Three Bullets for Ringo (1966)

Inventory

• Gordon Mitchell
• Mickey Hargitay

Inventory

• Behind the back shot
• Two chinese bodyguards
• A saloon gunfight
• A street fight
• A dying mother
• Three deeds in a box
• A funky afro-gypsy indian ritual
• A six-barreled cannon

Summary

The movie begins in good style, with guitar music and men's choir doing the "Ahhhh, ahhhh" thing, stock photos of pistols (all cocked), and the worst sound effects ever of a Winchester being cocked and fired. Gordon Mitchell's and Mickey Hargitay's names both show up before the title, which means that they either had the greatest agents ever, or the standard for being a box office draw was once much, much lower. The title in the title sequence is 3 Colpi di Winchester per Ringo, which seems to be rather specific. Cutting back on the product placement probably helped to fit it onto American marquees.

Without too much ado, a pair of gunfighters are hired to recover a woman from a gang of Mexican bandits who have kidnapped her. This is accomplished with considerable more ease than you might expect, especially considering the price that they charge.

When Daddy tries to welch on paying the gunfighters, they proceed to have the most stunningly apathetic gunfight in the saloon, at least until the banker shows up and everyone stops shooting and walks away peacefully.

As an aside, no one seems to have any idea of what two hundred ounces of gold weighs, as they pour out a dozen coins onto the counter and call it good.

Once things settle down, it turns out that one of the gunfighters, Ringo Carson, has a long standing relationship with the daughter. Or, to be more accurate, a long laying relationship. The other, Frank Sanders, is rather jealous of this relationship, which puts a strain upon the partnership. The two demonstrate that they are equally bad at pretending to brawl as they are at pretending to shoot. I don't normally like to complain about the continuity in these movies, but if you're going to have one guy knock another to the ground, when he hops up swinging, it should be the same one who fell. Finally, Frank has had enough, proclaims the woman to be not worth the fight, and rides out of town.

In a matter of the next couple of minutes, Ringo is reconciled with his estranged mother, marries Jane, becomes a father, the Civil War ends, and he is appointed sheriff. We know the war ends because of a caption, in Italian, which says so while someone in a nineteenth century Spanish uniform dies on the screen.

A few seconds after this sequence, the stage brings in a dying man who says that renegade Southerners are shooting up the place. Ringo says goodbye to his son, who appears to be about nine years old, and heads out to fight the rebels, who are wearing brand new Confederate (Spanish) uniforms. He rescues a little boy from a burning building, but is blinded when a beam from the roof falls onto his head. Fortunately for him, the leader of the rebels is his former partner, Frank, who brings him back to his home.

Within minutes, Jane's father, who's a gun runner, and Daniels, the Banker, offer Frank the sheriff's job. Fortunately for everyone, the Doctor does mention that in some cases a second blow to the head will cause the eyesight to return.

Now, at this point, the story gets a little unbelievable. No, really. It gets worse. Much worse. The conclusion is genuine batshit crazy.

As I said earlier, I don't like to complain about continuity, but people walk into a building in the dark and out a few minutes later in full daylight. At one point you can see daylight out a window, while the doorway next to it is open to the night.

By the way, IMDB calls it Three Graves for a Winchester, which makes no sense whatsoever.

In the obscure connections line, Mickey Hargitay was the husband of Jayne Mansfield for six years and three children.

Dialogue

"Jane, I'm sorry about this little mix-up, honey. They didn't harm you, did they?"

"No, but it wasn't a picnic, Pa. The whole thing was revolting, as usual, and I won't do it again."

"A bit of whisky, missy?"

She takes a slug and continues, "The first time I was taken by cattle rustlers, the second time by indians, just to get you to pay ransom. I'm getting tired of being your daughter."

Story

This movie is 87 minutes long including the credits. Beyond a doubt, that is at least 85 minutes longer than necessary. The dialogue is ridiculous and the plot defies description. This is as close as I've come to just turning one of these movies off.

Music

Once again, passable music.

