Sartana

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.

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).

"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.

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.