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Sartana (played superbly by John Garko) has one of the greatest entrances on screen of all the Spaghetti protagonists. When accused of looking like a scarecrow, he utters the classic line "I am your pallbearer" before gunning down all the bandits facing him. A classic moment, with the black clad Sartana setting the scene perfectly for this Gothic tinged western.

The story itself is a very complicated affair, and one which I'm not completely sure I followed from beginning to end (I blame the wine consumption). In simple terms, the story evolves around a stagecoach robbery and murder (with the culprits themselves hijacked and massacred by Lasky - played by the ever brilliant William Berger - and his gang). Enter Sartana, in the midst of further double crossing and more double crossing. And cue bloodshed aplenty!

Sartana combines the gadgetry of Parolini's later Sabata movies, with the darkness and brutality of Django. There are classic performances from Garko and Berger together with the familiar faces of Fernando Sancho and Klaus Kinski.

The success of Sartana is clearly demonstrated by the string of sequels (and name-checks) that followed. And rightly so, the character is in equal parts cool, mysterious and deadly. Much like the film. I just wish I understood it better (time to put away the bottle, and rewind the video perhaps).

A coach is stolen and its passengers are killed. Later occur a murders series starred by a bandit named Lasky(William Berger, unforgettable co-starring in ¨Sabata¨ as the banjo man). The stagecoach's strongbox has disappeared turning into several hands. The dark,elegant hero, a freelance gunman, named Sartana(Gianni Garco or John Garco) appears to chase the nasty gunfighter and discover the robberies and killings.The confrontation will be inevitable among the town's despots(Sydney Chaplin, Gianni Rizzo), a cruel murderous( top-notch Klaus Kinski, as always), a Mexican general named Tampico( the great Fernando Sancho in his regular character), Lansky and of course Sartana.

The first movie on Sartana starred by Gianni Garco is plenty of action, shootouts, double-crosses, twists and loads of violence and blood. It was followed by director Alfonso Balcazar with ¨Sartana non Perdona or Sonora¨. Miles Deem directed two Sartanas deemed lousy and cheesy. Giuliano Carmineo , alias Anthony Ascott, directed various with George Hilton who replaces to Garco. Hilton played more natural and roguish than Garco who was cold and peculiar. The movie gets the usual Western issues, such as greedy antiheroes, violent facing off, quick zooms, exaggerated baddies, among them. Appear very secondaries the habitual at Italian Western and Peplum genre, such as Sal Borgese, Carlo Tamberlani Andrea Scotti, and cameo by the director Parolini as a gambler. Special mention to Franco Pesce, Spaghetti's customary, as an old gravedigger. Atmospheric musical score by Piero Piccioni and appropriate cinematography by Sandro Macori. The picture is professionally directed by Frank Kramer or Gianfranco Parolini, subsequently he directed another Spaghetti-hero named Sabata with Lee Van Cleef in two entries.

"If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death" (1968), directed by Gianfranco Parolini and starring Gianni Garko, William Berger Fernando Sancho, Sidney Chaplin(!) and Klaus Kinski phoning in a cameo role, has only one great thing going for it, and that's its ridiculously over the top title. The rest is a banal Spaghetti Western that has no tension and no direction.

The script, such as it is, has a lot of incident and detail, none of which is interesting, as it is completely convoluted and very hard to care what happens to whom. Still, the plot is something like this: Sartana (Garko) gets involved with an insurance swindle run by several dignitaries, who hire a Mexican gang to steal a strong-box, and an American gang, led by Lasky (Berger), to kill the Mexicans.

It takes a very long time, too long, to find all this out, and by that point, I ceased to care. Berger is a good actor, one that fits very well into the greed-fill world of Spaghetti's, but isn't given anything interesting to do and is wasted completely. Kinski obviously was doing his role for the money, which is a shame, as his is, career wise the best actor in the film. Garko has a good opening line ("I am your pallbearer."), but not much else, and doesn't have the same magnetic presence as Clint Eastwood or Lee Van Cleef.

