7 winchester per un massacro

The Civil War is over. But not for Col. Thomas Blake (Guy Madison). He leads a gang of marauders who terrorize the area around the Mexican border, looting and pillaging, all in the name of the Confederacy. Blake dispatches Chamaco Gonzalez to the town of Manassas to learn the location of a lost Confederate payroll, presumably buried after the surrender at Appomattox by Gen. Beauregard's soldiers. But Camacho gets himself captured and has a date with a firing squad.

Enter a stranger named Stuart (Edd Byrnes) who rescues Chamaco and thereby earning a meeting with Blake.

He claims to know where the payroll is buried. He wants Blake's help in retrieving it, with the end goal of helping Southerners suffering because of the war.

Blake, of course, has other ideas for the buried fortune. With a handpicked group of men back across the Rio Grande to fetch the payroll, which Stuart says is buried in a sacred cave of the Apaches, near the town of Durango.

Along the way, a pretty lady named Manuela shows up, offering her assistance.

First up, Francesco De Masi's score is awesome, livening up the proceedings even more. Payment in Blood is the third Ed Brynes' spaghetti western and it's the serious one of the two. Not much humour, just a straightforward action tale that moves at a clip and provides a fair amount of uneasy alliances, double crosses and lead flying, body count piling up. It's quite fun with Guy Madison stealing the scene as Blake, an untrusting leader of a gang. Ed Brynes does well as the clean cut hero who has an agenda to fulfil. The finale set in an Indian burial ground is really exciting.

This is the second film of Enzo G. Castellari I have seen, after KEOMA. It's not as original as the latter but provides good entertainment. The opening starts with a pseudo-documentary narrative which introduces the characters. While in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN the introduced characters are the heroes here they are the baddies. Later the characters aren't much further developed, though. The strong aspect of the film is the uncertainty about the intentions of the Stuart character, well played by Edd Byrnes. He doesn't seem to be a good guy but maybe there is a reason why he kills so many innocent people. Guy Madison plays equally convincing his counterpart Blake.

Overall an OK violent western with a good Francesco De Masi score which supports the pace of the story.

5 / 10.

Enzo G. Castellari was a director who seemed to contribute films in a variety of genres, from sci-fi to giallo. I get the feeling that his best ones are his spaghetti westerns though. In Payment in Blood he delivers a pretty solid entry. Its story features a renegade Confederate colonel who refuses to accept the South's defeat in the American Civil War and so continues the fight with a band of outlaws. A stranger saves one of his gang from execution and is taken into their fold when he reveals that he knows the whereabouts of a casket of buried money.

It would only be fair to say that the plot-line has quite a few similarities with Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy. Its hero, however, looks a little different from the shady leads from other spaghettis. He looks more like a character from an American traditional western, although he still has the same amorality and essentially acts in a similar way. The villains are decent enough and there is a fair amount of violent action to keep us entertained. Things are wrapped up with an interesting enough climax in an Indian burial ground, located in a cave. Overall, this is an entertaining, if unremarkable, western and should definitely find approval with fans of the Italian strand.

Ticks all the right boxes with some whacky characters and several exciting action sequences. The musical score is half decent to. The story concerns a Confederate Major, who is caring on his own private campaign and after the official surrender. Sort of plays like an inferior 'Hellbenders' by the great Sergio Corbucci. The lower score of six, is just a comparison to the many other, better examples of this particular genre but the fans will still enjoy.

Crazed Confederate raider Guy Madison can't stop raiding, even after the Civil War is over and done with. Ex-Confederate Edd "Kookie" Byrnes knows where a fortune in confederate treasure is buried and needs the bloodthirsty Madison and his band of cutthroats to get there, leading to an uneasy alliance and a harrowing trip across the frontier.

Another of director Enzo G. Castellari's patented brand of light-hearted adventure films, Payment In Blood is a decent enough, if not very original movie. It does have it's share of good action scenes, locations, and performances by it's lead actors, benefiting greatly from Byrnes charisma and Madison's machismo. The climax at the Indian burial ground is pretty neat too.

Castellari is actually pretty good at setting up and directing action sequences. He made his fair share of good movies, but I feel he really could have knocked it out of the park (and still can) if given the right script.