culminates when Falk stabs Marcel to death. Sheila, seizing the
opportunity, makes a getaway.
Falk, Marcus and Bony move on to the next willage, to steal some food,
but Sheila is already waiting for them, shotgun in hand, and plans to bump
them off, sniper style.Her plan is only spoiled when Falk takes a young
boy hostage, to use him as human shield.
Soon though, when the trio has left the village with the boy, Falk and
Marcus, who never could stand one another, start a fight, and Marcus
shoots Falk in the leg, while the boy can make a clean getaway. The trio
moves on, but Falk is in immense pain, so they are only moving very
slowly, and eventually Marcus even sends Bony off to fetch some water -
which is where Sheila picks Bony up. But Bony can keep Sheila from
shooting right away, and recounts the story of the mercenaries and how he
hooked up with them: Initially, the mercenaries were paid to shoot the
head of whichever-state-they're-in, which they did, but then their
employers betrayed them and even wounded their Captain (Maximilian
Wolters), so the (then still larger) group of mercenaries were on the run
ever since. Eventually they bumped into Bony and forced him to be their
guide. But the Captain's fitness was rapidly declining, so they decided to
send Bony away with him and get him into a hospital. Meanwhile they were
putting up camp at a farmhouse, where they shot the owner and raped and
killed his little daughter ... Sheila's father and sister, which is why
she is now after the mercenaries.
Sheila now sees that Bony is innocent, and he even agrees to help her -
while elsewhere Marcus and Falk pick up their old feud again, and soon
enough, Falk injures Marcus so severely that - upon finding Marcus -
Sheila shoots him to put him oput of his misery. Then she and Bony track
down Falk and ultimately shoot him as well. But the mission accomplished
only leaves a feeling of emptiness in Sheila ...
The plot of this film is really interesting, far above the usual
mercenary-B-fare you would get in the early 1980's. Unfortunately though,
an uninspired, bland direction and an indifferent soundtrack prevent the
film from unfolding its full potential. What remains is a very average
B-actioner with a good script and of course Laura Gemser, who has several
(if brief) nude scenes, and has to act more than usual, which she does
quite well.
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