The director made "Sartana" and other "Circus" Westerns like this. They're called "Circus" Westerns because there is so much jumping around and choreographed back-flips that you might be watching a kung-fu movie and not a Spaghetti. The sets here aren't so much grand as big, to accommodate all the acrobatics; it has a hefty budget, but the desert scenes are shot in some quarry. Why? I suspect because Parolini was more interest in making an action film that just happened to be set in the West than creating a Western. These types of Spaghetti's were certainly very popular in their day, and they gave a lifeline to an ailing genre a few years later. I just wish the lifeline had been better. Maybe saying this movie is an insult to the genre is too strong, but when you see progressive and transcendent Spaghetti Westerns like "Black Jack" and "Once Upon a Time in the West" that were made in the same year, you realise how lazy this film is.

I am a big fan of Spaghetti Westerns (the good ones, anyway), and was really looking forward to seeing "Sartana." I loved the film "Django"--I can understand why it was so successful and inspired so many imitation Django-films. But after viewing the English language video of "Sartana", I can't see any reason why "Sartana" inspired any imitators, or was so successful. To me, "Sartana" was just an average Spaghetti, with a high body count--mostly resulting from the villains killing each other. I watched the video twice, and I still don't understand the plot--it was a jumbled mess; perhaps the original Italian version made more sense. Klaus Kinski's role was limited to just a few scenes, with almost nothing to do. William Berger made a charismatic villain, but his personality inexplicably alternated between bravery and cowardice. (And I don't know how Berger was able to recruit gang members, the way he was always killing his own men.) The unshaven anti-hero Garko (who bore an uncanny resemblance to James Franciscus in some scenes) was pleasing but unexceptional in the lead role, his only unique feature was his weapon, a tiny four-barrel pepperbox-style pistol--which in reality, with its short barrels and tiny bullets, should have been vastly inferior in range, accuracy and effectiveness when compared to an ordinary six-shooter. Even the background music was bland. Too many incidents were lifted from the Leone/Eastwood films: the musical watch, the metal plate deflecting a bullet, the eccentric coffin maker. And Sartana wins the final showdown by using a trick, instead of his skill. "Sartana" is a historically important Spaghetti Western because of its success and the number of imitators (in name, at least) that it inspired, but there are many better films within the Spaghetti Western genre.

I'm a big Spaghetti Western fan and fairly tolerant of the stylistic excesses, but this film made little sense. It's not clear what is motivating Sartana, the undertaking laughs insanely, William Berger does not know how to act, etc.

Crooked bankers plan an insurance swindle and hire a Mexican gang to steal the bank's gold but they also pay Lasky's gang to kill the Mexicans.

It is very obvious why Sartana created an avalanche of sequels, only second to Django. Even if it looks like yet another tale about stolen gold, Mexican bandits and switching allegiances, Sartana feels (and is) different. Of course seen back in 1968, it must have wowed European audiences with its bleak cinematography and nihilistic characters. However, 40 years (!) down the line, and it still feels as refreshingly dark and stylish as ever.

As in with most spaghettis, the plot is near incomprehensible. It has something to do about a stolen shipment of gold and a constant switching of allegiances, as thief betrays thief to get the gold. But, again as in with most spaghettis, the plot isn't the issue at all.

Sartana (1968) is a capsule of pure spaghetti western style. Everything is kept very minimal here, from the scarce dialogues, to the perennially empty town streets. Yet there's a hellish ambiance to proceedings and the nonsensical plot only adds to its psychotronic charm. I gave up trying to follow the plot after a while and just immersed myself in the surreal happenings.

Sartana himself is like a crossover between The Man with no Name (the standard by which every spag antihero is measured) and Django, a black-clad amoral anti-hero. He's not out there to catch the baddies. He's just out for money and blood. His quirky gadgets often bring to mind the other Parolini character, Sabata, but Gianni Garko's character plays on a whole other level. There is of course, the occasional comic relief, in the form of an old gravedigger, but it only confirms that Sartana is indeed a grim western. That same darkness would resurface in Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter years later, on the other side of the pond.

Overall, this is a must see for SW afficionados. If you're a fan of Corbucci's nihilistic side (Django, The Great Silence), Sartana will make you cream your pants. Dark, stylish, with a streak of Euro horror running through it, Sartana is a criminally forgotten piece of celluloid. Watch it and find out.