Acting

Whoever dubbed the leads seems to have believed that a cowboy drawl sounds like a mentally handicapped person with a speech impediment. They speak the words at a normal pace, but with a painful pause between each word and a flat inflection.

The best actor in the movie is a horse who gets shot and lays down, pretending to be dead. Unfortunately for the director, the horse proceeds to get up and fall down dead twice more in the background of the scene. At the end, he's walking around waiting for his next cue.

Kid Vengeance (1977)

Cast

• Lee Van Cleef
• Jim Brown
• John Marley
• Glynnis O'Connor

Inventory

• A snake
• A scorpion
• Two toes
• Four utterly inept brothers
• Two hundred pounds of gold
• A lot of dynamite

Summary

Okay, almost before the credits even begin, we know that this will be a winner. It's a Golan-Globus production, and for those of us of a certain age, the words Golan-Globus at the start of a movie let us know that 1) the script was unlikely to have cost more than $10,000 to buy off of whatever desperate screenwriter happened to walk into the office that day, and 2) for the most part, there was no reason to worry about excessive production values getting in the way of a trashy action flick. Now, admittedly the cousins would, in their later years, get into arty films that had cinematic merit, but this movie holds a special pride of place, as it is the FIRST Golan-Globus movie, which makes it the sui generis of an entire art form.

If that were not enough, this is a matzoh western, having been filmed in Israel, of all places. The concept of a mid-eastern western is rather metaphysical, in a number of ways.

We're not disappointed, because after a bucolic family scene, we move to town, where we meet Lee Van Cleef as an aging hippy. Jim Brown soon shows up as a prospector who struck it rich in the hills. Needless to say, this attracts the attention of the wrong kind of folk.

Van Cleef and his band soon shows up at the camp site of the bucolic family, where they engage in some old fashioned rape, pillage, and murder. This is all witnessed by the young son. When one of the bandits stays behind to loot the dead, the boy beats him to death with a shovel.

As the boy's sister is accidentally taken by the bandits while she hides in the wagon, the boy begins to wreak his revenge in a creative, if unlikely, commando operation. His actions are significantly aided by the general incompetence of the bandits, who seem destined for duty as the bad guys in a future Delta Force or Death Wish movie.

If nothing else, this movie does examine the idea that even bandits return home after a hard day of work to a quiet little bedroom community.

The title on the film is Vendetta. Kid Vengeance does have that grindhouse tone to it, though.

Apropos of nothing, it's amazing how little two hundred pounds of gold weighs.

Dialogue

"Don't step on the duck!"

Story

With a name like Kid Vengeance what do you expect? It's a revenge movie. There are a few twists thrown in, as well as some genuinely funny lines, but it is not the kind of movie where you're going to sit around with your friends and and debate what the filmmaker really meant.

Music

Decent music, by an Italian, of course. They saved money by using as little as possible of it.

Acting

What's remarkable is how much Lee Van Cleef looks like a balding, bearded Dennis Hopper. James Brown was one of the greatest football players of all time. He ran like the wind. From what I've read, he's intelligent and a gentleman, but in the name of all that is sacred, he couldn't act to save his life. Something clearly went wrong with Glynnis O'Connor's lines, because she's very badly dubbed.

Fundamental Constants

Once upon a time, when I was but a humble undergraduate, I had a professor who interrupted his lecture to point out one of the fundamental constants of the universe:

"Unlike such things as the fine structure constant, which is occasionally up for discussion (and why 1/137?), there is one number that remains fixed and unchanging throughout time. When I was an undergraduate, commercial fusion energy was twenty years in the future. When I was a graduate student, commercial fusion energy was twenty years in the future. And now, as I look upon your bright and eager faces, I tell you that commercial fusion energy is twenty years in the future."*

* I may be gifting my old instructor with more eloquence than he actually possessed, but we'll give the old boy the benefit of the doubt.

