Indio500

This is a really interesting western directed by and featuring Clint Eastwood. There are elements of this film that echo back to the famous Leone/Eastwood collaboration of the sixties but this is a vastly unique and different film and should be considered in an independent light. There are similarities - He is again the nameless stranger with a character similar to that played in the Dollars westerns and his dialogue is threatening yet highly amusing.

However there is a supernatural quality about this film, the score is brilliantly haunting and the desolate setting - the mining town of Lago - seems almost ghostly. Eastwood delivers a fine performance as perhaps the most controversial of anti-heros featured in a western and he dominates the film from start to finish.

The great thing about this film is that it's not what it seems. It might not jump out at you at first but this western has something extra. You'll just have to watch it!

This is one of the most beautiful westerns you will ever see. It's a true masterpiece and arguably Corbucci's finest.

Sergio Leone will always be the name everyone associates with spaghetti westerns but Sergio Corbucci's contribution to the genre deserves great recognition. People usually always mention Django and The Great Silence when talking about Corbucci's westerns but Companeros is perhaps his best work.

Companeros is a much lighter film than the aforementioned. Like most Corbucci westerns there is a political undertone to the film and the plot revolves around the Mexican revolution (similar to A Professional Gun which Corbucci directed 2 years earlier). Che Guevara look-a-like Thomas Milian is superb as the comical revolutionary Vasco and Corbucci regular Franco Nero is excellent as his ultra-cool Swedish mercenary partner. Add to the mix a marijuana-smoking psychopath played by Jack Palance and you have one explosive concoction of a western. Pulling all this together is another masterful score by the legendary Ennio Morricone. I guarantee you will still be singing the theme tune a week later!

I rate this as one of the best Westerns of all time. It's a really fun film and an absolute must for fans of the Spaghetti genre.

"Someone once wrote that revenge is a dish that has to be eaten cold....The way you're going you'll end up with Indigestion". Ryan (Lee Van Cleef)

Directed by Giulio Petroni and written by Luciano Vincenzioni, this classy western takes much of its inspiration from Sergio Leone's For A Few Dollars More masterpiece of two years earlier. Understandable when you realise that Vincenzioni also wrote the script for Leone's classic. Death Rides A Horse is a great movie with one fatal flaw - John Phillip Law. Unconvincing and wooden, Law lacks the cool calculating guise of an Eastwood, Nero or even Milian and fails in the role of hero. Luckily everything else about the film is perfect. As we would expect, Lee Van Cleef is excellent as the more senior hero in the partnership, the story line is second to none and Ennio Morricone provides a haunting and abrasive score. Petroni does not shy away from violence and this film has it in abundance but crucially it is woven into the story with good reason and contributes to the overall feel of the film without going over the top.

Definitely worth watching.