Forget the plot that was usual, this unique genre spaghetti western certainly are their colorful characters, Sartana (Gianni Garko) portraits a soft spoken hero, overtly akin as Clint Eastwood, but highly stylized, handling a sort of cylinder tagged with cards symbols, spinning around, playing poker, winning of course, those enemies as the Mexican General Tampico, who wants for any means who everybody shall call him as real name "DonJosé Manuel Francisco Mendoza Montezuma de La Plata Perez Rodriguez, very usual on realty spanish members, what a name, what character eating the chicken with dirty hands on a few bites only, also the blue eyes Lasky (William Berger) as often a crook and a special guest Klaus Kinski as the skillful dagger man, beauty girls, without forget the funniest older undertaker, the screenwriter and friendly director Gianfranco Parolini states at bonus material that never received a penny for this picture, which he had 30% of the profits, the producer did swear that lost all his money and couldn't pay his share!!!

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First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.25

Frank Kramer's SARTANA (1968) has emerged as one of the most interesting examples of the classic era Spaghetti Westerns and yet exists as a sort of exuberant failure, reveling in it's sense of artiness & bad taste at the same time. Yet it's an important failure, a movie that spawned a recurring character and helped to shape the Spaghetti Western into a genuinely "adult" form of cinematic entertainment. The film was classified with an "X" certificate in much of Europe when first released and only made it's way to English speaking audiences in a somewhat diminished cut -- and has now been released by indie Spaghetti Western label Wild East Productions on DVD in it's complete form, and demands some re-evaluation. When I first encountered this movie I was admittedly caught up in a wave of excitement about the film's look & style. Here is a pretty much pure example of the Spaghetti Western, made entirely in Italy by an all European cast with no standout Yankee Gringo star turn, unless you count Klaus Kinski's ten minutes or so on screen. Gianni Garko headlines as Sartana in the second of five screen outings by him as a character named "Sartana" but the first from the loosely related series featuring Sartana as a hero: 1966's $1000 ON THE BLACK depicts Sartana as a crazed, barbaric killer and is not related to the Good Guy Sartana movies ... or so the thinking goes.

Sartana's character in this first Good Guy outing is actually more successfully realized than the movie he inhabits, which tells a sort of labyrinthine plot by various bigwigs in a tumbleweed nowhere to intercept a shipment of gold & screw each other over for their percentages, resulting in murder and mayhem: the usual boring stuff. What works is Sartana's character fleshed out by Garko: A black garbed, laconic, mysterious gunfighter who appears out of nowhere with motives all his own and no past history (perhaps the ghost of the original Sartana, sent back to atone for his sins on Earth??). Yet he seems to know what everybody in the movie is up to and has a plan to play the different sides against each other & move in once the dust has settled to pick up the pieces for himself like a Hyena, which is how one character aptly describes him. Sartana is there to preside over the deaths, and make sure everyone gets buried in style.

This is done with a minimum of dialog, an emphasis on mood and a staggering body count for a movie of such limited scope. Which plays out very much like an arty, dark-toned cartoon or graphic novel, with Sartana as a sort of Batman like avenger who takes justice into his own hands. Garko wears his Sartana personal like a tailored suit, even perfecting a way of turning while gazing up from underneath the brim of a hat that reminds me of watching a cobra moving with a snake charmer. He also has more in common with James Bond than Clint Eastwood, armed with a small pepper-box type Derringer pistol that behaves more like a movie prop than an actual weapon, and more often then not scheming his way out of a jam or around his adversary's flanks. He is the epitome of "cool" as a Spaghetti Western anti-hero, and it is easy to see why his performance spawned a series.

