Beware Sartana's Brand of Generosity

Gianni Garko, the original Sartana, returns with a moustache in 1970's Have a Good Funeral, My Friend . . . Sartana Will Pay (Buon funerale amigos!... paga Sartana). Very generous of him and I can confirm he lavishly spends on coffins throughout the film taking this bit established in Yojimbo to decadent levels. Yet this film is a return to a more grounded, satisfying storytelling after the previous entry, Sartana's Here . . . Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin, drove the series' slightly coy sadism into self-parody. This one even has a sweet hint of a suggestion of romance for Sartana.

The plot isn't wildly different from previous entries--Sartana, the mysterious, preternatural gunman with gadgets is hunting people down having something to do with some kind of land swindle.

Among his enemies this time are a corrupt banker and the Chinese owner of a saloon, Lee Tse Tung (George Wang). For the latter, the film's climax turns out surprisingly to be a melee, taking Sartana out of his trick shot element. Tse Tung wields an anachronistic Japanese sword against Sartana but it leads to the cool image of Sartana wielding a katana when he naturally turns the tables.

There's less emphasis on Sartana's ability to hide his guns and escape certain death and more focus on him intimidating people with his presence. He also seems to have a soft spot for Abigail (Daniela Giordano), a young woman mixed up in the bogus land deal.

Two thirds of the way through the movie there's a particularly nice action sequence when four outlaw brothers are randomly introduced and very quickly dispatched by Sartana. They're introduced nicely, though, with music and visual composition so watching their showdown with the film's hero is really very good.

Have a Good Funeral, My Friend . . . Sartana Will Pay is available on Amazon Prime.

His Gun is Quick, His Titles are Long

You think you're hot stuff, out there in the old west, with your pistol and your freedom. But you know what? Sartana's Here . . . Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin. It's plain sense at this point. From 1970, it's the third film to feature the preternatural Spaghetti Western hero and the only one not to feature Gianni Garko in the lead role. Uruguayan actor George Hilton is a decent enough substitute in a film that's basically a series of gags, repeated scenes where Sartana faces certain death. It is amusing seeing each new clever way he finds to pull a hidden gun from some prop or garment but the weirdness and subtle mystery of the first two films are sadly lacking.

There is a somewhat difficult to follow plot about the owner of a gold mine possibly hiring men to steal from his own shipments. Sartana is on the trail and massacres one set of bandits or outlaws after another, often in rooms where it seems Sartana is definitely surrounded and has no possible way of getting to his gun and shooting three or five guys instantly. No realistic way, maybe, but that's never stopped Sartana before . . .

There's a running gag about Sartana shooting through bread. In one of the final scenes, he conspicuously sets up three loaves of bread on a table before his enemies rush in, a sure sign he's probably not going to use the bread. In fact, his little fake outs do start to get rather predictable.

A rival/friend/bitter enemy for Sartana appears called Sabbath (Charles Southwood), of course having nothing to do with the main plot. He's a dandy dressed in white who likes to gamble, suspiciously similar to Hot Dead, the character played by Klaus Kinski in the previous film. Sabbath doesn't have quite the charm of Hot Dead but his stand-off with Sartana at the end of the film is an amusing tangle of one-upmanship and ridiculous plot twists.

Sartana's Here . . . Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin is available on Amazon Prime.

The Weight of the Hat

He wears his famous black hat and black cloak but is that all it takes to be Sartana? Decidedly not, as evidenced by 1969's I am Sartana, Your Angel of Death (Sono Sartana, il vostro becchino). The sequel to If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death, this tale of Sartana hunting down his imposter is less focused than its predecessor but still a lot of fun, in no small part because of a much bigger, more amusing role for Klaus Kinski.

The opening credits feature a close-up of Sartana (Gianni Garko) doing card tricks--appropriate considering how much of the movie is about tricks, some cleverer than others. Sartana has his hands on a deck of cards more than once in the film, most effectively when he manages to surreptitiously swap the deck for a gun from the man guarding him.

Despite the straight forward premise, this film works a lot like a series of vignettes as Sartana drifts into rooms and sheriff stations, appearing suddenly to get the upper hand. As in the first film, there's something more supernatural about this Spaghetti Western hero than any other. The Man with No Name, Django, and Ringo all have mystery and faintly sadistic guile, but Sartana tends more than any other to do things that are clearly impossible. My favourite in this film being when a gunman spots Sartana's hat and cloak on a rack in a barber shop. The wouldbe killer scans the shop only to look back and see Sartana's gotten the drop on him because the hat and cloak have transformed into the man himself.

Kinski, who played a petty thug named Morgan in the first film, here plays a dangerous gunman called Hot Dead. He doesn't seem to have anything to do with the bank robbers who've framed Sartana or the plot of the film in any other way. A scene of Hot Dead in a train car lazily foiling a card sharp but promising to "lose anyway" is presented without any apparent connexion to Sartana. When the two finally meet, Hot Dead maintains his intriguing tendency to show his skill before deliberately backing down. Kinki's irrepressible natural energy makes this low energy character trait fascinating.

I am Sartana, Your Angel of Death is available on Amazon Prime.