6 pallottole per 6 carogne

Remake of Yellow Sky set in South Africa. Vincent Price gets top billing as the only star in the movie, but his role is not the biggest. The plot is about seven bank robbers who happen upon a ghost town. The only people in the town are gold prospector Price and his daughter (Diana Ivarson). Vincent Price is generally worth recommending any movie for and he's the best thing about this one. Robert Gunner plays the Gregory Peck role from the original as the bandit who falls in love with the daughter. Gunner is OK but no Peck, to put it politely. Blonde beauty Ivarson makes for an unconvincing tomboy. Moving the setting to South Africa is the film's only original feature. I fail to see why they even bothered to do this as it adds nothing to an otherwise typical western. Dull movie.

In what is probably the only entry in the category of 'voortrekker' westerns, Vincent Price plays a gold miner whose haul is the target of five bank robbers. Love interest is provided by the oddly effective Diana Ivarson (who apparently never made another film) as Price's granddaughter. It's all enjoyable if somewhat disconcerting due to the British and Afrikaaner accents of the leading players who are also decked out in typical 'western' garb. A fun diversion.

Wholesome South African western, inspired by "Yellow Sky" stars Robert Gunner as Stretch Hawkins, an essentially decent bandit who leads his gang into an all but abandoned mining town where they discover the inhabitants are the peroxide blonde sharp-shooter Ivarson and her elderly grandpa Price. The two have been mining the veins for gold dust and when Hawkins' gang get the scent, they go after the lot, despite Hawkins' making a deal with Price to take only half. Tensions run hot and predictably, the gang implodes on greed.

Aside from mega-star Price, playing a gangly old-timer looking to revive a town on his lucky strike, Gunner stars as the gang's moral compass and equilibrium with his work cut out trying to prevent his men from interfering with Ivarson and fighting amongst themselves. Gunner is something of an enigma in the annals of film history, his brief career resulted in just a handful of movies (notably as stricken astronaut Landon in "The Planet of the Apes") before it abruptly ended. Ivarson looks at times like she's attempting to play a primitive form of woman, raised on gold fever without a maternal role model; to some extent, she achieves the brief. Interestingly like Gunner, Ivarson also failed to nail a film career though she did marry cult-favourite, brawny chrome-domed tough guy Bob Tessier.

Some pleasant scenery of African savanna and the occasional action punctuates what is otherwise a bit of a romantic melodrama. Pretty tame, but not bad all things considered.

Although "The Jackals" is set in South Africa during the gold rush era, what will really strike viewers is how American most of it feels. The locations resemble American deserts, and the story and characters feel right out of an American cowboy movie. Only the occasional view of wildlife and native people break the illusion this is an American western. Anyway, I though the movie was a disappointment. It's cheap- looking at times, very slow, and directed in a style that severely lacks passion of some kind during key moments (like action sequences). Vincent Price gives a hammy performance, though his scenes all the same give some life to the movie. There is also a bizarre musical score that sounds WAY out of place for this type of movie. I would only recommend the movie for viewers who are really curious about what a western made by South Africans would look like, and even they might be squirming in their seats at times.

Almost a word for word re-make of "Yellow Sky", with a setting on another continent. No better than the original, but still worth seeing. A pleasure seeing Vincent Price in something not dealing with the walking dead or some ghostly mansion: he shone as the grizzled old prospector, Oupa.