The film also boasts a first rate A-list supporting cast of genre veterans: the crazed William Berger, Sydney Chaplin, Spaghetti Western legend Fernando Sancho, Andrea Scotti, Sal Borgese, and of course Klaus Kinski. One of the attributes that gives the film a decidedly surrealist bent is Kinski's "performance", which appears to have been filmed over the course of a long weekend without anyone else present on set but Kinski. Watch him in the barbershop scene: He appears to be dialing it in from another dimension, and in all is on-screen for about ten minutes. What a way to make a living. The later "Sartana" movies directed by Anthony Ascott became increasingly cartoonish but this film has a dark, nasty, almost sadistic side to it that is quite special. I would almost refer to it as "mean spirited", and filmed on a shoestring budget that allowed no quarter for artifice. The offbeat musical score by Piero Piccioni is uniquely un-cinematic with an organ as the central instrument instead of the usual Morricone flavored bravado, and most of the outdoor scenes were filmed near a dump outside of Rome. You can see the green yucky chemicals polluting the pond around which one scene is set, which seems appropriate for a ghoulish, overtly violent cartoon. Or even a horror movie.

8/10 for Spaghetti fans, 5/10 for everybody else, and a classic of the genre any way you slice it.

Spaghetti westerns can claim some essential classics among their ranks. For a handful of exemplars, and the way that westerns have largely faded as a genre since the 70s, I think it's often overlooked that of all the spaghetti westerns ever made, not all are equal. 'If you meet Sartana... pray for your death' is enjoyable, but I think it's safe to say that it's not one of the best examples of the style. There's a decided bluntness and lack of polish that characterizes the entirety of the picture, not least of all in its editing (brusque and tactless), cinematography, sound design (rather tinny), plot development (far less than fluid and natural), acting (quite overcooked), dubbing, and direction. All the solid bones are here of a concrete narrative, and one that should be compelling in and of itself, yet as it presents to us it feels like much of the fine detail has been sandblasted away, leaving blocky rough edges as one element of the feature ill-fittingly abuts another. This isn't to say that the movie isn't clever at points, but it seems like we're mostly getting the broad strokes, and only the crudest form of the tale as we could be seeing it.

In the fundamentals this is just as suitable as most of its brethren. The production design, art direction, costume design, and filming locations all serve to build a strong look and feel to the proceedings. Action sequences in and of themselves are done well, some better than others while some instances are undercut by curt or overzealous camerawork and editing. All this is well and good, but also only goes so far in securing a picture's favor. And more to the point, again, such quality is set against the wild dearth of subtlety that often strips the plot of coherence as the story advances. I'm not entirely sure that some scenes or beats have meaningful connective threads between them, for they've been worn away by the coarseness. And what is a movie, a western especially, without a distinct, united tale to impart?

'If you meet Sartana... pray for your death' is entertaining, and fairly worthwhile on its own merits. It's also notably flawed, and considerably weaker than many of its contemporaries. Just a little bit more of a delicate hand in any regard would have gone a long way toward improving the title as a whole. Opinions vary and no doubt other folks get much more out of this than I did; I also wonder if I'm not being too kind. One way or another this is a decent way to spend 90 minutes if you come across it, but don't go out of your way by any means.

I guess if you copy something (more or less), you can and should copy from the best. So this can be seen as an homage to Leone. Although the character of Sartana seems to have gone through quite something before emerging in his first official outing. The same actor (who got his name "englified", played Sartana, based on a Santana, not the Carlos Santana musician of later fame) in most of this officials outings and in one unofficial one, which unfortunately was not in the Arrow box set I purchased.

Now if you feel that I rated this too low and you had much more fun with it, I did not mean to offend you. I quite enjoyed it too. Yet it does not hold a candle to the few Dollars movie, which in itself was a masterpiece of course, in many regards. One of them being the charisma and stoic face of Clint. Garko is good, but he also is no Clint. Motivations are "unclear" apart from everyone being after the money/gold. The bodycount stacks and the twists keep on ... twisting. Doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, if it can "surprise" the viewer.

Good set design and costume department. Even if some things may have been borrowed from other ... "venues". They do fit into this world of cowboys going rogue ...

Now this is more like it! Corpses everywhere, strange enemies, even stranger heroes - this is a good Italian Western, right here. Take that, Dead for a Dollar! Gianni Garko (of Body Count) is the mysterious Sartana, out to get some gold that's been scammed by local businessmen in conjunction with an amazingly over the top William Berger (Dial: Help, Maya, Spider Labyrinth and Keoma). Berger for me plays the best character in the film, a heartless, hyperactive killer who is not shy in double crossing folks, but can intuitively know when to hook up with Sartana too if the situation demands it.

