Nonureva Really Surprised!

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . where every woman was a rape-victim-waiting-to-happen; where bankers robbed their own banks (which sounds like a story ripped from today's headlines); and where the bad guys always waited one second too long to kill the good guys. Vengeance is a dish best served cold, but with plenty of salt. Two Americans bring relief to a gang-terrorized Mexican village, with Ennio Morricone contributing one of his 80 film scores from the mid-1960s. This is a low-budget film, so instead of the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN you have "the better-than-average two" (which is still double the number of stalwarts in HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, or any number of other Clint Eastwood solo acts). Climaxing with a mini-version of the Siege of the Alamo, DEATH RIDES A HORSE is not dissimilar from a samurai flick. Director Giulio Petroni uses red filters from time to time to denote flashbacks to "Bill's" childhood trauma, just as Alfred Hitchcock had done a few years earlier in MARNIE. (If ALIENS watch these two films, they might not "get" them, even if they're NOT color blind, as their blood is green!)

Spikeopath Death Rides a Horse (AKA: Da uomo a uomo/As Man to Man) is directed by Giulio Petroni and written by Luciano Vincenzoni. It stars Lee Van Cleef, John Phillip Law, Carlo Pisacane, Luigi Pistilli, Anthony Dawson, Jose Torres and Carla Cassola. A Technicolor/Techniscope production, music is by Ennio Morricone and cinematography by Carlo Carlini.As a young boy Bill Meceita (Law), hidden away and cowering, was witness to the rape and murder of his family. 15 years later he is out for revenge against the gang who committed the crimes. Also after the same gang is Ryan (Cleef), fresh out of prison and with his own reasons for vengeance. Two men with the same objective, but not "exactly" working together even as they keep crossing each others paths…Highly regarded by staunch Spaghetti Western fans, Death Rides a Horse has all the staple requirements in place to understand why that is the case. However, and it is a fun, violent and technically smart picture, it still comes across as a little jaded, even unadventurous. Certainly as an appetiser to the more well known Spaghetti's from the houses of Leone, Corbucci et al, it's filling for sure, a good starting point in fact for those exploring the sub-genre for the first time. But it hardly transcends Spaghetti Western World.It's ripe with scope landscapes, sweaty close ups of hard bastard anti- heroes and low life villains, violence that grabs the senses as Morricone whirls his musical baton of sublime distortional sounds, and of course there's Van Cleef doing what he does best, acting with a visual skill that says so much whilst actually doing very little. The by-play between Cleef and Law, a future Sinbad no less, is truly enjoyable, as their characters get caught somewhere in the middle of a dusky void that asks them to help or hinder their respective rival.It all builds to the big finale, where a pretty gentle twist fails to derail the momentum of the action and tension. While Petroni drops in some visual flares which obviously had future directors taking notes. All told it isn't that great a film to feel confident enough about recommending it to the casual film fan, but anyone with an interest in Spaghetti Westerns will find rewards. On proviso that is, that expectation level is set at a suitable level. 7/10

bkoganbing After Lee Van Cleef scored in the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western films and after years of support he became a star on his own. Not exactly leading man material, Van Cleef became a kind of lower case Lee Marvin for the rest of his career. His first starring vehicle was Death Rides A Horse where he plays an old outlaw who has a score to settle with an outlaw gang that betrayed him.Also having a score to settle is young John Phillip Law who as a child saw the same band murder his parents and sister. One of the outlaws feeling sorry for him, carried him from a burning building. This is hardly an original plot and has been done in American and spaghetti westerns a Gazillion times best known as the storyline in Once Upon A Time In The West. Still veteran westerner Van Cleef and Law carry it off with aplomb.I'm not a big fan of spaghetti westerns, but this one is all right.

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx This is one of the good spaghetti westerns, but it could have been great. It tries too hard to re-weave the magic of For A Few Dollars More, indeed it comes from a similar creative team (Vincenzoni, Morricone, along with several cast members), but the pity of life is, you can't recapture old magic, you can only forge ahead.Similarly to For A Few Dollars More, there's two gunmen to sympathise with, one played by Lee van Cleef, and one younger more handsome one. Van Cleef plays Ryan and John Phillip Law plays Bill, both trying to beat the other to the punch. The difficulty is, Law comes off as a Alan Ladd's understudy for Shane and this is at times a damned dark movie, into which he doesn't seem to fit. The ladies / androphiles are in for a treat though because he's darned handsome, not hard to see why he was cast as a bare-chested angel in Barbarella.Both men have got an old grudge to settle and are after the gang of men responsible. We're back to A Few Dollars More territory in the setup (back-story of Mortimer), and with the gang (Mario Brega and Luigi Pistilli reappear). The only evocative name (a critical Leone-ian ingredient) in the whole film is Cavanaugh, and that's a recycle from For A Few Dollars More as well, and the efficiency of the bank robbery scene seems to be a visual quotation of Indio's rescue.I absolutely love parts of the film. The opening rain-soaked scene (minus a tad of expository dialogue) is pretty spectacular, as is the trick shot sequence. There's also craft in allowing connection with the senses of the character, you can feel Ryan take his gloves off, you can feel his face burn after his curious shaving technique.The effective scenes in the movie are all about horror, and I feel that many of the dark interior scenes had the same pungency of Pierre Lhomme and Henri Decaë's work for Jean-Pierre Melville. However the son-I-never-had buddy movie aspect of it diminished things somewhat. It's also a movie where there are occasional longueurs of the type that you would never see in a Leone movie, and there are lines that fall flat as the movie sprawls on to just under two hours. I felt that an editor could make judicious subtractions to this movie without damaging it at all.Petroni and co seemed to have trouble ending the movie, finishing with what seems like a condensation of the plot of The Magnificent Seven, and they never discovered how to inject humour without mawkishness, the Eastwood ingredient. It's a great watch, but so sad that it doesn't quite come across as its own movie.