Due volte Giuda

Nando Cicero's "Due Volte Giuda" aka. "Twice A Judas" of 1971 starring Antonio Sabato and the great Klaus Kinski, may not be a Spaghetti Western masterpiece, but it is certainly an entertaining and suspenseful and vastly underrated film.One aspect that makes this movie special is the amnesia story. This is one of the few Spaghetti Westerns to include amnesia, and the only one I've seen in which the topic of amnesia is actually one of the primary aspects of the plot, which follows a man (Antonio Sabato), who wakes up with a grazing gunshot wound to his head, next to a corpse in the middle of the desert, and has no clue who he is. The first half hour of the movie is quite confusing, and that's what maintains the suspense.

Kinski delivers an excellent performance as always, and Sabato fits in his role very well. José Calvo is furthermore convincing as an alcoholic doctor. The rest of the performances are OK too, but I couldn't say that any of them were particularly worth mentioning. The film is nicely (though in no way outstandingly)photographed, and the score is also quite good (although certainly not brilliant).

"Twice A Judas" is an original and suspenseful Spaghetti Western, and although it looses some of its quality towards the end, which is, in my opinion, a bit cheesy and too fast-paced compared to the film's beginning, it is certainly worth watching and way underrated. If you're a fan of Spaghetti Westerns and/or Klaus Kinski, I recommend to give this a try. 6/10

Similar to "And God Said to Cain", another Kinski "Spaghetti Western", Twice a Judas" is only marginal in entertainment value. Again Kinski's actual voice is absent, the dubbing is however far better than in "Cain." The other big advantage of "Judas" has over "Cain" is it almost totally takes place in daylight, as opposed to "Cain" which is barely visible for the majority of it's running time. The "Twice a Judas" storyline is scattered although flashbacks try to tie everything together with the ending. I consider "Twice a Judas" to be the better film of these two, but it is strictly for Kinski fans who can live with the fact that it really is not a very good film. MERK.

Antonio Sabato wakes on a hillside with a gun in his hand, a bullet groove on the side of his dead and no memory. Next to him lies a corpse, also clutching a gun. Last of all, there's a rifle on the ground with the word "Dingus" scratched into the butt. After being helped by a passing old man, the confused Sabato is directed towards town, where things get even more complicated.

Someone recognises him in the bar, and the next thing you know he's finding out he's been hired to kill a guy - his own brother! Played by Klaus Kinski! I'm not sure which of those revelations in more shocking. Kinski's a right arse here, taking land from the locals by force and building himself up quite a few enemies by doing so - including the local bankers who want to buy the land.

Sabato spends a lot of the film looking confused and wondering who all these people are and who the mysterious girl in the locket is (given to him by yet another mysterious girl). Sabato's mum isn't much help as she's gone insane and talks to her husband like he's not lying in a grave, but maybe that huge rifle over the fireplace will clear the air a bit...

There's a nice new angle to this one as our hero is not interested in any gold - he just wants his memory back. Quite a dark film too - the set up shots of the two inert bodies on the hill gets the following going in grim fashion, as does the landowner riding into town dead on his carriage. The only light hearted part is when Sabato's dog gets stuck into the bad guys during a gunfight. Kinski is his usual 'Crazy Frog with Hair' person.

Also starring Cristine Galbo from the House That Screamed and the forthcoming awesome Living Dead At the Manchester Morgue, and a film from the eighties called Suffer, You Prick!

Kinski, who was never one of my favourites (too much of a diva on set) has been further soured by allegations from his daughter in 2013 that he molested her. We'll never know it that's true or not, but it's certainly going to put a dampner on the next 600 Italian films he appears in.

In the great opening scene of this movie, a wounded man (Anthony Sabato) comes to among a pile of dead bodies and feasting vultures. He is suffering from amnesia, so he goes to the nearby town and ends up being hired by some greedy bankers to kill a man, who turns out to be his brother. He instead decides to join forces with his brother, but since the brother is apparently a local bully, willing to terrorize innocent homesteaders to keep them from selling out to the bank--and, more importantly, since he is played by sinister German actor Klaus Kinski--it's not clear he's necessarily the good guy in the conflict. The man then goes back to his family home to find his father and pregnant bride have been murdered, and that his mother has sunken into dementia. His brother's uncaring attitude to all this begins to make him even more suspicious.

This movie is kind of like the more recent art-house hit "Memento" (except that the character here is suffering from long-term amnesia instead of short-term memory loss). All the people he meets act mysterious at best, and at worst, seem to be trying to take advantage of him for their own purposes. And like with "Memento" the viewers are kept just as much in the dark as the protagonist. This is not nearly as good as "Memento", of course, and the final revelations are pretty seriously fumbled. Still it's not a bad movie. Sabato was one of those handsome but bland European actors (he kind of looks like a young Brando here), but he is better in this movie than in some of his other stuff I've seen. Kinski is always pretty good, but he suffers from being rather inappropriately dubbed into English. Women almost never have decent roles in these movies, but it's always nice to see the lovely Spanish actress Cristina Galbo (who headlined two classic Spanish horror movies, "La Residence" and "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie", and one of the classic Italian gialli "What Have you Done to Solange?") even if it is in a throwaway role like this.

This is available on one of those collections of public domain spaghetti westerns. It doesn't look great (like all public domain collections the presentation of the various films is pretty uneven), but it's still worth seeing

TWICE A JUDAS is a well-shot but rather routine spaghetti western enlivened by colourful cinematography and a slightly left-of-centre plot. The main character is a man who wakes up in the searing desert heat alongside a corpse. The problem is, his memory has gone, so suffering from amnesia he enters a local township and discovers problems with corrupt officials.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that Bourne-style plotting but it's the indifferent execution that lets this film down. The action scenes in particular are rather limited in scope and execution and nothing the viewer hasn't seen before. In addition, Antonio Sabato gives an exceptionally wooden turn as the protagonist, a guy you neither care about nor have any sympathy with despite his plight.

As is usual for this type of film, the best thing about TWICE A JUDAS is the dual role for Klaus Kinski. Kinski is reliably eccentric and/or nasty in his part(s) here and lifts things whenever he appears, so it's just a pity that's not all that often. Watch out for Cristina Galbo (THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE) as the love interest. As an aside, Sabato's dog steals all of his scenes.