Yep, it's one of those films. Missing gold, uneasy alliances, double crossings, and many, many shoot outs leading to corpses lying everywhere and a mere two characters left alive at the end. This is the kind of film you're looking for. It's got everything you want. Except boobs.

Some come for the Garko, who plays Sartana in a laid back, but deadly way, and stay for the Berger, who's anything but laid back here.

WHUP!

Oh, and seemingly, Klaus Kinski turned up on set one day, stared into the camera a couple of times, and got paid for it!

WHUP!

Oh, and this film has the loudest 'eating a chicken' foley effects I've heard ever heard ever heard.

WHUP!

This movie is shameless, even by spaghetti western standards. The only thing good, or sort of watchable about the film is the fat bad guy who shameless copycats the character of Tuco from the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

(1968) ... If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death/ Se incontri Sartana prega per la tua morte DUBBED SPAGHETTI WESTERN

Co-written and directed by Gianfranco Parolini that opens with a sabotage of a horse and carriage and taking a letter from a lady and her husband and the rider riding behind them. They think Morgan (Klaus Kinski) with his long range rifle has shot and killed the rider following the buggy, but apparently as soon as the other bandits showed up, he stands up to confront them before he guns all six of them down and Morgan escapes. Meanwhile, a transfer of gold is supposed to be placed inside of a stagecoach. With both bandits and another greedy gun man, Lasky (William Berger) leading his own outlaw gang until he is double crossed, and he guns them all down by a sub machine gun. And upon opening up the trunk/ chess, it is filled nothing but rocks. Upon Sartana coming back into town, he bonds with the pallbearer, Dusty (Franco Pesce). And he meets other shady characters such as General Jose Manuel Mendoza (Fernando Sancho) and his gang; the banker, Altman (Gianni Rizzo) and mayor, Jeff Stewal (Sidney Chapin) with the many twists, turns and revelations where the gold might be.

There is many gun fights except that there is like, only one interesting moment regarding Morgan (Klaus Kinski) confronting Sartana inside Dusty's funeral place. I did not care for the way the movie had ended that although Sartana ended up with the gold, he did not give any to Dusty the pallbearer, who did help and aided him to get that gold- his role has kind of being ignored and disregarded.

Watching this film is like sleeping through a typical Spaghetti western and only waking up for the gunfights.

In the first 11 minutes, there are about 5 shootouts and about three double-crosses. The hero of the piece in involved in one of those shootouts.

There's no set up or anything. This isn't Django, where the film focuses on him and him alone. His motives may not be clear, but we know he's up to something. There's something magnetic about the character.

Here we have faceless bad guys that Sartana happens to stumble into for some reason. The only reason you know the hero is the hero is because he has a good one liner. Otherwise he's as indistinguishable from the grizzled faces of the entire cast as everyone else.

You won't know for a very long while what ANYONE'S motivation is. Not the hero's. Not the bad guys. Heck, I challenge you to find out who the bad guys even are, because they keep walking on-screen and getting shot dead almost immediately after, and not even by the hero most of the time.

I'm pretty sure they gave the director a budget, a location, and a bunch of actors and said "shoot something", because they certainly weren't working with any script.

They had a vague idea to have a James Bond gadgety gadget hero in the old west, and that was it.

What you're left with is a film where things happen, people get shot, and a hero wanders in and out of frame with a music watch every now and then. You won't know why any of it is going on, and nor will you care, really.

First of the sartana films ive watched and i wasn't disappointed. Its not a complex film and isn't very gory either but what it does have is lots of shootouts if you are looking for something to turn off your brain to its this film. Sartana is this badass guy trying to unravel everything he's deadly, he's quiet, he resembles Clint Eastwood, he plays poker like James Bond, has his own special pistol and he has his own unique style of clothing which makes him standout in the desert. I'm rating it high just because its a fun movie and what other reason is there to watch a movie in all honesty. Even has his own outcast side kick the coffin maker weird how they always seem to be the outcast in westerns.