Le Justicier du Minnesota

"Minnesota Clay" (1964) was one of the earliest Spaghetti Westerns directed by Sergio Corbucci; in two years time he would make the iconic and notorious "Django" and in 1968, he made the best non-Sergio Leone Spaghetti: "The Great Silence". But this is early days for the director, before cynicism and boredom seeped into his love of making Westerns. Shot around the same time as Leone's groundbreaking "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), but released later, it shares the two gangs warring over a town theme, as well as the bandits being separated by race: the white, American Fox (Georges Riviere) and the Mexican Ortiz (Fernando Sancho); but this is the only similarity (which had been copied from Akira Kurosawa's samurai film "Yojimbo" [1961], which in turn had been inspired by the pulp writings of the brilliant Dashiell Hammett and his novel "The Glass Key" [1931]) and while nowhere near the greatness of Leone's Western, this is still a remarkably good movie.

The plot (by Adriano Bolzoni and Corbucci) though, is clichéd ridden: Minnesota Clay (Cameron Mitchell) escapes from prison after being framed by the devious Fox; returning to his hometown, Clay discovers that it is overrun by two gangs: Fox's and Ortiz's and then proceeds to clear the place up, even though his eyesight is failing terribly.

However, despite these script constraints, Corbucci directs some brilliant action, in particularly the climatic gunfight in the dark. He seems to be having fun with scenes like this, and it's not hard to see why. Riviere and Sancho honourably excused, the acting is mostly very poor. Mitchell is variable throughout, although his performance during the finale is very good. The music by Piero Piccioni is however, excellent and the photography by Jose Fernandz Aguayo is also pretty good. It may be finally floored, but this is still a worthy addition to the Spaghetti Western genre.

A pre-Django Spaghetti Western from Sergio Corbucci, starring b-movie master Cameron Mitchell as a gunslinger going slowly blind, and out to revenge his wrongful imprisonment before his condition overtakes him! Cam's been in prison for eighteen years but decides to break out one day and return to his home town, where his daughter lives (she don't know he's her dad though). The town is ruled by Fox, a nasty fella who put Cam in jail in the first place and is looking for a way to rid the town of the Mexican bandit gang (led by Fernando Sancho. Fernando basically plays the same character in every film I've seen him in - the chicken leg eating, cackling, Mexican bandit leader...and that's not a complaint).

Cam thinks about hooking up with Sancho to get rid of Fox but there's a Latin spanner in the works by the name of Estella and she's playing everybody for a fool. She frames Cam for stealing gold and basically leads everyone into a massive shoot out. Cam is going blind but he's also the greatest shot the town has ever seen, which makes him a bit of challenge.

Perfect pacing in this film I felt, and not only a great performance from Cameron (who is prone to over acting or not acting at all), but also a complete turnaround from Georges Rivieres as the bad guy Fox. The last film I watched him in (Castle of Blood) he played a wide-eyed, innocent romantic type...in this he's a man without a soul.

Cameron steals the show as the world weary gunslinger out to save his daughter before his blindness is complete. He basically has to fight his last battle using sound alone, which makes it very interesting. He sure ends up in some state by the end of the film! A quick note on Cameron Mitchell. He was the king of the b-movie, from low budget acid westerns like Ride In the Whirlwind (with Jack Nicholson), horrors like Nightmare In Wax, terrible weirdo films like Medusa, Hollywood bigshot films like the Klansman (with Lee Marvin!), mystery films like Haunts, playing a psychic so terrible the people who hired him shoot him in the South African slasher film The Demon, going up against Satan himself in The Nightmare Never Ends, being a cult leader talking crap in kung fu film Low Blow, or a park owner in Memorial Valley Massacre, one things for sure: He always looked middle aged, for some reason.

Before you watch "Minnesota Clay", I have one bit of warning. Apparently, multiple versions of the film were made depending on what country showed the film. Now of course this makes sense with dubbed films, but I am talking about making the film with DIFFERENT endings depending on the country. This is the second Italian western that features a happy ending in the Italian version and a less happy American version. Now here's the rub--you get BOTH COMBINED on the DVD of "The Fast, the Saved and the Damned" (a DVD collection of four Italian westerns). So, after the film ends, the Italian happy ending is tacked on--and it's all in Italian and with no subtitles! So, up until then, it was dubbed in English and suddenly it's all Italian!! Now I did not have a hard time following what happened (and you probably won't--especially if you are familiar with Spanish or Italian)--but others might feel incredibly frustrated and wonder what is going on in the film. My advice? Ask an Italian friend to watch it with you!

The film itself is an okay western--neither a standout nor a dog. Cameron Mitchell plays a man who was sent to prison--yet there WERE folks who could testify that he was innocent but they didn't! So, he escapes and goes looking for them in order to force them to tell the authorities what they know. However, being a film, you KNOW it won't go that smoothly! Decent acting, nice music but nothing much more to make it stand out from the crowd.

Quick draw Cameron Mitchell escapes a federal hard labor camp and returns to his old stomping ground to find the man who could have exonerated him of murder charges, where he reconnects with his estranged daughter, and tangles with two rival gangs, all while contending with his own failing eyesight.

The second western directed by Italian favorite Sergio Corbucci, this isn't as good as some of his later work. Still, it's a solid western that's handsomely produced and a lot of fun to watch, with some good gun-play and a memorable title character, effectively portrayed by Mitchell.

The climax where Minnesota Clay battles the heavies using only his sense of hearing is quite entertaining.

Sergio Corbucci's "Minnesota Clay" puts a spin on the spaghetti western genre. Here the protagonist (Cameron Mitchell) is losing his sight as he escapes jail and seeks revenge on the man who wronged him. There's a lot of the stuff that we expect to see in spaghetti westerns. To be certain, Corbucci went on to direct "Django", which inspired Quentin Tarantino's 2012 homage. But the important point is that the European* westerns - depicting a gritty, dismal Old West - were a rejection of the John Wayne mold (which made the Old West look immaculate and wholesome). I suspect that "Minnesota Clay" was a fun movie to make.

*It wasn't just western Europe that made westerns. The Eastern Bloc also made them. An example was "The Sons of Great Bear" from East Germany.