I sat in my chair as he said this and harbored a secret chuckle, for I knew what he did not. I had spent several years as a technician working for the Fusion Research Center at the University of Texas on the Texas EXperimental Tokamak (TEXT), and I knew that with the remarkable breakthroughs that we were making daily, that it would only be a decade or so before someone, somewhere, had a working fusion reactor. After all, at that time there were hints from Princeton and other places of near-break-even operation, if only for a fraction of a second.

Well, today (and I am sorry to say that it has been much more than twenty years since I had sat in that classroom) there was an Op-Ed in the New York Times on the topic of fusion energy. Stewart Prager who is identified as the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has a wonderful piece that talks of all the benefits of fusion energy: it's not a greenhouse gas producer, it doesn't pollute, there is no chance for a catastrophic meltdown, it's available to every country on Earth, and the fuel is damn near free.

And then, in the last paragraph, just when he's closing the deal, he mentions the fundamental constant:

Fusion used to be an energy source for my generation’s grandchildren; now, plans across the world call for a demonstration power plant in about 20 years.

Hmmm, I wonder how the gravitational constant is holding up these days?

The Unholy Four (1970)

Inventory

• Leonard Mann
• Woody Strode
• Peter Martell
• Luca Montefiori

Inventory

• One saloon brawl
• $100,000 in gold
• A traveling sideshow
• A church organ
• One graveyard gunfight

Summary

A band of bank robbers create a distraction by setting fire to an asylum for the criminally insane. In the resulting confusion, four inmates escape. Strangely, the townspeople seem much more concerned with recapturing the inmates than the are in catching the bank robbers.

It's easy to see why, when, within a day, the bank robbers are dead, ambushed by their erstwhile allies, while the inmates have eliminated the bounty hunters who had set out after them. Regardless of how crazy they are, it certainly appears that they're competently criminal.

One of the inmates has amnesia, but in the escape, he learns that his name is Chuck Moll. As the four of them drift into a town, they learn that he's the eldest son of one of the two families that run the town. The only question is which family. This would be easily cleared up if at least one of the families had the surname "Moll".

Dialogue

"Five dollars."
"I'll see your five and raise you twenty."
"You raise twenty, I raise a hundred."
(Lays cards down.) "Flush"
"You been cheatin'."
"What was that?"
"You been cheatin'."
"So have you."

Story

The story is good, with a nice collection of twists and turns. The four main characters have the usual one quirk each, with one strong, one good with a knife, one good with a rifle, and one good with a pistol. The dialogue is pretty wooden, but Woody Strode is the only American in the cast, so it's not as though any of the actors were likely to be complaining about it.

Music

The theme for this movie sounds as though it should be playing in a late-sixties comedy involving a young woman finding her way after moving to New York City. It reappears throughout the movie at odd intervals, giving a strangely upbeat lilt to a gunfight.

Acting

Woody Strode is a fine actor who never seemed to get the kind of leading roles that he deserved. In this movie he has about three lines, probably because he didn't speak enough Italian to recognize his cues. Luca Montefiori and Peter Martell are actually pretty good, but Leonard Mann seems to have been given the direction to look confused and took it to heart. There is one brief scene where he doesn't have a puzzled look on his face and he flashes a bit of real charisma that immediately disappears again. I'm afraid that I have to rate the acting as slightly below average.

End of an Era

Those who know me, know that I have been a space junkie since before space was cool. Which, to be fair, could mean last week. In truth, my earliest memory of the space program is Apollo 8. I was five years old and one of my classmates looked at a piece of paper sitting on the table and asked the teacher what it said. I looked down and read, "Blast off at noon." Since this was at a time when five year olds did not read, I was hauled off to the principal's office, where I was carefully examined for other obvious abnormalities. The next summer, I sat with my family to watch Neil and Buzz take their steps on the moon and before the next year was out, I can remember explaining to adults why rockets were multi-staged.

