Il momento di uccidere

More than a bucket of blood promises the German title of the movie: "Ein Sarg voll Blut" means "a coffin filled with blood". Needless to say there is no such thing in the movie. Django and Bull, two gunmen with nothing else to do, look for a woman who knows the secret of a gold treasure. Quite a lot of baddies want to lay their hands on the gold, too, of course - not an unusual story, but "Il momento di uccidere" still is a spaghetti western above average due to excellent camera work and editing plus the ironic, yet very tough George Hilton starring as Django. Horst Frank ("Preparati la bara") is among the villains, while Walter Barnes plays Django's partner as such a rogue you wonder how he happened to be one of the good guys. Loni von Friedl acts convincingly as the pretty heiress who has more than one secret to hide. A movie without any serious flaws, really.

I sure like the pedigree of this one, as director Carnimeo (a/k/a Anthony Ascott) is behind several fine Sartana films as well as FIND A PLACE TO DIE; and George Hilton is one of the Spaghetti Western genre's most laconic and charismatic stars. But despite very capable and creative direction, a hooky theme song and score, and the presence of Hilton's winning smirk, the film is a dud.

Hilton plays a notorious bounty hunter (Lord) who, with his burly, sloppy sidekick Bull (Walter Barnes in a Jack Black-style role) aims to discover the location of a missing fortune in gold. Horst Frank is the hot-headed young man that stands against them.

If you were to make a list of the pic's assets, you'd think, wow, must be great: There is an intriguing mystery to the story, as the heroes must decipher various arcane clues and enlist the help of a long-missing crippled girl. The title song, "Walk By My Side" by Francesco DeMasi, is supremely infectious, and repeats throughout in a variety of forms, notably plucked on an electric bass guitar. Carnimeo's varied camera set-ups feature numerous unusually-composed and visually-arresting shots and interesting points-of-view. Hilton is sarcastic and charming. Barnes is goofy and funny, in a Bud Spencer sort of way. Still, the picture bored me to tears in each of two separate attempted viewings. (I was made so catatonic the first time around, I stopped halfway through and tried again from the beginning on another day. No Luck.) If I had to put my finger on it, I guess I'd say there is a distinct lack of dramatic tension and/or action on hand. We seem to follow Lord leisurely from from one scenario to the next, never sensing any danger, import or panic to what's happening. The very few action sequences are of that most boring variety: The Shootout. Is there anything less exciting than two teams of gunmen firing at each other from darkened buildings? In several such scenes here, various pistoleros crouch behind their hiding spots, peek out and fire, crouch back down again, maybe somebody does an overly dramatic fall ... you get the idea. Furthermore, these scenes are usually edited such that there's no perspective on who's shooting whom, from where, adding to the viewer's dissonance. Let's have some some action, guys! A chase on horseback, a fistfight, a daring escape, a dramatic leap from a building, a tense river crossing ... stuff that makes the runtime fly by, not just fill the time.

By no means a failure, you may like this film if you are specifically locked in to Hilton's particular charm, or can forgive its clock-stopping dullness. I wouldn't recommend it otherwise. 5 out 10 stars, C-.

The second Western from Giuliano Carnimeo is a perfect production with a great cast. George Hilton and Walter Barnes are a perfect team and on the other side the great german actor Horst Frank. As Regina Loni von Friedl is also very good and insidious. Responsible for the good looking of the movie is Stelvio Massi with his camerawork. The movie has also a ironic sense of humor which is very good for it. Francesco de Masi did a great job with the wunderfull music. Giuliano Carnimeo and George Hilton made also a few other good movies together f.ex. the Giallo "Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?" or the western- comedy " Il West ti va stretto, amico ... è arrivato Alleluja". Carnimeo is also responsible for three of the Sartana- movies with Gianni Garko.

This one doesn't seem too well rated on the IMDb, but it has cinematography by Stelvio Massi, has George Hilton in it, has a scene set in a creepy mansion just like the old Italian Gothic horror films, also has a couple of Giallo like twists at the end, and features Horst Frank as a sadistic homosexual sharp shooter. And the ending takes place in a slaughterhouse! That's real meat in there - don't tell Morrisey!

Hilton is Lord, his mate is Bull. Them are two tough guys who travel to a town to track down their mate, Judge Warren. However, the judge is missing, his daughter has been kidnapped, and no one is talking. The town is ruled by some douche called Forester and his campy son Horst Frank, and they might have kidnapped the girl because there's half a million dollars in gold missing and they want. It.

Isn't that always the case though? You just want a pint and a decent place to sleep and all of a sudden folks are surrounding you and laughing and spitting in your water and getting annoyed when you gun them down. It must have been a hard life, being a gunslinger.

Then the usual happens - double crosses, beatings, attempted rape, shootings, big gunfight in the end. What makes this one stand out a bit more than the usual is Stelvio Massi's endlessly inventive cinematography (people looking at others through the barrels of a shotgun, multiple Hiltons looking at a corpse via shattered mirror fragments - He's very good, Massi). Then you've Horst's character as a sadistic, but frustrated, sharpshooter. And a hidden bad guy we don't see until near the end. Plus, the lead bad guy gets dispatched in a manner I don't think I've seen in a Western before.

The film becomes rather violent in the last half hour too, and that's when Carnimeo throws in the Giallo twists. Good on you sir. Carnimeo would go on to make on of my favourite Giallo films ever - the Edwige-Fenech-With-Her-Clothes-Just-Painted-On film The Case Of The Bloody Iris.

The DVD company Wild East put this out with another George Hilton spaghetti western on the same disc, "Full House For The Devil". The two compliment each other, and not in a good way. This is a pretty poor western. The first third of the movie is very confusing, with motivations by the various characters murky. Eventually we learn what's going on, but the movie doesn't really improve with that knowledge. The story remains very slow-moving, and the sporadic action sequences are not particularly exciting. The two protagonists (played by Hilton and Walter Barnes) are not very likable, coming across as kind of smug and cold-hearted. Is there anything of merit to be found here? Well, the opening credits song is not bad, and the director occasionally pulls off an interesting visual. But I think even the biggest spaghetti western fans won't find this limited merit enough to make the movie worth investing their time with.