7 Winchester pour un massacre

The title "Payment in Blood" appears to be a marketing title as another title of the movie was "Renegade Riders" as seen in the opening credits in the 1993 VHS released by MNTEX Entertainment. The transfer was low quality as the beginning credits were cut off since it was in "pan and scan" mode and not the "letterbox" mode usually used in the beginning to capture the full screen credits with the saloon style border.

The movie has all the classic Spaghetti-Western style and sound effects and out-of-sync voice dubbing that people love. It would be nice to see a new DVD transfer from the original film stock but there are no DVDs available although there are wide screen versions on the internet floating around.

When his career started to wane stateside, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes went to Europe and starred in several spaghetti westerns, including this one. I've seen several of Byrnes' spaghetti westerns, including this one, and in all of them he seems to be out of place. He looks too clean-cut to be stuck in the grittiness of the spaghetti western world. Still, he does give it his all, rolling around in the dirt and giving it his all.

As for the rest of the movie, it has its ups and downs. It has a great musical score by Francesco DeMasi, very memorable despite a lot of it being repeated as the movie runs. There are also some serviceable action sequences, which is fortunate because the parts of the movie between these action sequences is kind of slow and lacking plot and character development.

If you like spaghetti westerns, give this movie a go. If not, look for another movie.

The Civil War is over. But not for Col. Thomas Blake (Guy Madison). He leads a gang of marauders who terrorize the area around the Mexican border, looting and pillaging, all in the name of the Confederacy. Blake dispatches Chamaco Gonzalez to the town of Manassas to learn the location of a lost Confederate payroll, presumably buried after the surrender at Appomattox by Gen. Beauregard's soldiers. But Camacho gets himself captured and has a date with a firing squad.

Enter a stranger named Stuart (Edd Byrnes) who rescues Chamaco and thereby earning a meeting with Blake.

He claims to know where the payroll is buried. He wants Blake's help in retrieving it, with the end goal of helping Southerners suffering because of the war.

Blake, of course, has other ideas for the buried fortune. With a handpicked group of men back across the Rio Grande to fetch the payroll, which Stuart says is buried in a sacred cave of the Apaches, near the town of Durango.

Along the way, a pretty lady named Manuela shows up, offering her assistance.

First up, Francesco De Masi's score is awesome, livening up the proceedings even more. Payment in Blood is the third Ed Brynes' spaghetti western and it's the serious one of the two. Not much humour, just a straightforward action tale that moves at a clip and provides a fair amount of uneasy alliances, double crosses and lead flying, body count piling up. It's quite fun with Guy Madison stealing the scene as Blake, an untrusting leader of a gang. Ed Brynes does well as the clean cut hero who has an agenda to fulfil. The finale set in an Indian burial ground is really exciting.

Hmmm, now this sounds very familiar to me..... clean shaven poncho wearing bounty hunter goes undercover with a gang of "bad guys" in the pursuit of a cash box buried in a graveyard by soldiers during the Civil War.

And, yes, there are more than a few similarities between this film and Leone's "For a Few Dollars More" (in particular) and "Good, the Bad and the Ugly". And, yes, it has obviously a lower budget than both the aforementioned films. But when the "borrowed" stories are so good, there doesn't seem to be a problem in my eyes in recounting extended versions of such tales. So, I really enjoyed this film in its own right.

The leading role does owe more than a nod of the cowboy hat to Eastwood's Man with No Name, and in that respect Byrnes is not an ample substitute. To me, he is far too clean looking (although, like Eastwood's character, he will do whatever he needs to in order to get a job done). The show stealers are Blake (played by Guy Madison) and that rarest of things - a spaghetti western female role (Loiuse Barrett).

Whilst not as outstanding as some other Castellari films (say, Keoma and Jonathan and the Bears), it is still a highly enjoyable Spaghetti Western fare that I would recommend to fans of this genre.

Crazed Confederate raider Guy Madison can't stop raiding, even after the Civil War is over and done with. Ex-Confederate Edd "Kookie" Byrnes knows where a fortune in confederate treasure is buried and needs the bloodthirsty Madison and his band of cutthroats to get there, leading to an uneasy alliance and a harrowing trip across the frontier.

Another of director Enzo G. Castellari's patented brand of light-hearted adventure films, Payment In Blood is a decent enough, if not very original movie. It does have it's share of good action scenes, locations, and performances by it's lead actors, benefiting greatly from Byrnes charisma and Madison's machismo. The climax at the Indian burial ground is pretty neat too.

Castellari is actually pretty good at setting up and directing action sequences. He made his fair share of good movies, but I feel he really could have knocked it out of the park (and still can) if given the right script.