When Columbia made its first flight, I sat with a mass of other science geeks and we watched it together. Those of you who never saw a Saturn V launch can't imagine how terrifying that first shuttle flight was. Saturn rockets were an unstoppable force once the engines fired. They moved steadily and with profound dignity off the launch pad and into the sky. Shuttle launches are all together different. The shuttle's main engines fire and then take their time coming to full thrust. Then, once the main engines are at full throttle, the two solid rocket boosters are lit. Once they are at full thrust, explosive bolts fire and the whole combination of shuttle, external tank, and solid rocket boosters pops into the sky as if shot from a slingshot. The thing is, while the main engines are coming to full thrust, they're turning huge amounts of water to steam under the launch pad. The SRBs add to the steam when they fire, but the solid fuel also creates great quantities of smoke. That first launch, when the whole pad and rocket disappeared into a huge white cloud, it looked like a terrible explosion had taken place. As everyone in the room was holding their breath, out pops the shuttle, taking off toward the sky like a bat out of hell. After a moment, the entire room went completely crazy, as the whole crowd cheered and screamed and danced around like over-educated idiots.

When Columbia landed at White Sands, New Mexico in 1982, I traveled with three other technicians from the Fusion Research Center, driving overnight from Austin to catch the landing. Of course, it didn't land that day because of the worst sandstorm in the history of the region, and we had to return to Austin (or risk losing all of our jobs), so we missed the actual landing the next day.

When Challenger exploded, I was still at the University of Texas. I went home and watch replay after replay, with tears streaming down my cheeks. That day and 9/11 were probably the two most emotionally devastating in my life. I was a scientist, a physicist, and I had spent my life believing in technology. And there it was, scattered across the sky. I have read the accident review board's report and Feynmann's addendum many times since then and to this day I believe that PowerPoint killed seven people.

I've gotten up early and stayed up late and taken lunches at strange hours, all to watch the shuttle launch. I was even watching, by pure coincidence, the Challenger landing on NASA TV when it shattered into thousands of pieces across Texas. When Atlantis went up, I had the NASA feed running on my computer. Of course, my boss came in to talk just before launch and by the time I could shoo him out, I was I sure that I had missed the launch. Fortunately for me, there was a hold at T-31 seconds that lasted just long enough for me to catch the restart of the clock.

Here's the weird part: I've never liked the shuttle. It's the wrong spacecraft, built to go where no one needed to go, with capabilities that didn't contribute to science. It was built to satisfy the needs of the Air Force, who hardly used it before Columbia and never used it after. They built an entire billion-dollar launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base for the shuttle and it was never used. The wings that failed for Challenger were added for the Air Force, which had a need for what's called cross-range capability. Most things that fall from space, including spacecraft, fall in more or less a straight line. This means that you need to reenter the atmosphere at a time when you're lined up with where you want to land. The thing is, the Air Force wanted the ability to go up and either leave something up there or bring something down without anyone knowing about it. This pretty much means a once-around flight. The problem is that while you're making your orbit (in about ninety minutes), the Earth is busy spinning, so you're going to come down about fifteen hundred miles from where you took off.* Since this is rather inconvenient, the Air Force wanted the ability to "fly" the shuttle back to where it took off. In the end, the shuttle made very little use of this capability and the next result was large and fragile wings that cost huge amounts of energy to lift into orbit.

* The assumptions here are that you're launching into near-polar orbit, which is why they built the site at Vandenberg, and that your launch site is near the equator, which is not true for Vandenberg. At the latitude of Vandenberg, the cross-range need is only about 1200 statue miles, which is, remarkably enough, the exact cross-range capability of the space shuttle. In fact, one feature of every launch is the discussion of the AOA, or Abort-Once-Around. This is an option if there is a main engine failure on launch. Outside of the shuttle industry, it's not widely known that this capability is all but useless for a flight from the Kennedy Space Center. The window between a TAL (Trans-Atlantic-Abort) and an ATO (Abort-To-Orbit) is pretty much zero.

The part about being built to go where no one needs to go probably needs some explanation. After all, everyone has been talking about how we need to resupply the International Space Station now that the shuttle is no longer around to do the job. Once again, there is a story behind the story. The ISS was built to give the shuttle something to do. There is no real analogy to it except building a railroad into the middle of a desert and then deciding to build a city there, so that building the railroad seems like a good idea.

