If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death

Statement: “He’s dressed like a scarecrow.” Response: “I am your pallbearer.” Sartana keeps relatively clean despite the dusty grimey world these Italian Westerns take place in. Klaus Kinski is a side villain but as ever, more memorable than the head villain. What a title!

Fine enough formula spaghetti western.

I watched this purely for the awesome title. Unfortunately, it's not a great example of the genre and not much of a movie. The dubbing is bad and Garko is no Eastwood (despite clearly trying to be). Worst, though, is that the action doesn't even work due to a lack of understanding of spatial and temporal relation between shots in action sequences. Not sure if this was a directorial or editing issue, but there's one scene where it's especially bad.

The first Sartana film is ... fine. Berger is a great grinning, laughing bad guy. Klaus Kinski drops by. The middle section kind of drags with repeated chases leading to double-crosses, but the chain of bad guys killing other bad guys in the last act is entertaining. Garko is appealing and went on to play Sartana three more times.

There are so many different people, factions, double crosses, and dead bodies that it's a bit hard to decipher exactly what's going on other than, of course, they all want the gold. But if one is content with a spaghetti western to simply be full of character and bravado, then this movie is cool as hell.

The only thing higher in this than the amount of double crosses is the body count; i.e. a spaghetti Western with a nonsensical plot but an enjoyable amount of action.

Não sei se é poque eu estava emocionalmente muito mal hoje, mas esse filme não me trouxe prazer de qualquer tipo, eu amo um bom spaghetti, mas esse me pareceu muito trivial, sem falar que o "segredo" da narrativa fica claro para o público desde o início, não ajuda a fotografia do filme ter sido feita no sistema Telecolor que mesmo restaurada fica com uma aparência peculiar. Box Versátil Sartana - A Série Completa.

A lot of fun if you like Django, but don't care about the drama.

Nothing in it is particularly bad, but the narrative is a mess and Sartana is just not a compelling lead, so there's nothing that stands out either..

This is a FUN spaghetti by the director of later Sabata. A lot of similarities between the two characters. If you liked that you should enjoy this darker -almost gothic- film as well. There are more betrayals than in your average Giallo and the finale borders on horror. Parolini's direction is competent; especially his use of sounds. Great cast: Garko is cool, Berger & Sancho hilariously over the top and Kinski in smaller part. I do enjoy Sabata a bit more as it flows better and has Van Cleef.