Here are the problems with a manned station in low orbit. The things that low Earth orbit (LEO) are good for tend to be things like Earth observation. Taking pictures of various types to observe clouds, oceans, and landforms or for map making. There are also some experiments like growing crystals of materials that can't mix in gravity. None of these require human intervention. In fact, having people around means that there is unexpected motion, as the people move around, as well as the need for air, heat, water, and food.

Where should people be in space? On the rocks and ice cubes all around the solar system. People are very good at pattern recognition and adaptability. While it's perfectly fine to have rovers wandering Mars (go Opportunity!), a person could cover more ground, faster. Also a trained person can spot things that look out of place. For example, from the transcript to Apollo 15:

145:41:19 Scott: Get that unusual one. (Pause) Here's some dense...And there's another unusual one; look at the little crater here, and the one that's facing us. There is a little white corner to the thing.

The unusual rock with a little white corner is the "Genesis Rock", the first piece of anorthosite to be found on the Moon. These rocks (more would be found by the Apollo 16 astronauts) date back nearly 4.5 billion years and solidified shortly after the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized planetoid hit the just-formed Earth. Developing algorithms that can spot slightly odd rocks on a field of more or less identical rocks is a difficult task. Fortunately for us, seeing something that looks out of place is a strong survival tool, so the evolutionary algorithm generator has been hard at work on this problem for a very long time.

So where should we go now that the last shuttle has launched? There are hints of a plan, if politics, greed, and stupidity don't screw it up too badly. Having commercial operations like SpaceX deliver supplies to the ISS sounds like a great idea. Let's face it, UPS and FedEx do a better job delivering packages than does the Post Office. The same will be true for crew transfers, too. Despite what some would have you believe, there is very little difference between delivering parts and people, at least on the way up. When returning to Earth, you want to be more careful with the goods when people are involved.

If there is a place for government involvement in manned space flight, it should be in the development of genuinely heavy lift rockets. These have been out of favor since Saturn, but a new rocket in that class would go a long way toward getting men and women onto the Moon.

As an old space cadet, I'll have more to say someday. I'll also put together some links where you can learn more about these topics from people who are far better qualified than I am. Until then, I say to the crew of Atlantis, best of luck and may the wind be at your back.

Four Rode Out (1970)

Sue Lyon
Pernell Roberts
Julián Mateos
Leslie Nielsen


Inventory

• Dead horses
• $120,000
• A wedding dress
• Two canteens of water

Summary
This clearly is not going to be the typical movie that we have seen so far. Instead of the protagonist being introduced by killing someone or being released from jail, this one begins with a man sneaking through a window into the bedroom of a young woman. She peels off his boots, belts, and other assorted items and then crawls under the sheets with him. Just as they are about to get started on a detailed discussion on the virtues of romantic love, an enraged man storms into the bedroom. Before anyone can say a word, the first man uses a right jab to the second man's face as an opportunity to grab as much of his hardware as possible before defenestrating himself. After his departure, the second man slaps the woman, and repeatedly cries, "You're just like your mother." After a few repetitions of this anguished phrase, he rushes from the room and we hear him shoot himself.

The next scene begins looking up from a grave at the woman and a priest. Soon, Marshall Ross shows up to ask the woman, who we learn is named Myra, about the window-climbing gentlemen, who we learn is named Fernando Nuñez. The marshall claims Nuñez is a bank robber and a murderer. Maya proclaims his innocence and appeals to Ross, who tells her that he will find Nuñez, no matter what.

Leslie Nielsen then appears as Mr. Brown, a Pinkerton agent, also pursuing Nuñez, but with more concern about recovering the stolen money than about any abstract notions of justice. The two men join forces, although not by the marshall's choosing. Before long, they're joined by Myra. Brown is determined to kill Nuñez on sight, while Ross wants to bring him in for a trial. Myra is desperate to save his life, so Brown offers Myra a trade, Nuñez's life for her favors. A friendlier threesome has never ridden together.

When they catch up to Nuñez, the movie turns into a taut psychological thriller.

This is actually a paella western, as it a Spanish-American production. The DVD version is strangely censored, with the word "whore" blipped out repeatedly.

Dialogue
"You like girls, Mr. Brown?"
"Wa-well, what do you mean?"
"Well, the way you talk about hunting down Nuñez. You talk about every man you hunt down that way?"
"What way?"
"You know, the way some men talk about the women they've had. You strike me that way about this boy."

Story

This is a western for grown-ups. It's not a shoot-em-up and good and bad are all very relative. The plot is nuanced, the characters are detailed and not stereotypical, and the dialogue is rich and realistic. I cannot understand why this movie is not part of the Western canon. I consider the fact that I have never seen it before to be truly remarkable.

Music

The movie opens with a woman (Janis Ian) playing guitar and singing the theme song. Her playing and singing pop up again from time to time. There is nothing wrong with the music, but it doesn't play much of a role in this movie.

Acting

Leslie Nielsen does a wonderful job playing a dirty, low-down, scum-sucking bastard. It's a reminder of why he got leading man roles long before he turned to comedy. Pernell Roberts reminds me of Henry Fonda in There was a Crooked Man, a tired lawman who has seen too much. He brought major western credentials to the movie, having played Adam Cartwright on Bonanza. There was something about him and his beard that looked awfully familiar. Although I didn't realize it at the time, I was recognizing him from his time as the title character on Trapper John M.D. Julián Mateos is more than passable and Sue Lyon looks and acts like Lindsey Lohan, minus the stints in rehab. Ironically, much like Lohan, Lyon ruined her career through a series of bad decisions.

Fistful of Lead (1970)

Cast

• George Hilton
• Charles Southwood
• Erika Blanc
• Nello Pazzafini

Inventory

• Hard boiled eggs
• A pepperpot pistol
• Whiskey checkers
• Trick #1
• An ex-rooster
• A parasol
• A well-armed horse

Summary

Our hero, the bounty hunter Sartana, is enjoying a picnic lunch and watching his prey cross the prairie, when they are ambushed by a group of Mexicans popping up out of the ground. They kill all of the wanted men and then flee after tossing a lit bundle of dynamite into the wagon. Sartana throws his canteen down from the hilltop where he is dining and, with a single shot, puts a bullet into it, which douses the fuse. Investigating the wagon, he discovers that it is loaded with lockboxes filled with moneybags, which in turn are filled with dirt. Shades of The Road Warrior.

At this point, I wish to digress. If the real history of the West had been anything like the movie version, the bandit would have gone the way of the buffalo or passenger pigeon, given the number of bounty hunters that were indiscriminately shooting them. Our time should be a crime-free era, with banditry either extinct or dwelling in protected wildlife parks. Clearly one-third of the population west of the Mississippi served as bounty hunters, with the rest evenly distributed between outlaws and townspeople. Had I been governor, I would have mandated that civilians wear blaze orange vests to minimize the number accidentally plugged by undisciplined bounty hunters.

To return to this movie, we find Sartana, with a somewhat different look, still with a nasty habit of offending people. This time around, most of the people he offends don't have much time to nurse a grudge before he ventilates them.

The plot involves shipments of gold that keep getting stolen, or do they? There are double, triple, and quadruple crosses until it's impossible to guess who has what and who plans to take it. And then, when a gunfighter named Sabbath who reads Shakespeare's sonnets shows up, things get really confusing.

As bad as Fistful of Lead is as a title, it beats the original English title, I Am Sartana, Trade Your Guns for a Coffin. That, I'm afraid to say, is the translation of the Italian, C'è Sartana... vendi la pistola e comprati la bara.

Dialogue

"Damn this gringo, he killed seven of us. And my woman got away. He fooled Mantas. He's one clever hombre. Si, this gringo, he thinks with his head."

Story

Well, it's all stolen from something or another, but at least the writers put the pieces together in a new and interesting manner. On the whole, about as good as it gets for one of these.

Music

The soundtrack benefits greatly from a lack of a theme song. The background music has a surf guitar meets men's choir vibe going that works pretty well all around.

Acting

George Hilton, who was originally from Uruguay, does a more than acceptable job as a low-rent Clint Eastwood. This would be his only time playing Sartana. Charles Southwood, who plays Sabbath, is a good-looking SoCal actor who spent a few years bouncing around the European movie circuit before fading away. The supporting cast was surprisingly good, especially Nello Pazzafini, who played Mantas, and who appears to have been in in half of the movies and television shows filmed in Italy from 1959 through 1989.

This Man Can't Die (1968)

Cast

• Guy Madison
• Lucienne Bridou
• Rick Battaglia
• Peter Martel

Inventory

• A bugle
• Trick #1^†
• Trick #2^††
• One coot
• Two codgers
• Chorus-line fu
• Bodice ripping
• A saloon gunfight

^†Trick #1 is the old "put a stuffed blanket near the fire so that the bad guys will shoot it and give themselves away" routine. It is now officially the oldest trick in the book. It appeared in Johnny Yuma and at least one other movie already reviewed, but I don't feel like re-screening them to find out which one.

^††Trick #2 is the old "let the bad guys follow my riderless horse, while I hide behind a rock" routine. This one also appeared in Apache Blood, as well as many others. It is apparently part of the villain recruiting process that only candidates that fall for one or both tricks can qualify for a position.

Summary

A bounty hunter takes a commission to find out who is running guns and whiskey into an Indian reservation. The commission is offered by the commander of the local fort, who is aiming for a promotion and who offers our hero a chance at redemption. What he is being redeemed from is, at least for now, a mystery.

We now cut to the Benson family, which consists of three brothers, one of whom has never come back from the war, although he sends the occasional parcel back home, and a pair of rather fetching sisters. While the two brothers and one sister are in town collecting the latest package, a band of brigands rides in and offs Ma and Pa, while having their way with the younger sister. One of the bandits catches a bullet and misses the departure, which leaves the siblings to decide that he is the man who cannot die, for if he recovers, he'll lead them to the other bandits.

Now, the sheriff shows up at the ranch and offers to help (the siblings hide the man who cannot die), but the elder brother waves off the help. His sister repeatedly implores him to let the sheriff help, but the elder brother brushes him off. The doctor, whom they bring blindfolded to the cave to perform surgery urges them to let the sheriff do his job, but the elder brother waves him off.

If you get the idea that the elder brother is both stubborn and thick as a brick, you're not far off the target.

The bounty hunter, we soon learn, is the eldest brother. He demonstrates his superior skills with a rifle, a horse, and in the sack, the latter by saying hello to an old friend, despite being shot in the arm.

In style, this movie falls somewhere between John Ford and Sergio Leone. That's not to say that it's in their class, but it has many of the characteristics of both the traditional and the spaghetti western. There are an impressive number of well-built sets that don't look familiar. Clearly this movie had a bigger budget than did the average pasta special.

Once again, the title appears to have wandered around a bit. While the DVD has this title, IMDB uses Long Days of Hate. The original Italian title is I lunghi giorni dell'odio which Google Translate mangles as "I hate long days." This is, by far, the best possible title for this movie, so it's a shame that the others seem to have won out.

Dialogue

"I'll have to operate. But even then, there isn't much hope."
"Then do the impossible, Doc."
"I'll need a lot of boiling water, Susie."

Story

Okay, it's not The Searchers. It's not even Fistful of Dollars. It is watchable, though. The quality of plot and writing isn't any worst than the grand old prime time dramas, like Dynasty.

Music

The theme song sounds as if it were intended for a Bond movie. The first chase scene also sounds as though it were written for a spy movie. After that, it settles down into average western fare, with just a touch of the spaghetti on the side.

Acting

Guy Madison is good looking and delivers his lines as though he means them. He made his career playing in westerns and this film, while probably not his best, was probably no where near his worst acting job. The remaining actors were, for the most part, serviceable.